The Godowsky Projec t



Building a foundation


For many years, I have been fascinated with the piano transcription by Leopold Godowsky of Saint-Saens "Le cygne", the sheet music of which was given to me by Alan Buratto decades ago.

In 1998, I decided to learn the piece, in spite of becoming legally blind 5 years earlier. I also attempted some of Godowsky's Schubert lieder transcriptions. For me, learning a piece is a laborious effort in that I have to commit to memory first single beats and then learn how to play it as I am unable to consult the printed score sitting on the piano's music rack (or in this case, on my laptop's screen).

About 3 years ago, I picked up practicing "Le Cygne" again and was lucky enough to perform the piece at New York's Merkin Hall, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Joy In Singing Award, a competition I won in 1985.

I now produce documentaries about musical subjects. My first was Never before: The Life, Art And First New York Career of Astrid Varnay". Premiered in 2004, it has been screened by the Wagner Societies of Boston, New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco and Toronto.

My second documentary is distributed by Video Artists International (VAI) and is entitled "Florence Foster Jenkins: A World Of Her Own", released in 2007.

I am now in the early stages of preparation for my third subject, that of pianist Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938). One can easily say this virtuoso of colossal achievement, was considered by the total of his colleagues, the greatest pianist in musical history.

A perfect description from the highest level came in a comment by pianist Josef Hofmann. As told by Abram Chasins: after an evening at one of the many dinner parties at the home of Godowsky, Hofmann remarked to his student "Never forget what you heard tonight. Never lose the memory of that sound. There's nothing like it in the world. It is tragic that the public has never heard Popsy as only he can play."

And Leopold Godowsky never had a teacher.

His career was not without controversy. His "reworkings" of the Chopin Etudes earned him much praise and strong condemnation. But those 53 arrangements and transcriptions, without question, brought the human mechanism of piano technique to unheard-of heights. Is there any technical difficulty that Godowsky did not address in these colossal etudes? We think not.

My first task is to have read to me the biography of Leopold Godowsky, Godowsky: The Pianists' Pianist by Jeremy Nicholas. A friend, Jack Stein is in the patient process of reading it to me, a task he undertook when he read to me the biography of Astrid Varnay, Fifty-Five Years in Five Acts: My Life in Opera.