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LIVING MASTERS OF MUSIC
EDITED BY ROSA NEWMARCH
THEODOR LESCHETIZKY
"If you choose to play!--is my principle
Let a man contend to the uttermost
For his life's set prize, be it what it will."
BROWNING
[Illustration: _Photo. by H. S. Mendelssohn, London, IV._
Theodor Leschetizky (signature)]
THEODOR
LESCHETIZKY
BY ANNETTE HULLAH
[Illustration]
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMVI
Printed by BALLANTYNE & CO. LIMITED
Tavistock Street, London
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. 1830-1862 1
II. 1862-1905 14
III. THE EVOLUTION OF THE METHOD 25
IV. THE METHOD 39
V. THE LESSONS 51
VI. THE CLASS 66
VII. THE CENTRE OF THE CIRCLE 75
ILLUSTRATIONS
LESCHETIZKY AT THE PIANO _Frontispiece_
_From a copyright photograph by
Mr. H. S. Mendelssohn, London, W._
_To face
page_
LESCHETIZKY'S VILLA IN THE CARL LUDWIG
STRASSE, VIENNA 14
LESCHETIZKY IN 1903 18
ON THE KAHLENBERG 22
DR. ARNE (OLD SCHOOL) 26
A GROUP OF PUPILS 50
LESCHETIZKY AND MARK HAMBOURG 70
LESCHETIZKY AT KARLSBAD 76
THE PROFESSOR'S BIRTHDAY 80
CHAPTER I
1830 TO 1862
Theodor Leschetizky was born in Poland at the Castle of Lancut, near
Lemberg, June 22, 1830. His father, a Bohemian by birth, held the
position of music-master to the family of Potocka. His mother, Theresa
von Ullmann, was a Pole.
The Potocki had luxurious tastes. They were cultivated people, who
cared for beautiful things, and were rich enough to have them. The
Castle itself, a fine old building, stood in the middle of a large
park, surrounded by trees and plenty of open land; it contained a
picture-gallery and a private theatre. This was the home in which
Leschetizky passed his childhood, seeing life as a delightful thing,
full of grace and ease, which might have been quite perfect had there
been no music lessons. But at the age of five he began to learn the
piano, and had to study two hours a day from the beginning. He loved
music intensely, and might even have loved practising; but his father,
according to the parental custom of the day, was so extremely severe
that the lessons were a misery to both, and, but for his mother's
gentle help, might have ended in his hating the instrument altogether.
In spite of such troubles, his progress was extraordinary. In four
years he was ready to play in public, and made his first appearance at
an orchestral concert in Lemberg. He played a Concertino of Czerny,
and created a considerable sensation; "but," he says, "I cannot
remember very much about the music, because at the time my mind was
entirely taken up with the rats." Concerts were given so rarely in
those days that any place was considered fit to play in. Leschetizky's
first concert-room--probably a little more primitive than most--was
built of wood; the light came in through the cracks, and the floor was
full of holes, through which climbed the aforesaid rats in hundreds,
running about fearlessly, not only during rehearsal, but at the
concert itself.
After this exciting début Leschetizky went about playing everywhere,
and very quickly became famous as a "wonder-child." Everybody talked
about him and wanted to hear him; great ladies borrowed him for their
salons when they could, and fêted and spoilt him, as great ladies
always do--all of which he enjoyed as much as they did.
When he was ten, his father, pensioned by the Potocka, took his family
to live in Vienna, where they were already accustomed to spend the
winter. Joseph Leschetizky's post in the Potocka household had given
him the opportunity of meeting all the great artists of the time who
frequented their salon; and in this way Theodore had been able to hear
the best music from his earliest boyhood. For a year the boy continued
to study at home with his father, after which he went to the great
Czerny, whose school was so famous in those days, and to which many
of the greatest artists, such as Liszt, Thalberg, Döhler, Kullak, and
Hiller, had belonged.
Himself a fine pianist, Czerny had been a pupil of Clementi and an
intimate friend and pupil of Beethoven; "a fact of which he was very
proud," says Leschetizky. "So often, indeed, did he speak of him to
me that I always felt as if I had known him myself." In the same
indirect way he became spiritually acquainted with Chopin, whose pupil
Filtsch was his great friend. A little older than Leschetizky, Filtsch
was already a beautiful player, whom Chopin loved, of whom he thought
highly, and who would assuredly have become famous had he lived.
