DESCRIPTION:
Józef Hofmann, pianoforte – Scherzo In B Minor (Op.20 No 1) by F. Chopin, Brunswick c.1920 (UK; accoustical recording)

NOTE: Continuing the theme of Chopin (see my previous uploading) I’d like to present a true rarity in my collection: the early accoustical recording of one of the greatest pianists in history of piano music, the piano virtuose as well as the inventor on field of engineering, Józef Hofmann. That Polish genius has been classified by one of the greatest American music critics Harold Charles Schonberg as the greatest and the most flawless pianist of the 20th century. HMV and RCA unsuccessfully pursued recording projects with Hofmann in the 1930s. Rachmaninoff dedicated his Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor (1909) to Hofmann, although Hofmann disliked it and never played it.

A child prodigy, Józef Hofmann was born in Cracow , Poland in 1876 to the Polish family of the conductor and composer Kazimierz Hofmann and the operatic singer Matylda Pindelska. In age of 5 he gave piano concerts in Warsaw and then throughout Europe and Scandinavia, culminating in a series of recitals in America in 1887-88 that elicited comparisons with the young Mozart and the young Mendelssohn.. The Russian genius of piano Anton Rubinstein took Hofmann as his only private student in 1892 and arranged the sensational recital of his pupil in Hamburg, Germany in 1894. Hofmann toured and performed extensively over the next 50 years as one of the most celebrated pianists of the era. In 1924, he became the head of the piano department at the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, and became the Institute's director in 1927 and remained so until 1938, recruiting the world’s top artists, such as Efrem Zimbalist, Fritz Reiner, Marcella Sembrich-Kochańska or Leopold Auer to the Institute’s faculties. Among his pupils were Abram Chasins, Shura Cherkassky and Walter Susskind. Hofmann was also a composer (a pseudonym Michel Dvorsky): among his works are concert B-flat major for piano and orchestra, symphony A Haunted Castle (1919) and a number of piano miniatures. However, compared with the size of his fame and genius, the number of his recordings is far too modest. He found the invention of a phonograph deeply unsatisfactory for his musical demands. Between 1919-23 he recorded several accoustical sides for Columbia and Brunswick, but felt the representation of his chaste and prismatic tonal palette was not captured and he remained reluctant to make new recordings. He did experiment with short studio test recordings in 1935, and in retirement in California experimented with piano string electrical pickups and designing an additional spruce soundboard under the piano lid. At least three of his concerts in 1930's were recorded live. These concert recordings exhibit an older Hofmann (age 60-62) in public just prior to the sharp decline in his pianistic command, and include sensational readings of Chopin's G minor Ballade, Andante Spinato and Grand Polonaise, A-flat Waltz (Op. 42) and F minor Ballade. After hearing a performance of Chopin's B minor Sonata by Hofmann, Rachmaninoff cut that piece from his own repertoire saying "not since Anton Rubinstein have I heard such titanic playing".

As an inventor, Józef Hofmann was author of several dozen bigger and smaller items, many of which are today indispensable parts of our everyday life - like paper-clips or windshield wipers inspired by the pendulous movement of a metronome, which he used for piano exercises. Hofmann had small but exceptionally strong hands, therefore he designed for himself a special keyboard with narrower keys, which Steinway build for him. Unfortunately, that genial mind at a certan stage of its progress started to implode and to devour its own master. In late 1930s, Józef Hofmann was no longer able to hide the sad fact of his advancing alcoholism. His career started to decline and in January 19, 1946 he gave his farewell recital at Carnegie Hall. Józef Hofmann died in 1957 in LA.