The Wall Street Journal may not be at the top of every Harpsicordian Music lover’s or friend of Bach’s list of where to find tit-bits of interest but in the Reviews Section on May 6th 2011 there was a nice article praising Wanda Landowska titled “Remembering The Heroine of the Harpsichord.”
Most of us never had a chance to hear The Great Wanda. (I was born too late sadly.) But there is a remarkable DVD available with the only extant moving picture show of her playing. She was interviewed in her home in 1953 and the DVD includes vintage recordings of the artist performing selections from Bach, Francisque, etc. Treat yourselves to the Wanda Landowska: Uncommon Visionary” DVD and learn more of the woman who single-handedly provoked the revival of harpsichord music.
By A. J. Goldman
EISENACH, Germany—When Polish harpsichordist Wanda Landowska (1879-1959) met the cellist Pablo Casals, she famously told him, “You play Bach your way and I’ll play Bach his way.” While her dogmatic assertion might seem a little quaint today, a new exhibition at the Bach House, (the composer’s birthplace) makes clear just how influential Landowska has been in the way we think about and appreciate Bach’s music.
Landowska at her Pleyel harpsichord in Saint-Leu-la-Forêt in 1933.
Her name might not exactly ring bells these days outside musical and scholarly circles, but Landowska was a tireless advocate for an instrument that, at the time, was considered an inferior predecessor to the piano, as well as a pioneer of what is now called authentic performance practice.
The exhibition “Memories of Wanda Landowska” marks the 100th anniversary of a “musical battle” between the piano and the harpsichord held November 1911 in Eisenach. The harpsichord won.
Spread over two rooms in the Bach House, numerous objects, photos and musical examples are used to explain the life and work of this musical pioneer. They show her featured alongside famous artists or reposing in the tranquility of her “Temple de la Musique Ancienne” in Saint-Leu-la-Forêt, near Paris, where she lived from 1925 until driven out by the Nazis because of her Jewish origins. Some of Landowska’s belongings lend a shrine-like aspect, including the shoes that she wore while playing concerts (she wore long dresses that kept her pedal work a secret).
The exhibition’s centerpiece is an original 1927 harpsichord by Pleyel, the French make favored by Landowska, that is demonstrated every hour. At nearby listening stations, you can hear her playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Well-Tempered Clavier. For the uninitiated, these virtuosic renditions will come as a revelation. They reveal Landowska’s conviction that Bach should not be played with stiff reverence. As she wrote, “In their day, these works were accused of being too passionate. If we are incapable of evoking the same feelings, then our tradition is wrong.”
