Wanda Landowska Plays Bach, Mozart, Händel, Scarl

Menuhin, Yehudi; Rodzinski, Artur; New York Philharmonic; Landowska, Wanda; Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire; Bigot, Eugène

The conductor Arthur Nikisch described Wanda Landowska as the high priestess of the harpsichord, “prima clavicembalista assoluta” and “Bachante”, not least on account of her intensive Bach studies. Her concert activities, her influence as a teacher and her many publications and record releases assured Landowska of a central role in the revival of 17th- and 18th-century music for harpsichord. The method of finger training that she developed for keyboard instruments of every kind is of inestimable value, as is her own technique of harpsichord playing. Many of today’s leading harpsichordists have come up directly or indirectly through her school. At her suggestion, composers wrote for the harpsichord: Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) composed his Concert champêtre pour clavecin et orchestre FP 049 in 1927/28 and Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) made Wanda Landowska the dedicatee of his 1926 Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra. The historic recordings presented here should be of interest not just to lovers of Early Music but throughout the music world. They range from Jacques Champion de Chambonnières to Henry Purcell and François Couperin, from Domenico Scarlatti and George Frideric Handel (both born in 1685 like J.S. Bach) to Bach himself, while the Classical composers Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart round off the program. The Bach works include his Goldberg Variations (the Paris performance of 1933) and the “48”, the whole of the Well-Tempered Clavier, recorded in New York and Lakeville between 1949 and 1954.

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