Leschetizky's readings of the lighter compositions of Chopin are for
the most part inspired by the remembrance of what he assimilated
from this gifted boy, and he has changed his rendering very little
since those days. Czerny cared little for Chopin, either as pianist
or composer, nor did he willingly teach his music. His mind was too
limited to understand subtlety, and he felt for it the contempt the
plain man always feels for what he cannot grasp.
At fourteen Leschetizky began to take pupils himself, and seems to
have been a prodigy in teaching as well as in playing, for he had
soon so much to do that his time was quite filled up. His father
took two rooms for him next door, so that he might carry on his
musical work without disturbing the household. He was very busy, for,
besides the teaching and his own practice, there were lessons from
Sechter in counterpoint and, until his voice broke, he sang in a
church choir two or three times a week. He played everywhere. He was
known in Metternich's salon, to Thalberg, to the great Liszt, whom
he worshipped, to the Court, to Donizetti, who encouraged his early
attempts at composition, in fact to all the great artists who passed
through Vienna.
It was at this time that he heard Schulhoff play one evening
at Dessauer's house. It was a new experience. Hitherto he had
heard nothing like it. To phenomenal technique he was quite
accustomed--fireworks could no longer disturb his equanimity--but
the poetry, exquisite finish and simplicity of Schulhoff's playing
touched something within him that till then had lain dormant, and he
recognised at once the incompleteness of his own work.
Schulhoff, though not a pupil of Chopin, knew him well in Paris, and
had caught something of his manner; yet it was not this--already
familiar to Leschetizky through Filtsch--but his marvellous power of
making the piano "sing" that brought to the boy the vision of a new
world. The public did not understand Schulhoff at first. They rather
despised this pianist, who played to them in a perfectly simple way.
They missed their runs and trills and surging octave passages, and
found him dull. Not so Leschetizky. Here was a pianist who had gone
further, and attained to something higher than the rest. He too must
reach the same plane. For months he worked, refusing to play in public
till he had gained what he had been searching for, and when he emerged
from his exile, not only his playing, but his point of view had
entirely altered.
Up to this time, in spite of Filtsch's influence, he had, like others,
been satisfied that "the perfect finger" was the desirable thing; now
he recognised a finer ideal. The change in him was to be of farther
reaching influence than he dreamt of at the time, for it filtered
through him to his pupils and created in them the germ of what
developed later into the famous Leschetizky School. Schulhoff's visit
marked an epoch in Leschetizky's life.
In the same year he took a course in law at the University; and this
together with his pupils kept him so busy that he was obliged to read
hard into the early morning hours to get through the double work.
When the Revolution of 1848 came--putting an end to all music in the
city for the time being--he was ready for a holiday. Having also hurt
his arm in a duel, therefore unable to practise, he decided to take
this opportunity of seeing something of the world. He did not see much
of it, for he went to Italy, and promptly fell so deeply in love with
everything--and everybody--there, that he had to be removed from the
source of danger; and a faithful friend hastily took him back to the
Austrian mountains and kept him there, till both his mind and his city
were calm enough to permit a safe return to ordinary life.
For four years he worked away steadily at his teaching, playing much
besides, and leading the gay social life his genial nature loved. He
also composed his first opera, "Die Bruder von San Marco." Meyerbeer,
to whom he played it, thought it showed great promise, and urged
him to finish it, but this he never cared to do, and the work still
remains as he left it then.
In 1852 Leschetizky decided to go to Russia, and set out in September
of that year.
His début at the Michael Theatre in St. Petersburg resulted in a small
circle of pupils, which very soon grew into a large one. His fame as a
pianist had already preceded him, and shortly after his arrival he was
commanded to play before Nicholas I.
He tells of the magnificent carriage sent to convey him to the palace,
of the sumptuous apartment and dainty supper to greet him when he
got there and, alas, of the intolerable piano, upon which he flatly
refused to play, and went home instead. Expecting to be ordered out
of Russia, a little later on he received to his surprise a second
invitation, accompanied this time by no beautiful carriage, and graced
by only a very meagre supper served in a miserable little bedroom. But
the piano was all he could wish, and he played on it so much to their
Majesties' satisfaction that, his sins forgiven, bedtime discovered
him once more in the gorgeous apartment of his first visit.
