Godowsky Leopold, *13 February 1870, Žosliai (near Vilnius; formerly Trakai County), †21 November 1938, New York, American pianist, composer and teacher of Polish-Jewish descent. At the age of nine, he was already proficient at playing the piano and composing. In 1879, he made his debut as a pianist in Vilnius, followed by his first concert tour of Poland, Russia and Germany. In 1884, he began studying composition with W. Bargiel and piano with E. Rudorff at the Königliche Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. After a few months, he left for the USA, where he performed with singers C.L. Kellogg and E. Thursby, and in 1886 – apart from his own solo performances, which began in Boston – he toured Canada with Belgian violinist O. Musin. In 1886, he returned to Europe; in Paris, he was briefly a student of C. Saint-Saëns, who later became his patron. In 1887–88, Godowski gave concerts in London, including one before Queen Victoria. In 1890, he returned to the United States, where he took up a position as a lecturer at the New York College of Music; in 1891, he married the singer Frieda Saxe and became a US citizen. In 1894–95 he conducted teacher-training courses at the Broad Street Conservatory in Philadelphia, and from 1895 to 1900 he headed the piano department at the Chicago Conservatory. After a performance in Berlin (6 December 1900), where he achieved a triumphant success and was hailed as one of the greatest pianists of his time and the successor to Liszt, he was offered a piano class there. In 1909 he was appointed head of the master class (succeeding Busoni) at the Akademie der Tonkunst in Vienna. In March 1911, he performed in Poland. In 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I, he left Europe and settled in the United States. He gave concerts in South America, Asia and (after 1918) in Europe. In 1926, he performed again in Poland. On 25 April 1930, at the Columbia studio in London, shortly after completing the recording of Chopin’s Sonata in B-flat minor, he suffered a slight paralysis which prevented him from continuing his career as a pianist. From then on, Godowski worked only as a teacher. In 1934, he received an honorary doctorate from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Although Godowski was essentially self-taught, he was one of the greatest masters of the keys. Józef Hofman called him “the greatest mechanicus of the piano”. However, concert audiences rarely had the opportunity to admire Godowski’s exceptional skills, as their presence in the hall had a paralysing effect on the pianist; the same applies to most of his recordings. Those who had heard of the legend of Godowski were therefore disappointed. According to his students (including H. Neuhaus and D. Saperton, later Godowski’s son-in-law) and friends (J. Hofman and A. Chasins), it was only in the privacy of his home, surrounded by a small circle of close friends, that he conjured up all the magic of his wonderful piano technique. An aura of great pianism emanates from Godowsky’s compositions, especially from his paraphrases and piano arrangements. Legendary fame is enjoyed by the Studia nad etiudami Chopina, which are clothed in a new sonic guise, texture, and harmony, and combined in pairs or even threes (similarly to the themes of Johann Strauss’s waltzes in the Metamorfozy symfoniczne). Unfortunately, Godowsky’s Studia do not introduce new musical values and even “constitute a significant lowering of the artistic value of the original” (H. Neuhaus, Sztuka pianistyczna, transl. N.D). Godowsky himself did not seek to dazzle audiences with his technique; for example, as a pedagogue he was “not a teacher of piano playing, but above all a teacher of music” (H. Neuhaus, ibid.). This aspect also predominates in his recordings for Columbia (1913–20 and 1929–30) and Brunswick (1920–29), which demonstrate that Godowsky was an outstanding pianist, yet restrained in his use of virtuosity, and that, while achieving masterful refinement of detail, he maintained an approach consonant with modern aesthetic ideals. This approach is expressed in a precise reading of the score and fidelity to the stylistic principles of the period, without emphasising the subjective element of expression. The best examples include the Polonaise in C-sharp minor and the Scherzo in E-major Scherzo (recorded in 1926 but not approved for release), the Berceuse (1913), certain nocturnes (1929), as well as Chopin’s Sonata in B-flat minor, Mendelssohn’s Rondo capriccioso (1928), Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E-flat major, Op. 81a, Grieg’s Ballade in G minor, Op. 24, and Schumann’s Carnaval. In particular, his performance of Chopin’s Sonata in B-flat minor is impressive for the monumentality and architectural sense that characterised Godowsky’s playing.
Literature: M. Aronson Key to the Miniatures of Leopold Godowsky, New York 1935; H. Neuhaus Pamiati Leopolda Godowskogo, “Sovietskaya Muzyka” 1939 No. 3; K.S. Sorabji Leopold Godowsky as Creative Transcriber, in: Mi contra Fa, London 1947; L.S. Saxe, The Published Music of Leopold Godowski, “Notes” 1957 No. 3; H. Neuhaus Ob iskusstve fortepiannoy igry, Moscow 1961, Polish edition Sztuka pianistyczna, translated by A. Taube, Krakow 1970; H. Schonberg Godowsky, the Buddha and Godowsky. The Pianist’s Pianist, in: The Great Pianists from Mozart to the Present, New York 1963.
