by Maureen Buja  July 3rd, 2017

Mieczysław Horszowski in 1990

At his death at age 100, just one month short of his 101st birthday, the Polish and later American pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski (1892-1993) had one of the long-lasting careers in the performing arts. His age puts him with other pianists such as Alice Herz-Sommer (1903-2014) and Leo Ornstein (1893-2002), as spanning a century of amazing musical change.

When you trace his influences, we find that his first teacher was his mother, who had been a student of Karol Mikuli who had been a student of Chopin’s. He then became a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky, who had studied with Carl Czerny who had been a student of Beethoven. Thus, in one performer, we have both the great German and Polish piano traditions.

His first notable performance was in Warsaw at age 9 of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and his international career as a child prodigy began thereafter, with tours of Europe and America.

His repertoire was limited because he was small, barely 5 feet tall as an adult, and therefore couldn’t play the works that required a large hand span. His repertoire, therefore, was diverse and ranged widely over both the Classical and Modern periods. He performed the entirety of Beethoven’s solo piano repertoire in New York in 1954-55 and all of Mozart’s piano sonatas in 1960. He also played music by Bach and Stravinsky.  

Mieczysław “Miecio” Horszowski in 1902

His performance style was ‘natural, unforced….balancing intellect and emotion,’ and, as was common with Leschetizky’s students, his tonal quality was also noted. In this performance of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1, we hear these qualities, as the piano seems almost to sing.

Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11: III. Rondo: Vivace (Mieczyslaw Horszowski, piano; Vienna Symphony Orchestra; Hans Swarowsky, cond.)
In the final movement of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier, he brings a sense of both sound and silence.

Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-Flat Major, Op. 106, “Hammerklavier”: IV. Largo – Allegro disoluto (Mieczyslaw Horszowski, piano;)
An amazing pianist and teacher to the end, he gave his last lesson a week before his death. His students at the Curtis Institute of Music included Richard Goode, Dina Koston, Anton Kuerti, Murray Perahia, and Peter Serkin, among many others.

Salvador Dalí (Born on May 11, 1904): The Excesses of Life

 by Maureen Buja  May 11th, 2026

Spanish artist Salvador Dalí (1907–1989) took the art world of the 20th century and changed it forever. Starting with his studies of Impressionism, he progressed to Cubism and the avant-garde movements, creating worlds of new imagination.

Carl van Vechten: Salvador Dalí, 1939 (Library of Congress: cph.3c16608)

His art may have been surreal, but it was backed by technical skill and precise craftsmanship. Although he started his work in the late 1920s, it wasn’t until 1940, when he moved to the US, that he started to achieve commercial success. It wasn’t until 1948, after the war, that he returned to Spain.

Name any field in the arts, and Dalí was there: painting, sculpture, film, graphic arts, animation, fashion, and photography saw his efforts. He also wrote fiction, poetry, essays, and criticism. In both art and writing, he saw himself as a subject, through self-portraits (the first in 1919) and autobiographies. Often, his ostentatious public behaviour was more famous than his artwork, such as when he took his anteater for a walk in Paris.

Dalí walks his anteater in Paris, 1969

He made his first trip to Paris in 1925, when he met one of his artistic heroes, Pablo Picasso. The Catalan painter Joan Miró had mentioned Picasso to him and introduced him to the idea of Surrealism. Even as Dalí developed his own style, he made visual reference to both Picasso and Miró in his work.

He grew his first moustache in the mid-1920s (as seen above), but later, his moustache grew to magnificent proportions, almost becoming an icon of the icon. Dalí referred to this version as his ‘very aggressive’ moustache.

Roger Higgins: Salvador Dalí and his ocelot Babou, 1965 (Library of Congress: cph.3c14985)

His most famous work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931 but seems new for each generation. The melting watches get us to think about the rigidity of time and whether it’s real. Behind the focus on the watches, the landscape expands out to sea.

The image reverses reality: hard objects lie limply curved, ants are attracted to a metal watch case, and yet in the background are the very realistic cliffs from Dalí’s native Catalonia coast. The figure draped along the ground isn’t a horse but rather Dalí’s own face in profile, with his long eyelashes carefully presented.

