The "second book" begins with the entrance of harpsichordist
Wanda Landowska. Utilizing Landowska's personal papers, Kildea allows the reader to glimpse into Landowska's world as an artist, scholar, and collector of rare manuscripts and keyboards.
In 1911 the brilliant harpsichord pioneer
Wanda Landowska discovered the piano languishing in the same drafty monastery where Chopin and Sand had stayed.
"
Wanda Landowska." G centered; [F.sub.3]-[G.sub.4]; Tess: mH; 2/2, stately, but not too slow ([micron] = ca.
Later the reviewer learned from Lance Schachterle that de Falla had composed the piece for
Wanda Landowska, who in the 1920s played on mammoth, reverberant harpsichords quite able to outmuscle the accompaniment.
This month he performs the inaugural recital at Washington DC's Library of Congress on the 1912 harpsichord belonging to the legendary
Wanda Landowska, and he is giving more recitals in the USA and Canada before returning to the UK for his Brinkburn date in July.
in 1938, his life first in Boston and then in New York, and finally anecdotes about his friends and acquaintances including Paul Hindemith, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Alexander Kipnis, the economist Fritz Machlup, the Czech soprano Jarmila Novotna,
Wanda Landowska, the Viennese voice teacher Julius Patzak, Curt Sachs, the philosopher Alfred Schutz, and Bruno Walter.
THE FAMOUS POLISH HARPSICHORDIST
Wanda Landowska has recently been characterized as an "uncommon visionary" and an "epochal exception." (1) Such epithets recognize her as a singularly influential musician and, at the same time, mythologize her into a modern revolutionary who almost single-handedly initiated the worldwide harpsichord revival of the twentieth century by championing above all the "authentic" performance of Bach on the harpsichord.
"The fact that I'm gay isn't remarkable," says Schenkman, adding that
Wanda Landowska, the 20th century's premier harpsichordist, was a lesbian.
Though some listeners will always prefer the sound of the harpsichord, we have had over the years numerous editions by distinguished pianists such as Edwin Fischer and
Wanda Landowska (the latter on the harpsichord) and we now have two more notable versions.
They interviewed more than 15,000 people, but rescued only a fraction, including Hannah Arendt, Pablo Casals, Marc Chagall, Lion Feuchtwanger,
Wanda Landowska, Franz Werfel and Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel (who smuggled out Mahler's manuscripts), and the great alternative healer and physician Emanuel Revici--who died this past January at the age of 101.
Ahlgrimm's performances of Baroque music represented a radical departure from the distinctly 20th-century interpretations by the much more famous
Wanda Landowska and her followers.