Wanda Landowska News
(1879-1959) Polish-French harpsichordist
- harpsichord, piano
- classical music
- Congress Poland, Second Polish Republic, France
- harpsichordist, music teacher, pianist, musicologist, composer
streaming
Last update
2024-03-18
Refresh
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
2024-01-06 21:26:14
“No Choice but Love: Songs of the LGBTQ+ Community”
[…] Tel jour, telle nuit, ends CD 1, appropriately, because this is the work, composed of course for Poulenc’s friend and main vocal interpreter, baritone Pierre Bernac, that resulted after some of the squabbling and advice portrayed (or imagined) in Jake Heggie’s humorous and touching work, which directly precedes it here: Friendly Persuasions. Heggie’s four songs evoke imagined but plausibly characteristic interactions between the composer Poulenc and four of his friends and colleagues, including harpsichordist Wanda Landowska and, in the second song, Bernac. [caption id="attachment_57319" align="alignright" width="524"] Eric Ferring (Gillian Riesen photo)[/caption] All in all, No Choice but Love is one of the most imaginative debut recitals I have ever encountered. Ferring sings with total control at all volumes and at both ends of his capacious range. Oh, what a joy to hear a singer who has not frayed his voice by singing heavy roles! Madeline Slettedahl (who has been on […]
2023-09-19 06:45:00
Vivid and strong-minded performances: Bach's Harpsichord Concertos from Steven Devine and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
[…] tone of the keyboard rarely carries as well as other instruments; it fills in gaps well enough (usually, but not always, that is however another discussion), but hardly dominates in concerto mode and I have heard plenty of live performances where the soloist was hardly done justice to from the middle of the hall.Perhaps my ears are at fault. But, clearly Bach's idea of a keyboard concerto is rather different to our modern ideas. Wanda Landowska playing her steel-frame industrial-sized harpsichord this was not. However, wouldn't it be good to have some sort of eye-witness description of exactly what happened at Cafe Zimmerman? What sort of instrument did Bach play, was there an additional continuo instrument besides the soloist, how many instrumentalist played, how big was the room, what was the acoustic effect. And that is all without going into the fact that Cafe Zimmerman ran and outdoor musical season […]
2022-06-22 06:42:44
The Lost Art of Frances Cole: recordings from the 1970s provide a glimpse of the art of the Black American harpsichordist
[…] Cole made at Westminster Choir College in Princeton where she taught.The Lost Art of Frances Cole on Parnassus Records' Black Swans (an imprint showcasing rare classical recordings by Black artists) features Frances Cole in a wide-ranging recital of music by Bach, Scarlatti, Rameau, Gottschalk, Bartok, Ligeti and Howard Swanson, all recorded live in 1974. Cole was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1937 and studied piano and violin, but became interested in the harpsichord in 1966, studying with Wanda Landowska’s pupil Denise Restout at the Landowska Center in Connecticut. Cole made her debut as a harpsichordist in 1971. She gained a reputation amongst harpsichordists, did some broadcasting and taught both at Westminster Choir College and at Queens College, as well as being an affiliated artist at Temple University. She established a Festival of the Harpsichord at Westminster. Harpsichordist Kenneth Cooper, who performed at the festival described her as "a spicy, adventurous and unconventional lady, […]
2022-06-15 06:38:38
Poul Ruders' Harpsichord Concerto
[…] through blind self indulgence." Indeed, as a young man Ruders played the harpsichord and has used the instrument in his orchestration, and first wrote a solo for the instrument in 1985 with his Cembal D'Amore for piano and harpsichord. But here he has to rise to the challenge of writing for harpsichord and orchestra when balance is a problem, after all the harpsichord was never meant to appear with a modern symphony orchestra and when Wanda Landowska commissioned Francis Poulenc's Concert champêtre the solo instrument she had in mind was a mammoth steel-framed harpsichord rather remote from the authentic instruments common nowadays. Here, Ruders opts to use discreet amplification so that the balance is taken care of but on the recording, at least, this comes over with a nice degree of naturalism. Slightly frustratingly, the recording information does not include details of the instrument that Mahan Esfahani uses. In all three movements, Ruders […]
or
- timeline: Composers (Europe). Performers (Europe).
- Indexes (by alphabetical order): L...