Dalí: The Persistence of Memory, 1931 (New York: Museum of Modern Art)

This painting, in turn, has inspired many different composers. Spanish composer Javi Lobe has woven a melancholic story in his piano piece.  

English composer Richard Causton, on the other hand, uses the imagery of Dalí in combination with a memory of a strange sound phenomenon he encountered in India. Ill and confined to bed, he heard the sounds of the world around him but in a strange and altered timescape. Workers on the rooftops of factories around his room would strike the hours by banging on slats and pieces of metal. As the composer drifted in and out of wakefulness, time expanded and contracted – did 4 am really come before 2 am, or was that the fever bending time? 

Composer and pianist Jeffrey Jacob focuses on musical memory in his work, noting that it explores the impact of the past upon the present through the juxtaposition and combination of older and contemporary musical styles. Set in a haunted landscape that seems quite close to Dalí’s imagined setting, he alternated between the past and the present. Each movement starts us in a different world.  

The second movement takes us through three different periods of musical time. We start with the percussive drive of Bartok, before wandering back in time to Schubert. The composer has taken an accompaniment pattern from a Schubert song and created a ‘misterioso’ piano sonority around it. Finally, we’re in the late 19th century, experimenting with Impressionism with a soaring melody. In each section, melody is the driving element.  

That’s only one of the many paintings and works that Dalí created that were an inspiration for the composer. The database of Music based on Pictures (Musik nach Bildern) lists dozens of works based on Dalí’s images. Not many have been recorded, but it gives a view of how popular and inspirational his surrealism has been in the imagination of composers everywhere.

The Finnish composer Uljas Pulkkis (b.1975) put together three Dalí works in his 2002 work, Symphonic Dalí: Three paintings for orchestra. Dali’s 1954 painting The Colossus of Rhodes was behind the first movement. The Colossus of Rhodes was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The tallest statue of the ancient world was a statue 33 m (108 feet) high of the sun god Helios that stood in the city of Rhodes. Built in 280 BC, it collapsed in the earthquake of 226 BC; after the collapse, although parts of the statue were preserved, it was never rebuilt, and the final remains were destroyed in AD 653.

Dalí: The Colossus of Rhodes, 1954 (Bern: Kunstmuseum)

The second movement was inspired by Shades of Night Descending, from 1931. It seems to be set in the same landscape as The Persistence of Memory.

Dalí: Shades of Night Descending, 1931(St. Petersburg, FL Salvador Dali Museum)

The third movement, Dawn, is an explosion of colour, literally, because Dalí loaded a gun with snail shells filled with ink and fired them at his lithography stone.

Dalí: Dawn from Pages Choisies de Don Quichotte de la Mancha, 1957

The Polish composer Joanna Bruzdowicz (b. 1943) made her own pictures at an exhibition, but based them on an exhibition of the works of Dalí. Her selection included many different styles of Dalí’s works, ranging from his early works of 1927 to 1970. She, of course, did a movement on The Persistence of Memory, but let’s look instead at his 1929 painting Portrait de Paul Élouard

Portrait de Paul Élouard, 1929 (Figueres, Spain: Dalí Theatre and Museum)

This surrealist portrait of French surrealist poet Paul Éluard, who was married to Helena Diakonova, aka Gala, who left him in 1929 for Salvador Dali, marrying him in 1934. In the portrait, the poet is ‘dissected’ by the painter – the Zeppelin may indicate modernism as does the fact that everything in the painting is in the same plane. It’s a dreamscape with many different elements juxtaposed.

In her piano work, Bruzdowicz opens with a busy world, always in motion. A point of reflection quickly spins back everything into the movement of the opening section.

Spanish composer Cristóbal Halffter (b. 1930) created his work for chamber orchestra, Daliniana, on three Dalí paintings: Relojes blandos (Soft watches), El sueño (The Dream), and El nacimiento de las angustias líquidas (The birth of liquid anguish). Relojes blandos refers to the melting watches of The Persistence of Memory, while El sueño is another of the dreamscapes.

Dalí: El sueño

A pseudo-self-portrait set on fragile supports exists in a sleeping world (note the shadowy sky and the moon hanging on the left side). These are the kinds of poles used to support fruit trees when they’re heavily laden, and are a strong reference to the countryside. The massive head rests uneasily in space.

