Word: landowska
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...Warsaw as a child of four, Landowska expressed herself on the piano while other children were learning to talk. Her first teacher, recognizing her precocious virtuosity, let her play whatever music pleased her. But "a stern, dry man" took his place, and "my delightful roamings through the gavottes and bourrées of Bach were at an end." She was very unhappy. "I dream only one thing, when I am grown to play only Bach, Haydn and Mozart." She sealed this vow in an envelope, to be opened "when I am a big girl. But I opened it the next...
...graduated from the Warsaw Conservatory of Music at 14, an accomplished musician whose professors agreed that they had nothing further to teach her, and set off on her own, giving concerts throughout Europe. But Landowska had no desire to dazzle concert audiences in the accepted manner: "I have always been in revolt." Her beloved cantor of Leipzig, Bach-and his contemporaries-had vanished from the piano repertory. Instead, performers who believed that the old master had no notion of the keyboard's capabilities served up a hybrid fare under the names of Bach-Liszt, Bach-Tausig, or Bach...
TOGETHER with her husband, Henri Lew-Landowska, who hyphenated his name and identity to hers, and was a folklorist, an amateur musician, "an excellent cook" and her personal court jester, Landowska began collecting manuscripts and examining old harpsichords in all the great museums of Europe. She brought the results of her researches to the Pleyel firm of Paris. In line with her suggestions, they built an instrument, "capable of greater brilliance and more tonal variety -the first modern instrument to give full justice to the 16-foot register, that essential set of strings for a deep resounding bass...
...Countess Tolstoy heard her play in Moscow and invited her to her estate for the Christmas season. The count sent two sleighs to the railway station, one for Landowska, the other for the harpsichord which has followed her everywhere, sometimes on gondola and camelback. She returned again for the Christmas of 1909: "My music was a revelation to Tolstoy. I played for him; he talked...
...years, the jangle and warble of her strings was heard at Saint-Leu-La-Forêt, a green suburb of Paris where Landowska established her Ecole de Musique Ancienne. Here she lived, after her husband's death in 1919, among her 10,000 books and manuscripts, her pupils, her ancient instrument and nine dogs. Music lovers from all over the world came to her villa and concert hall. The 2 o'clock train that left Paris every Sunday for Saint-Leu, 30 minutes away, was referred to by station guards as "Mme. Landowska's train...