Saperton & Godowsky
I'm not sure how I missed this. A little more detail from Jorge Bolet on Godowsky. He was speaking in 1983 to Carola Grindea for her book Great pianists and pedagogues.
(The "lessons" as such were around 1932/33 in New York City.)
Further information from this website:
‘Jorge’s scores of these pieces bore Godowsky’s markings in red crayon—the daunting “Passacaglia,” based on themes from Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphony; the “Fledermaus” and “Künstlerleben” symphonic metamorphoses (on famous waltzes by Johann Strauss II); the “Java Suite” (based upon Godowsky's trip to [modern] Indonesia.'
Albert McGrigor
Jorge listed these lessons for 1932-3 in a submission to Grove's Dictionary of Music; but they do not seem to have been systematic lessons. Gregor Benko has said, 'I remember a party at Sidney Foster’s house when he, Bolet and Abbey Simon reminisced about Leopold Godowsky, who apparently used sarcasm and insults with students..., and it left an indelible impression on these great artists, who had all played for him and suffered abuse.' In a BBC film from 1989, Jorge seemed to have softened his view, saying he was 'a very wonderful man'.
Godowsky's biographer, Jeremy Nicholas, states: ‘Occasionally, Saperton and Bolet would go to New York and visit Godowsky, and Bolet would play Godowsky to Godowsky, as it were, and get advice from him. He said that in that sense, yes, he had studied with Godowsky. Of course he also, in the same way, had advice from (and played for) Hofmann as he was head of piano at Curtis. But his main teacher was Saperton, though Bolet told me the greatest purely musical influence was the French musician Marcel Tabuteau, first oboe with the Philadelphia Orchestra – the greatest musical mind I have ever known.’
Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1986 had a feature on Jorge at the Festival de La Roque-d’Anthéron, in which he states: 'I never heard Godowsky play; he had had a heart attack ("un infarctus"), and no longer played the piano. He was not a pianist for the big halls, he was - if you like - an artist of the salon. There are salons where the ladies are elegant and where hands are gently kissed. It is of such ladies that we must think when we play Godowsky, not of dancers wearing après-ski boots.'
'Jorge had in mind to play Godowsky's Johann Strauss Künstlerleben at his forthcoming 75th birthday tour as grande finale (1989). He played this piece on several occasions for me telling me: "This is a work in progress, no! a lot of work in progress!"
'He had played a lot of Godowsky for me when I was staying with him in Bloomington. We went to Butler University where he kept his scores and could use his Baldwin SD 10 (in his apartment he had a small grand which he never touched). While I turned pages he played the Passacaglia, most parts of the Java suite, Künstlerleben, Fledermaus and parts from Triakontameron. All the time I was thinking why I am turning pages? He knows the music! Unfortunately, his 75th birthday tour never happened.'
Mattheus Smits
Jorge mostly played Fledermaus throughout his career. The earliest offical record for Künstlerleben is 3 August 1939 in the Anfiteatro, Havana (and this is the only reference I have).
Carola Grindea (née Rabinovici) (1914 – 2009) was a Romanian-born British pianist and piano teacher, who established the European Piano Teachers Association (EPTA). In London, she taught at the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle and later the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and developed the Grindea Technique to encourage a balance though not relaxed body posture to eliminate muscular tension and better the performer's technique.
Carola Rabinovici was born on 29 January 1914 in the Romanian city of Piatra Neamț in the province of Western Moldavia. Grindea was educated under the tutelage of Constanța Erbiceanu at the National University of Music Bucharest.
Grindea was holidaying in Europe before the outbreak of the Second World War and she and her husband arrived in the English port town of Dover on 2 September 1939. She had the phone number of Myra Hess, the pianist, and the latter invited the couple to her house in Golders Green, London, where they learnt of the declaration of war. Grindea urged Hess not to enlist as an ambulance driver and instead establish a series of lunchtime concerts at London's National Gallery that ran during the war. She earned money by teaching and playing piano. She also worked for the Romanian language division of the BBC.
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