Halffter’s world seems equally fragile and disjointed.

The final work in the set is based on El nacimiento de las angustias líquidas, an image of instability and anxiety – a solid is converted to liquid, a common Dalí theme.

Dalí: El nacimiento de las angustias líquidas, 1932 (Figueres Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí)

Dalí’s complex image Plaisirs illuminés (Illumined Pleasures) from 1929 is the basis for a double concerto for violin, cello, and chamber orchestra by Francesco Coll.

Created to illustrate the shooting script for Un chien andalou when it was published in the journal La Révolution surréaliste, the painting is filled with a number of shadow boxes representing the disjunctions between reality and illusion as experienced in a movie theatre. Note the two heads in the sky that also appeared in similar form in the Portrait de Paul Éluard. This collage of dreams and anxieties, both personal and universal, includes Dalí’s disembodied head in the middle box. Some very surrealist images are in each box: rows of bicyclists with lights on their heads, a hand with a bloodied knife, and an egg-like object in front of a church wall. And, at the back right, what might be another of those watches.

Dalí: Plaisirs illuminés (Illumined Pleasures), 1929 (New York: Museum of Modern Art)

Francesco Coll (b. 1985) studied trombone at the Joaquín Rodrigo Conservatoire of Music in Valencia and the Madrid Royal Conservatory, graduating with honours. He then went to the Guildhall School for a degree in composition, also achieving honours. His reputation is for pushing music to its extremes, and it is known for its surrealistic juxtapositions. It was as composer-in-residence with the Camerata Bern that he wrote Les Plaisirs Illuminés, a double concerto for violin, cello and chamber orchestra, for Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Sol Gabetta as soloists.

Avant-garde French composer Igor Wakhévitch (b. 1948) worked with Dalí in 1974 on an ‘opera-poem’ entitled Être Dieu (To Be God), with a libretto by Spanish writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán.

The music is a surrealistic mix of speaking voice, choral singing, and a little bit of everything in the world. The work, in 6 parts, ‘Dalí as God, Brigitte Bardot as an artichoke and Catherine the Great and Marilyn Monroe do a striptease’.

Dalí: Self-portrait, 1972

Dalí created a self-portrait, which was combined with ‘the famous “Mao-Marilyn” that Philippe Halsman created at Dalí’s wish’. Note Dalí’s signature in the bottom left, crowned, with an orb and cross, as if royalty…or God. In his self-portrait, his signature moustache is prominent.  

Dalí, of course, has the last word on his work in the world. Often viewed as a madman for his images, he calmly noted that ‘The difference between a madman and me is that I am not mad’.

Allan Warren: Salvador Dalí, 1972

The excesses in his images, be it of liquid watches or giant figures from the past or even of himself, can only drive our own imaginations forward.

Forgotten Pianists: Stanislav Neuhaus

 by Maureen Buja  May 3rd, 2026

Russian pianist Stanislav Neuhaus carried on the tradition of his father, the pianist and teacher Heinrich Neuhaus (1888–1964). Heinrich taught at the Moscow Conservatory from 1922 to 1964 and was the author of The Art of Piano Playing (1958), considered the most authoritative approach to the subject, which is still available today.

Stanislav Neuhaus

Stanislav Neuhaus (1927–1980) was the son of Heinrich’s first wife, Zinaida, who married the writer Boris Pasternak in 1931 and took Stanislav with her. Despite living with his stepfather, he studied piano with his father, graduating in 1950, continuing postgraduate studies until 1953, and later becoming one of his father’s three assistants, along with Lev Naumov and Yevgeny Malinin.

Stanislav was always in the shadow of his father, considered one of the most celebrated artists of his generation. His father’s pupils included both Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter, and as his father’s assistant, Stanislav would have had teaching responsibilities as well. Outside his work for his father, he had his own teaching studio, beginning in 1957, with students including Vladimir Krainev, Radu Lupu, Brigitte Engerer, and his own son, Stanislav Bunin. In recognition of his artistic achievements, he was designated a People’s Artist of the RSFSR in 1978.

