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Guest article by Karine Hetherington

Vladimir Horowitz is probably the most famous concert pianist of all time. Wherever he performed, he drew legions of fans right up to his death in 1989. Audiences flocked to see the supernatural energy he brought to Chopin, Liszt, Brahms and other favourites from the romantic repertoire. There is no doubt, he was both virtuoso artist and a fascinating, idiosyncratic performer. Much has been said about his unusual flat-fingered technique which purists found vulgar.

Viewing some old footage of Horowitz, I was struck by how Jekyl and Hyde he appears on camera. Charming and charismatic, he nevertheless appears haunted by sadness.

Lea Singer, author of  ‘The Piano Student’, based on Horowitz’s secret life, had the novelist’s nose for the hidden story.

She was lucky enough to gain access to to Horowitz’s correspondence with a certain Nico Kaufmann. Kaufmann was Horowitz’s piano student, soon to become his lover in 1937. The secret letters have never been published and are to be found at Zurich’s Zentralbibliotek. Up until his death, Horowitz remained married to Wanda Toscanini (daughter to the famous and very influential conductor, Arturo Toscanini).

This is an unusual book which at first reads like a dark detective novel of the sort Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt might have written. A man walks away from his planned suicide. The agents, who were supposed to assist him, turn up to an empty house. The man has already fled and the reader sees him turning up at a bar where a remarkable pianist is playing.

Slowly, maddeningly slowly at first, in a bizarre, convoluted dialogue, the pianist, Nico Kaufmann, reveals his life to the stranger. The first few chapters were a tad far-fetched. We want suspense but frankly I was a little lost. An absence of speech marks, standard practice in European novels (this book was originally written in German) may have slowed me down a little.

Thankfully I grew accustomed to the style and notation. It was a good thing, as Lea Singer’s research translates into a riveting tale. 

Kaufmann takes the stranger (thereafter known as Doneti) on a journey into his past. The pair visit grand faded hotels, bars, lakeside houses around Zurich and Lucerne. In this twilight world Kaufmann’s memories of Horowitz surface in Proustian fashion. Of his piano lessons as a young man. His first kiss with his teacher. A powerful image remains with me of pale-bodied Horowitz, in his early thirties, lying next to the young Kaufmann in the hotel room. Their naked bodies are outstretched on the bed and are barely touching.

Not over sentimentalised, this is a moving book, filled with tension and tragedy. We see Horowitz, warts and all. We see his rages, his professional perfectionism and his bouts of depression. The younger Kaufmann is loved, hated and controlled by the older lover. With the urgency of war approaching adding to the suspense, this makes this a fascinating read.

Recommended if you, like me, relish knowing more about the legendary Horowitz, all be it through the imagination of an author who has researched the subject well.

In the confessional nature of the dialogue, this might make a good play. 

‘The Piano Student’ by Lea Singer is published by newvesselpress.com on October 6 2020.

Karine Hetherington is a teacher, writer and reviewer who lives in London. A dual-British and French national, with a Russian ancestry thrown in, her short stories and novels reflect her passion for both the detail and grand sweep of European history. After studying creative writing at Birkbeck College in London, Karine has been telling stories that have brought history to life, with tales of love and adventure that draw on the detail of real events and real lives. Her two published novels, The Poet and the Hypotenuse, and Fort Girard, are set in France in the 1930s and 1940s. Karine is also a reviewer for The Cross-Eyed Pianist’s sister site, ArtMuseLondon.

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YCAT, the Young Classical Artists Trust, which identifies, supports and nurtures early in their professional careers, has put together some very useful resources in its 21cMusician toolkit – a brand new series of micro-courses, videos, interviews, blogs and live events, each with a different monthly focus, to help young musicians kickstart their careers.

In the crowded, highly competitive market that is the classical music industry, it can be hard for young musicians to get started and make a mark – and never more so now, at a time when the industry and the arts in general, are in extremely straitened circumstances due to the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic – young musicians need good advice and practical support, which YCAT seeks to offer with its resources.

In the first of its monthly series, #21cMusician toolkit, the power of programming is explored with a number of leading music writers, critics and reviewers, myself included – plus advice on designing inventive and intriguing programmes.

Visit the YCAT website to read more

Photo by Kilyan Sockalingum on Unsplash

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Piano music commissioned and recorded during lockdown to support musicians struggling during the Covid-19 crisis

There have been many initiatives to keep the music playing and support musicians during these difficult times. What all of these initiatives demonstrate is that musicians are, despite straitened circumstances, determined to keep playing and to continue to share their music with audiences. It also sends a powerful message to government that the industry is determined to survive, to let the music play, come what may.

I have a personal interest in this wonderful project by pianist Duncan Honeybourne: Duncan and I are friends, and also colleagues – together we run a lunchtime concert series in Weymouth.

During the UK lockdown, Duncan decided to offer short video recitals from his home every day. He called them ‘Piano Soundbites’. The series proved very popular and within a few weeks, Duncan had the idea to approach composers to ask them to write new piano pieces for him, to be premiered as ‘Contemporary Piano Soundbites’ in his video recitals. Alongside this, Duncan set up a Just Giving page to raise funds for Help Musicians UK (formerly the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund). The response was incredible – the project, which was ranked in the top 10% of Just Giving fundraisers nationally during April 2020, has already raised well over £2000 for Help Musicians UK, supporting musician colleagues struggling in the current situation.

