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发表于 2013-4-11 21:12:09
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Stephen Hough
Stephen Hough is a concert pianist by night, but his daytime interests include theology, art, hats, puddings... and writing about them. His website is www.stephenhough.com and he is @houghhough on Twitter.
Why was Josef Hofmann considered the greatest pianist of all?
By Stephen Hough Music Last updated: September 17th, 2009
19 Comments Comment on this article
I received an email from someone the other week, wondering if I had any views about Josef Hofmann's position as the universally acclaimed 'greatest pianist' of his time. I knew about his reputation – Rachmaninov famously put aside performing Chopin's B minor sonata after hearing Hofmann in the same piece. But when we listen to the recordings of Hofmann today can we see what Rachmaninov and just about all of his colleagues and contemporary critics were so enthusiastic about? Was he really the greatest during a golden period of so many greats?
Why some artists are more acclaimed than others has to do with a lot more than just the quality of their playing. When Paderewski stepped on to the stage with his fabulous mop of hair, his handsome face, his patrician walk, his aristocratic demeanor, his immaculately tailored clothes, and a CV which included being Prime Minister of Poland, there was more in the air than Beethoven and Chopin. The audience were in adoration mode even before he sat down at the piano. Hofmann was one of a group of 'modern' players who eschewed histrionics and outward display – and who chose short haircuts. It was partly a reaction to Liszt's theatrics on-stage, his mane, his star-ward gaze, his cigars, his glances at the ladies as he spun one seductive phrase after another … and it began a trend which continued with all the great artists of that and the next generation: Rachmaninov, Rubinstein, Horowitz, Heifetz, Moiseiwitsch, and so on. But this is only one, superficial aspect of Hofmann's modernism.
Josef Hofmann was born in 1876, the year the first modern Steinway piano was made. Although the Steinway factory opened in New York in 1853 and their first full concert-grand (8' 5") was produced three years later, it was only with the invention of the Capo d-Astro bar and the full cast-iron plate that a truly modern piano was created – just in time for the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. (It's worth noting here, as a sideline, that Hamburg only began making their own home-grown Steinways around 1910. Steinway was an exclusively American company for its first half century.) I think part of Hofmann's unique success and acclamation was that he was, by the time his career was in full flow, the first pianist to use the modern American piano properly – to learn how to play to and with its strengths. Many European artists were uncomfortable with the Steinway. They found its action too heavy, its tone too brilliant, its bass too rich, its treble lacking the delicate silver strands of the Erard or the transparent, reedy baritone of the Bechstein. Moritz Rosenthal was uncomfortable with the Steinway and, during his recording sessions in the early 1930s at Abbey Road with Fred Gaisburg, he complained that he could not get "his effects", asking for his favoured Bosendorfer instead. Gaisburg protested that the Steinway sounded cleaner, clearer on record and they ended up adjust the action to suit the pianist's taste. Schnabel was forced, very much against his will, to play Steinways when he left war-torn Europe for America. Chopin would probably not have been able to play more than a few bars on a modern Steinway. Liszt would have been restricted. Debussy and Ravel would have written very different music if they'd have had modern Steinways in their studios. But Hofmann not only sat in front of it with the confidence and expertise of an experienced pilot in a cockpit, but he even invented one of its later features – the 'accelerated action', patented in 1940.
When Hofmann's bass chords crashed against the back wall of Carnegie Hall like huge waves, when he spat out his repeated notes with the speed of steel pistons, when his melodies hung in the air like wheeling birds, he was directly influenced by the Steinway's improved dampers, hammers, iron frame, Duplex Scale system and the Capo d'Astro bar. Hofmann's assertive brilliance was breathtaking … and new. Abram Chasins tells that Horowitz, on visiting Steinways once, asked about a piano in the corner. "That's Hofmann's". "Please … may I just touch it" replied Horowitz. No one had ever played liked this before, and I think it's the main reason he was crowned king at a time of many princes. |
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