Despite that shadow, Stanislav made his own name and was recognised by Aram Khachaturian, in the paper Soviet Musician, as ‘the best pianist in the Moscow Conservatory’. The International Stanislav Neuhaus Piano Competition, held in Chelyabinsk, Russia, at the Chelyabinsk State Institute of Culture, was named in his honour – the last one was held in 2021.

Few recordings seem to be available, but fortunately, there are many videos of his work.

A Chopin program created for The Golden Era of Russian Pianism, vol. 1, gives us a broad selection of études, ballades, a waltz, and a scherzo. Even from this, we can get a feeling for the emotion and interpretation that he brought to his performances.   

Chopin’s Étude Op. 10, no. 3 gives us a better view of his performance style.

Stanislav Neuhaus plays Chopin Etude Op.10-3   

A 1973 live recording of Neuhaus playing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 draws us deeply into Russian pianism at its greatest.   

A 1954 video shows Neuhaus’ interpretation of Debussy.

Stanislav NEUHAUS plays DEBUSSY Clair de lune     

We’ll close with a work for piano 4 hands, Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D major, K. 448, played by Heinrich and Stanislav Neuhaus.

A New Ave Maria

 by Maureen Buja  April 23rd, 2026

First created in 1853 as work for piano and cello, Gounod combined an improvisation with Bach’s Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846, from Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier. By superimposing his melody over the 1722 work, Gounod created a piece that still lives today.

The Ave Maria verse as done in historiated initials, ca 1480–1496 (From the Heures de Charles d’Angoulême, folio 52r)
(Gallica, btv1b52502694t/f. 133)

Originally, Gounod had just improvised over Bach’s Prelude. His future father-in-law, the composer and pianist Pierre Zimmerman, transcribed the work and wrote it out as a work for a string instrument (violin or cello) over keyboard (piano and harmonium). It was published under the title of Méditation sur le 1er prélude de piano de S. Bach.

Bayard & Bertall: Charles Gounod, 1860 (Gallica, btv1b84542916)

The same year, the words to Alphonse de Lamartine’s poem, ‘Le livre de la vie’ (The Book of Life), were set to Gounod’s improvised melody.

François Gérard: Alphonse de Lamartine, 1830

Le livre de la vie est le livre suprême
Qu’on ne peut ni fermer, ni rouvrir à son choix ;
Le passage attachant ne s’y lit pas deux fois,
Mais le feuillet fatal se tourne de lui-même :
On voudrait revenir à la page où l’on aime,
Et la page où l’on meurt est déjà sous nos doigts

Alphonse de Lamartine

The book of life is the supreme book,
That one can neither close nor reopen at will;
The cherished passage cannot be read twice,
But the fatal page turns of its own accord:
One would like to return to the page where one loves,
And the page where one dies is already beneath our fingers

Alphonse de Lamartine

By 1857, the French publisher Heugel had already added the work to his collection of modern classics for the piano (Classiques Modernes du Piano) and published it as a solo piano work. In his preface, Heugel argues that modern French pianists shouldn’t have to beg for a place at the table where Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Weber already held court. Along with Gounod / Bach piece, Heugel included works by Thalberg, Alkan, Czerny, Herz, and others.

In 1859, Heugel added the Latin text of the Ave Maria prayer, and with that addition, created the perfect combination of words and music that, more than 160 years later, still has a place in the repertoire.

Ave Maria, gratia plena,
Dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus,
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us, sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Now, in a new combination of Bach and the Ave Maria prayer, French composer Christophe Loiseleur des Longchamps has created his own new Ave Maria. Combining the Prelude from the First Suite for Solo Cello, BWV 1007, with a new melody, Loiseleur des Longchamps has updated a once-familiar work, perhaps too familiar, and makes us hear the perfect combination of music, improvisation, and text.

Christophe Loiseleur des Longchamps   

Christophe Loiseleur des Longchamps attended the Conservatoire de La Celle Saint-Cloud, studying harp, before moving to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Toulouse. From the harp, he expanded into the world of choral music and was founder and director of the Notre-Dame de Brive Choir School from 2000 to 2012, while also serving as the director of sacred music for the diocese of Cahors. He’s currently in Limousin at the Collège Jean-Baptiste de La Salle. As a composer, he’s written operas, oratorios, and musicals, and his works are being performed around the world, from Korea to the UK and France.

