Mieczyslaw Horszowski

Polish-born pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski delivered his final recital at 99, just over a year before he died in 1993. The pianistic lineage he embodied stretched back to the beginnings of the Romantic period, well before his recordings began appearing in 1936. His mother, herself a pupil of one of Chopin’s students, gave him his earliest lessons; his principal teacher, Theodor Leschetizky, had been a protégé of Czerny. At five he was already playing and transposing Bach inventions; at eight he appeared publicly as a prodigy, and at ten he embarked on a formal career. In 1905 he played for Fauré and possibly Saint-Saëns; the following year he made his American debut at Carnegie Hall. Also in 1906 he met the young Pablo Casals and Arturo Toscanini, who remained lifelong friends and frequent collaborators. Chamber music became his particular domain, and he appeared regularly at Casals’ Prades Festival for many seasons.

From 1911 to 1913 he suspended his concert activity to study the humanities at the Sorbonne in Paris. During the war he settled in Milan and stayed until 1939, maintaining an international touring schedule. When World War II began he was performing in Brazil; instead of returning to Europe he traveled to the United States and remained there for the rest of his life. Engagements with Toscanini’s NBC Symphony soon followed, and in 1942 he joined the faculty of Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute. On New York recital stages he presented complete cycles of Beethoven’s piano works and of Mozart’s sonatas and concertos, and he performed at the White House in 1961 and again in 1978. He was the first pianist to record on the earliest surviving piano, built in 1720 by Bartolomeo Cristofori and preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 1981, at the age of 89, he married Italian pianist Beatrice Costa, his first marriage. Although failing eyesight ended his concerto and chamber-music appearances, he continued giving solo recitals from memory. At the Curtis Institute his students included Anton Kuerti, Murray Perahia, and Richard Goode. While his repertory was wide, he concentrated chiefly on Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin, and even in his last years he undertook demanding works such as Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations.