Horszowski, Mieczyslaw

Horszowski, Mieczyslaw, remarkable Polish-born American pianist and pedagogue; b. Lemberg, June 23, 1892; d. Philadelphia, May 22, 1993. A child prodigy, he began to study the piano at a very early age with his mother. At age 5, he played and transposed Bach inventions. After further training with Melcér and Soltys in Lemberg, he went to Vienna in 1899, where his own Marche Solennelle was performed for Emperor Franz Josef II. He had lessons with Kistler (1899) and pursued his studies with Leschetizky (until 1904); later he was a pupil of Heuberger and Mouquet (harmony and counterpoint). Following his Warsaw debut as soloist in Beethoven’s 1^st Piano Concerto in 1902, debuts followed in Vienna and Berlin in 1903, and then in Paris in 1905. In 1906 he played in London before Queen Alexandra, at the Vatican before Pope Pius X, and in N.Y. at Carnegie Hall. After tours of Europe and the Americas (1907–11), he took courses in philosophy, literature, and art at the Sorbonne in Paris (1911–13). He then resumed his career and distinguished himself as an interpreter not only of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin, but also of contemporary composers. From 1914 to 1939 he lived in Milan. In 1942 he settled in the U.S. and in 1948 became a naturalized American citizen. He joined the faculty of the Curtis Inst. of Music in Philadelphia in 1942, where he remained an eminent member of the faculty for the rest of his life. In 1954-55 he played all of Beethoven’s solo piano music in a series of N.Y. recitals, and in 1960 all of Mozart’s sonatas. In 1961 he appeared at the White House in Washington, D.C., with Pablo Casals and Alexander Schneider, and in 1978 he played there again. In 1981 he married the Italian pianist Beatrice Costa. About this time his eyesight began to fail rapidly, which precluded him from playing concertos and appearing in chamber- music settings. All the same, he continued to give critically acclaimed recitals from memory. In 1987 he performed at the opening of the Casals Hall in Tokyo. On Oct. 31, 1991, at the astounding age of 99, he gave his last recital in Philadelphia, thus bringing to a close one of the most outstanding performing and teaching careers of the 20^th century

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire