On Sept. 14, Crescendo, the award-winning music program based in Lakeville, will present a harpsichord solo recital by Kenneth Weiss in honor of world-renowned harpsichordist Wanda Landowska. Landowska lived in Lakeville from 1941 to 1959. Weiss is a professor at the Paris Conservatoire and has taught at Julliard. Born in New York, he now resides in Europe.
Weiss will play selections from “A Treasury of Harpsichord Music.” It includes works by Baroque composers such as Bach, Mozart, and Handel. It was recorded by Landowska in New York City in 1946 while she was living in her Lakeville home at 63 Millerton Road, which overlooks Lakeville Lake. Weiss said, “I am honored and excited to play in Lakeville, where Wanda Landowska lived.”
Landowska fled Nazi Germany in 1941 with two of her students, one of whom was Denise Restout, who later became her companion of many years, and a harpsichord in a box. They landed in New York. Landowski performed the Goldberg Variations of Johann Sebastian Bach at New York Town Hall to “Incredible success.” She then looked around for a place to live and found Lakeville where she resided until her death in 1959.
Kenneth Weiss made “a pilgrimage “to Lakeville in the 1980’s. “Madame Restout received us in the kitchen of the home she shared with Landowska. From the two Pleyel Harpsichords to Landowska concert gowns on display it felt as if Landowska had just stepped out.”
Madame Wanda Landowska, world famous harpsichordist and resident of Lakeville from 1941 until her death in 1959, will be honored in a concert presented by Crescendo and featuring a performance by Kenneth Weiss, renowned harpsichord soloist and professor at the Paris Conservatoire.Provided
Wanda Landowska was a child prodigy. Christine Gevert, Founding Artistic Director of Crescendo said that Landowska “went way beyond the harpsichord to other instruments.”
Landowska commissioned music from composers and wrote some of her own. She also had harpsichords built to order. She founded a music school in Paris where she “invited her students to come and stay on the property as if they were her own children.” She often became a lifelong mentor to students.
Landowska also authored many articles, some of which were translated from Polish and French and made into a book by her life partner Denise Restout who was left to take care of Landowska’s legacy when she died. Most of Landowska’s papers are in the Smithsonian, unfortunately still boxed up.
One reason for Landowska’s fame was that “she changed the course of music and how people perceived and enjoyed it.” She had a Bauhaus architect, Jean-Charles Moreux, design a concert hall, near Paris in the 1920’s, which was filled with light, in contrast to most darkened theaters. She had a low stage built so she could be close to the audience and would bring a carpet and lamp from home “to create ambience” said Gevert. Landowska had a “Holistic concept and made performances more attractive and accessible. She was one of the first performers to talk to the audience.”
The concert will be at the Lakeville Methodist Church at 6 p.m. on Sept. 14. It is presented with special support by Leszek Wojcik, famed Carnegie Hall recording engineer who lives in Lakeville. Wojcik “understands the importance of Landowska’s legacy,” said Gevert, and works with Crescendo to preserve it.
Tickets are available at www.crescendomusic.org or at the door, first come, first serve, forty-five minutes before the concert. Prices are forty dollars for general seats, ten dollars for youths or seventy-five for an up-close seat.
Support for the concert has also been provided to Crescendo by the Connecticut State Department of Economic and Community Development/Connecticut Office of the Arts (COA) from the Connecticut State Legislature, and NBT Bank.
A previous version of this article did not state that "A Treasury of Harpsichord Music," was recorded in New York City.
