WITH GODOWSKY IN BERLIN & VIENNA - GODOWSKY’S PERSONALITY AND TEACHING

 

“I saw Godowsky in Berlin for audition on 2nd January 1907 and remained with him until May 1910, coming home for August each year”. Miller described Godowsky’s appearance and manner in the following terms  “Physically he was a rather small man but one felt there was something big about him. He was however quickly sensitive to small things. One day when it was my turn for the next lesson my newly soled and heeled boots squeaked…my progress across the floor was a distressing experience for him. I was a shy young man and was often surprised to find how comfortable one felt with him. He was a happy man, completely at ease yet very alert. His expression hardly varied but the eyes were very alive. He seemed the opposite of the emotional virtuoso. He sat almost motionless at the piano, intensely concentrated, a little reserved, and the characteristic “Godowsky sound” was, I think, due to a sense of unusual control. Apart from encores he did not display his technique, but you couldn’t miss it. He could make ordinary scales sound quite startling – just the combination of speed and evenness.

 

“As a rule he did not play during lessons. His hands were smallish but he could stretch a tenth with ease. The fingers were a trifle thin and very strong and more of an equal length than is usual. He could pass one finger over another with great dexterity. The hands seemed ideal for a pianist. His technique was a beautiful thing in itself – as much in gentle music as in bravura passages. He could additionally play a big work in a big way, without losing the general conception. If he were alive now his playing would be much the same and this could not be said of most of his contemporaries. There has been a change of direction in piano playing and Godowsky had anticipated it. If one had to pick out one particular feature in which his playing excelled, and would still excel, it would probably be his wonderful control of the piano itself, which seemed to give a characteristic sound”.

 

Miller continued “When Godowsky was appointed head of the piano class at the Vienna Conservatoire in 1913 in succession to Busoni I went also and continued as a private pupil.  In Vienna he lived at No 9 Arenberg Ring in the Third District. [Despite the appointment]  he had however said to me some four years earlier ‘Don’t have anything to do with colleges of music and conservatoires’. As no such thoughts had entered my head I expected an explanation – none came and we went on with the lesson. It dawned on me that he’d been ruminating about this appointment and had temporarily decided against it at the time of his sudden outburst”.

 

In Godowsky’s Berlin circle Miller had opportunities to meet and mingle with the many musicians who came to the tea parties – Pachmann (a great friend of Godowsky), Diaghilev, Grieg and others. One day he had tea with Hofmann, who spoke English with a slight American accent. Miller also remembered spending time with Godowsky’s son and daughter Wanda in Berlin. He heard Grieg accompanying his wife and attended the final concert before his death in 1907. One day in April 1907 Godowsky announced that Grieg was in the next room. He’d come to ask his host to make a record of the Grieg Ballade in G minor; he was staying in his flat while they discussed the work which the composer considered his best piano piece”. [Godowsky recorded the work on Hupfeld piano roll before 1922 and on Columbia discs in 1929; the latter traversal remains one of his very finest performances].

 

“Godowsky admired Busoni and Pachmann. Of the latter he said that he had no physical strength but that one never felt the climaxes should have been louder as he graduated his tone so well. The one pianist he couldn’t stand was Eugen D’Albert – he declared that he hadn’t a pupil who played as badly as D’Albert!  While I was with him his concertos were the Beethoven 4 and 5, the two Brahms and Liszt E flat. I heard him play both the Beethoven concertos at a concert in Charlottenberg. Later I heard the Tchaikowsky No 1 in the Albert Hall. His solo repertoire seemed unending.  At a recital he gave in Southport I noticed he had a programme on the piano which he consulted between items. When he had been asked by the organising committee to submit his programme he sent a booklet of his repertoire and asked that the items should be chosen for him. No doubt he wouldn’t have done this in Berlin or Vienna. I was told the booklet contained practically the whole of Chopin among other things. If I were to say which performance of his I enjoyed most I would choose the Liszt Sonate that he played at a recital in Chester. He had the proof prints of his own E minor Piano Sonata with him and after the recital his thoughts seemed much engaged with it”.

 

Godowsky visited Liverpool for a concert with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in 1908 playing  Beethoven No 4 (his own cadenza) and Chopin ‘Andante Spianato & Polonaise’ in an orchestrated version by Scharwenka (Fee £52.10, value 2022 £4950, see below) Once he played two recitals in Liverpool – afternoon and evening with different programmes. “Afterwards we walked down to the old North Western Hotel in pouring rain under an outsize umbrella he carried. When we arrived he changed his clothes and had a shower. He declared ‘I am washing off the wrong notes’ “.

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The last time Miller saw the pianist was at a Halle concert in Manchester in the 1930s playing  Beethoven Concerto No 4. In recalling the event Miller said “He had flown over from Paris, his papers had been wrong and he was kept hanging about at the airport. He managed to have a little rehearsal but had next to nothing to eat since leaving Paris. He made a little fluff in the last movement that nobody would have noticed who didn’t know the work. He seemed tired and I was sorry. He gave me a final piece of advice ‘Don’t forget that what you are playing at the moment must relate to what has gone before and what comes after’. As an encore he played the Chopin Ab Study Op 25 No 1. That was the last time I heard the ‘Godowsky sound’ “. 

 

What effects of Godowsky’s formation remained in Miller’s own playing might perhaps be considered in the light of a 1929 recital review when he played Beethoven, Chopin, Granados, Weber-Godowsky, and his own ‘Alla Marcia’. A K Holland, the Liverpool Post critic wrote  “..he is the type of player, we feel sure, whose gifts are best illustrated in more private and intimate surroundings, and one who does not do himself justice under concert hall conditions. We have always found him a rather introspective type of musician and we can regret his tendency to dramatise his work for the benefit of an audience. Frequently we felt last evening he was making mental points which did not come off in the actual pianistic performance. He was seeking, in short, to externalise his feeling about the music..there was a very considerable and appreciative audience which showed Mr Miller has a definite following in Liverpool”.  On this occasion Holland, who otherwise wrote enthusiastically about Miller’s musicianship, raises an interesting parallel with Godowsky who, it was said, impressed even more when he played in intimate surroundings than he often did in the concert hall.  To quote from one of Godowsky’s recommendations  for musical performance “You must emphasize everything clearly, like a good actor so the listener will also get what you are trying to express, and play in a sort of imaginative, subconscious way to yourself”. [Latter quotation in Reginald Gerig’s 1974 book ‘Famous Pianists and their technique’ pp332-333. All Miller quotations are as reported in articles which appeared in ‘Musical Opinion’ and local press interviews over the years]