He was very happy in his Russian life. He had many friends, and among
them Anton Rubinstein. As boys they had played together in Vienna,
now as young men they were to work together in St. Petersburg.
Rubinstein was concert-master at the Court of the Grand Duchess Helen,
the sister of the Emperor Nicholas. Soon after Leschetizky came to
Russia, Rubinstein wishing to go on tour, asked him to take his place
until his return. Leschetizky agreed to do so, on the understanding
that he could live in his own rooms instead of staying in the palace,
and be allowed to go on with his private teaching at home. Life would
have been intolerable to him had his freedom been curtailed. His
duties were to arrange all the music at Court, to give singing lessons
to the daughter of the Grand Duchess, and to one of her Maids of
Honour--Madlle. de Fridebourg, who possessed one of the most beautiful
voices he had ever heard. In 1856 he married this lady. Sixteen years
later they were divorced.
Leschetizky's connection with the Grand Duchess brought him into touch
with all the great artists who visited St. Petersburg. The Grand
Duchess Helen was a remarkable woman, who exercised considerable
influence over the political affairs of Russia and made her palace
the centre of culture in the capital. Of wide sympathies and
unusual intellectual gifts, she was fitted to be the leader of any
sphere she might choose to rule. Men and women from all parts of
Europe--military, diplomatic, artistic--visited her salon. She it
was who started the Russian Imperial Musical Society which, under
Rubinstein's directorship, eventually founded the Conservatoire; and
it was in a large measure owing to her influence that Rubinstein,
Kologrivov, and others were able to carry out their schemes for
educating the people to a knowledge of good music.
St. Petersburg was very far behind the rest of Europe in regard to the
status of the musical profession when Leschetizky first went there. It
was not regarded as an honourable career at all, nor even as a serious
study. The rich patronised it because it was fashionable; the bargeman
on the river chanted his song as he went because he loved it; but its
cultivation as an art was in no sense a conscious necessity of Russian
life.
Outside aristocratic circles there was little or no music, scarcely
any one who thought it worth while to make it his life-work. No one
knew anything about the generation of young native composers then
growing up. Even Glinka's popularity had waned, and Dargomijsky and
Balakirev were hardly more than names. The orchestra of the Symphony
Concerts--given but two or three times in the year by the Court
Chapel--was made up of students, clerks, or any one who could play,
and liked to spend his leisure in that way. Till 1850, when Rubinstein
inaugurated the Sunday Concerts, there were no public orchestral
performances outside the Court at all; and even twelve years later,
when the Conservatoire was started, musical life was but just
awakening, and a little knowledge of the art spreading through the
city. The ignorance of people in general was incredible. Leschetizky
tells an amusing story to illustrate this.
One day a rich tradesman came to one of his musical friends to ask
what his terms would be for giving pianoforte lessons to his daughter.
He named his price. "Well," said the tradesman, "that certainly is
expensive--but does it include the black keys as well as the white?"
In a comparatively short time the condition of musical affairs
improved immensely, for the people at once took advantage of the
opportunity to hear and learn, and Leschetizky's popularity as a
teacher increased so rapidly that very soon it became impossible for
him to take all the pupils himself, and he found it necessary to train
some of them to work under him as assistants.
In 1862, when the St. Petersburg Conservatoire was opened with Anton
Rubinstein as director, Leschetizky transferred his class there.
Though among the pioneers who actively interested themselves in its
development as a means of popularising the study of music, Leschetizky
was more taken up with pupils in particular than pupils in general.
He sympathised to a certain extent with Rubinstein's plans for the
improvement of the musical condition of the country; at the same
time his nature, more individualist and less philanthropic than his
friend's, preferred to work in a smaller field. He could devote
himself heart and soul to watching and tending the unfolding of any
young talent, but not to the education of the masses; and it is well
that it was so, for otherwise a specialist would have been lost to
the world. His chief care was that each pupil entrusted to him should
develop to the best of his ability; if pianism in general incidentally
benefited by the system of study he had built up, so much the better.