In addition to this version for voice and cello, the composer has also prepared a version for soprano, cello and chamber orchestra, and we look forward to hearing that!

Website: christopheloiseleurdeslongchamps.com

Conductors on Conducting

 by Maureen Buja  March 29th, 2026

They’re the only member of the orchestra who stands with their back to the audience; nonetheless, every member of the orchestra keeps an eye on them…just in case. It’s the conductor, of course.

The English historian Charles Burney quotes Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who said:

Maurice Quentin de La Tour: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1753 (Musée Antoine-Lécuyer)

The more time is beaten, the less it is kept…

This is a wonderful way of both condemning conductors who wave their arms too much and describing the attention their orchestras pay them.

Rousseau then goes on to explain what happens when everything falls apart:

…and it is certain that when the measure is broken, the fury of the musical general, or director, increasing with the disorder and confusion of his troops, becomes more violent, and his strokes and gesticulations are more ridiculous in proportion to their disorder.

Liszt saw the role of the conductor as very hands-off:

A. Göschl, “Liszt Ferencz”, Borsszem Jankó 6, no. 276 (1873): 5. (Budapest National Széchényi Library)

The real task of the conductor consists, in my opinion, in making himself ostensibly quasi-useless. We are pilots, not drillmasters. (1853)

Gounod had a similar view. Instead of being Rousseau’s general, he saw the conductor as someone who had his own taskmaster, the composer:

Étienne Carjat: Charles Gounod

The conductor is nothing more than the driver of the coach engaged by the composer. He should stop at every request or quicken the pace according to the fare’s orders. Otherwise, the composer is entitled to get out and complete the journey on foot.

The composer and conductor Hans von Bülow, speaking with the composer and conductor Richard Strauss, talked about musical knowledge:

Hans Schließmann: Hans von Bülow conducting, 1884. (Figaro)

You must have the score in your head, not your head in the score.

Rimsky-Korsakov, on the other hand, saw conducting as a particular skill:

Conducting is a black art. (1909)

In a note to his 10-year-old sister, Thomas Beecham downplayed the whole performance:

Emu: Thomas Beecham, 1910

It’s easy. All you have to do is waggle a stick.

In 1927, Richard Strauss wrote his 10 Golden Rules for a young conductor, and he cautioned that:

Strauss conducting, 1916

You must not perspire while conducting; only the public must get warm.

He also had something against the wind sections:

Never let the horns and woodwinds out of your sight; if you can hear them at all, they are too loud.

English conductor Eugene Goosens loved the podium:

Eugene Goosens (photo by Tully Potter)

It is the most wonderful of all sensations that any man can conceive. It really oughtn’t to be allowed.

Russian-American conductor Nikolai Malko cautioned against conductors who resorted to other means to get their directions across:

Nikolai Malko

He should rely on gestures more than words. It often happens that a conductor begins to talk when gestures fail him and then becomes accustomed to his own chatter.

Sometimes the soloist has to reassure the conductor. Hornist Barry Tuckwell told conductor André Previn how to get out of a mess:

André Previn

When you get lost, and you will, everybody does at one time or another, just make some elegant vague motion, and we’ll put it all to rights quickly enough.

Pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim had his doubts about conductors and their egos:

Daniel Barenboim

Today, conducting is a question of ego: a lot of people believe they are actually playing the music.

Barenboim, of course, made his early name conducting piano concertos from the keyboard, thereby knowing that he was actually playing the music in at least one sense!

Russian-American composer and conductor Igor Stravinsky was with Barenboim on how conductors considered themselves:

Stravinsky conducting

‘Great’ conductors, like ‘great’ actors, soon become unable to play anything but themselves.

Hmmm. Sean Connery, anyone?

San Francisco Symphony’s conductor Michael Tilson Thomas said it most plainly:

Michael Tilson Thomas (illustration by Zach Trenholm)

Conductors are performers.

English clarinettist Jack Brymer wondered why conductors were regarded so highly when they abandoned playing in the orchestra for the podium:

Why is anyone who adopts successfully this strange form of extroversion regarded instantly as being of so much greater moment than he was last week, when he was just a player?

Brymer also saw the orchestra in a different light than many people:

No wise conductor tries to outdo that bunch of professional comics, which is the average symphony orchestra.