‘Contemporary Piano Soundbites’ celebrates the diversity of styles embraced by a broad cross-section of professional composers working today. Featured composers include Sadie Harrison, Graham Fitkin, John McLeod, David Lancaster, Francis Pott, Luke Whitlock and John Casken, as well as younger and emerging composers, and each piece is no more than 6 minutes long at the most. These piano miniatures represent an important contribution to the ever-expanding repertoire for the instrument, to be enjoyed by amateur, professional and student pianists alike.

pianist Duncan Honeybourne

“….it was an invigorating experience to record an entire disc of pieces which hadn’t existed less than four months earlier! Especially stimulating and exciting is the juxtaposition of several leading senior composers with some of their most gifted younger colleagues. Several young composers make their first appearances on disc.

My objective, as I stated in my invitation to composers, was fourfold: to imaginatively harness the zeitgeist of our present situation: to bring comfort and enjoyment to a large ready-made audience stuck at home, to aid musicians badly affected by the “cultural lockdown” and to add to the contemporary repertoire, creating an artistic keepsake of this extraordinary phase in our history.

My long term plan is that, as well as helping our colleagues at a time of need, the collection will provide a snapshot of reflections and musings by some of the finest and most distinctive composers of our time at a unique and unprecedented moment in our history. I hope the disc will make for a refreshing, enriching, stimulating and quirky listening experience too!”
Duncan Honeybourne, September 2020

The music was recorded in late July 2020 in the new Gransden Hall at Sherborne Girls School, Dorset.

The disc is released on the Prima Facie label and is available to order now

For review copies, sample tracks, interviews with Duncan and other press information please contact Frances Wilson

Meet the Artist interview with Duncan Honeybourne

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A film by Antonio Iturrioz

Leopold Godowksy (1870-1938) is regarded as one of the giants of the keyboard, renowned for his formidable technique and ingenious transcriptions of works by other composers, transforming already challenging pieces, such as Chopin’s Études, into works of extraordinary difficulty and invention, which few pianists are prepared to tackle. In addition to transcriptions, Godowsky was also a significant and prolific composer in his own right. He was the last in a lineage of great post-romantic composers that included Rachmaninoff and Busoni, and made a major contribution to the development of piano music. A ‘pianist for pianists’, the critic James Huneker referred to him as the “Buddha of the Piano”; popular during his lifetime, Godowsky and his music is hardly known or performed today.

The Cuban-American pianist Antonio Iturrioz is one of the few musicians to rise to the challenge of Godowsky’s music and, following an injury to his right hand when he was a young man, he spent several years studying Godowsky’s complete left hand transcriptions and original compositions. His 2010 film The Buddha of the Piano – Leopold Godowsky is the result of meticulous research into the composer’s life and music, and is the first and only film on Leopold Godowsky. Illustrated with archive material including photographs, scores and piano rolls, this engaging film summarizes Godowsky’s achievements as a pianist and composer, and reveals his busy, peripatetic life, and his thoughts on music and life, shining an important light on, arguably, the greatest pianist of all time. But perhaps what is most satisfying is the music which accompanies the film. Performed by Antonio Iturrioz himself, he demonstrates not only superlative technical fluency, endlessly rising to the vertiginous challenges of this phenomenal music, but also shows a deep appreciation of Godowsky’s unique artistry. Mr Iturrioz’s film, together with his performances, are a wonderful endorsement of Leopold Godowsky’s remarkable talent and his significant contribution to pianism and piano repertoire.

Antonio Iturrioz playing the restored 1923 Steinway Duo-Art Concert Grand which was used for the performances for his film

More information about Antonio Iturrioz’s film here

Concert pianist, documentarian and Steinway Artist Antonio Iturrioz, born in Cuba, came to the United States when he was 7 years old. Giving his first concert at 9, he played the Liszt First Piano Concerto for his orchestral debut at 15. His teachers have included his father, Pablo Iturrioz; Francisco De Hoyos, a pupil of Gyorgi Sandor; Bernardo Segall, who studied with the Liszt pupil Alexander Siloti; Aube Tzerko; and Julian White. He has taken master classes from Byron Janis, Alexis Weissenberg, Jorge Bolet, and Andre Watts.

While recuperating from an injury to his right hand, Iturrioz learned important and obscure works for the left hand, including the complete Godowsky arrangements and original compositions. This led to his first film, the unique documentary The Art of the Left Hand: A Brief History of Left Hand Piano Music, called “an important film” by Clavier magazine. His second, The Buddha of the Piano: Leopold Godowsky, the only film about Godowsky, has been shown at international piano festivals, colleges in the U.S., the Edinburgh Society of Musicians and at the American Liszt Festival in South Carolina. Highly praised by Marc-Andre Hamelin, Carlo Grante, and many others, Scotland’s greatest pianist of the second half of the Twentieth Century, Dr. Ronald Stevenson, said, “It is an important film for all pianists and pianophiles….You reveal with skill, clarity and sensitivity the intricacies of his polyphonic piano writing.” The film, translated into Italian and French, will soon be translated into Polish. Both films have been featured on national public television.

Iturrioz in 2013 gave the world premiere performance on one piano of L. M. Gottschalk’s complete two-movement symphony, La Nuit des Tropiques, (the first American symphony) having transcribed for the first time the second movement, “Fiesta Criolla,” for one piano.

The Steinway & Sons label released in fall 2018 the world premiere CD of this historic work. Andre Watts has called Gottschalk and Cuba an “extraordinary album of music!”

For more information please visit:

www.gottschalkandcuba.com

www.newinternationalgodowskysociety.com

www.theartofthelefthand.com