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Prof. Heinrich
(Harry) NEUHAUS
- a teacher of the Masters.
Heinrich
Neuhaus was born on April 12, 1888 in Elisavetgrad, today Kirovograd, in the
West Ukraine. His father was Gustav Neuhaus, the German pianist
and a teacher of the German language, who arrived to Ukraine from Rheinland (Germany) in
1870; G. Neuhaus studied the piano in Köln (Germany) by Ferdinand Hiller. The future Great
Neuhaus' mother was Olga Blumenfeld, a highly talented pianist (hers
mother, so - Harry's Grandmother - was born Szymanowska; she belonged to the
same family Karol Szymanowski was born in It should be
apparent that in such family as was the Neuhaus', the future Professors' and
even Rector's of the P. Tchaikovsky Conservatory one, relations
with music were very close, intensive and fruitful. As Prof. Neuhaus later
said, he became "infected with music just from the early
childhood". The decisive impact on his musical development he got from
his uncle, a legendary teacher Feliks Blumenfeld
(among his students were Simon
Barere and Vladimir
Horowitz); thinking about his musical growth yet, we should not disregard
the powerful influence of generous atmosphere ruling the Neuhaus family's
life. The Neuhaus' have used to play chamber music together, they friendly
and actively supported each other to become better in performing, deeper
learned, more enlightened, etc. All these took place in truly friendly,
informal, warm and deeply human atmosphere created in their home by Neuhaus'
themselves and by their such brilliant musical friends as violinist Paweł
Kochański, singer Stanislawa Szymanowska, pianist Feliks
Szymanowski, who both were the siblings of Karol
Szymanowski; of course Karol by himself participated very
actively in these family music making, as well as a poet and writer Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz and the future worldwide known
virtuoso pianist Arthur Rubinstein, too. The piano
education of Harry Neuhaus become finalized in 1915 in the Conservatory of Music of St. Petersburg; Harry
prepared the diploma exam under artistic guidance of his uncle, Feliks
Blumenfeld and got at last the title "Liberated artist".
This diploma formalized the Harry's former musical studies in Berlin, where
he studied the theory of music by Max Bruch and Engelbert Humperdinck and by Karl H. Barth -
piano and organ. Within 1912 - 1914 he studied the piano under Leopold
Godowski in Vienna. At the same time
he studied musical aesthetic, acoustic, harmony, piano literature,
instrumentation, analyze of musical forms and history of music; young Harry
participated as well in the seminar of solo performance with orchestra led by
Ferdinand Löwe. The diploma exam he passed through on the 6-th of
April 1914 had been honored by the Austrian State Award (Staatspreis).
On the 12-th of
January 1914 Neuhaus gave a recital in the Bechstein-Hall in Berlin, playing 6 Choral Vorspiele
of Bach-Busoni, 3 Intermezzi op. 117 and Rhapsody
op.119 of Brahms, Sonata op. 58 of Chopin and of Karol Szymanowski -
II Sonata in A Major. Within years of his studies in Berlin and Vienna
he visited Kalkar n. Köln,
a hometown of his father Gustav, and (in 1908) – together with his cousins, Karol and Feliks Szymanowski –
he went to visit Italy. Young tourists, Harry was 17 years old, started from Nervi, Genova, Rome and Naples. In Autumn of
1908 Harry Neuhaus traveled to Ukraine and back to the Central Europe via
Lviv/Ukraine, Budapest and Fiume
- to Venice and Firenze. These journeys
were not the concert tours: young Neuhaus just saw museums, went sightseeing,
listened to concerts and operas, went to theatres and saw exhibitions. He
actually tried to absorb as much as possible from the culture, he liked to
live and work in; from the culture, he becomes so suddenly and brutally
separated from... Immediately
after his studies in Vienna, when the First World War begun, Neuhaus, the
genuine European, humanist and artist - had to come back to Ukraine, which
was a part of the Imperial Russia and his own words "got stuck into
piano pedagogical mud". He started teaching the piano in Elizavetgrad,
after then he has been invited to the musical conservatories of Tbilisi and Kiev, and after - while extremely positive resonance on his
piano pedagogic talent "went before him" - he became invited to and
started his work in the P.
Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Music in Moscow
(in the 40-ties interrupted by more than a year long imprisonment in the
famous Soviet punitive complex Lubianka). Despite the horrible war circumstances Neuhaus gave
concerts; at one evening he could play all the Sonatas of Skriabin; his interpretation of the 24 Preludes
of Debussy has been
approved in Moscow as the real artistic wonder. But before all
he was the pedagogue, by whom liked to study all the most talented young
pianists from the whole Soviet Union. Harry Neuhaus becomes the greatest
piano teaching authority not only because of his great piano instrumental and
piano pedagogical skills, but as well due to the fact, he - living in
circumstances no one of us today could even superficially imagine -
represented the values of the truly interminable quality: Professor
Neuhaus, due to the place of
birth, thanks to kind of received education and because of his profoundly
personal convictions, was the representative of traditional European thought, idea, civilization and culture. And, however, without doubts, in many meanings of the
word he must accept the circumstances he was forced to live in, in my opinion
- he offered his students such kind of feeling of mental and moral STABILITY in the world, which could destroy the
life of tens of millions human beings, openly said - in minutes, and due to
this truly rare ability of him - to be morally STABLE, his students become
able to work more creatively and more strongly than they, who were guided by
just the "pure artists"... The list of
Prof. Neuhaus' students, who made a huge international piano career, could be
very long. In my opinion it would be much enough to maintain the two of them
only - Sviatoslav Richter and
Emil Gilels - to understand, who was the teacher we now are
speaking about. His importance has been built not only via his students: his
writings, and especially, his legendary book, The Art of Piano
Playing, translated not only into main
languages of the World, but as well into - I suppose - any language the
civilized nation might like to speak and write in, persistently do its
encouraging work. It gives pianists the definitely incomparable possibility
to prolong the contact with so open-minded piano teaching idea, shaped by
Prof. Neuhaus, in spite of the question of its belonging to any "piano
school". Of course, working in Russia, and being deeply acquainted with
great Russian literature, music and poetry, he - in certain sense of world -
belongs to the Russian
piano tradition, but as well he belongs to
the German
cultural tradition. The Polish cultural
sphere was apparently very present in Prof. Neuhaus' artistic life, and not only
the family ties connect him to the Polish piano tradition; his intellectual formation has happened in the same
field that shaped such different personalities as Arthur
Rubinstein, Ignacy
J. Paderewski or maintained above Karol
Szymanowski. It is, maybe, worth to say that
he not only very fluently spoke Polish language, but as well could recite
much more Romantic Polish poetry than many "genuine" Poles would
able to... I would like to
stress again the Neuhaus' piano pedagogic connections with the Chopin's Piano Method. Prof. Zbigniew
Drzewiecki in his introduction to Polish edition of the Neuhaus' book wrote:
"The uncommonly large learning and erudition of Prof. Neuhaus could be
approved by the fact, his piano instrumental technique and teaching were
grounded on these not numerous still representing the genius dimension
guidelines, given by Chopin" (introductory words to the Polish edition
of The Art of Piano Playing by H. Neuhaus, PWM, Kraków 1970, p. 9). Neuhaus was the
greater admirer of poetry of Adam
Mickiewicz, he actively propagate the works
of Szymanowski; Prof. Drzewiecki remembered the evening spent together with
Prof. Neuhaus in Warsaw in 1937, when he, declaimed ex tempore large
fragments of Polish national poem "Pan Tadeusz" by hearth (H.N. was
a member of the jury of Third International Chopin Piano Competition). Not many contemporary Polish
Professors, even of the Polish literature, I suppose, would be ready to do
the same today... Henryk to Polish
people, Heinrich -
to Germans, Gienrich Gustavovich - to Russians, Harry - at
home, Neuhaus died in one of the Moscow hospitals on 10th of October 1964.
Literally some hours before his death Arthur Rubinstein came and saw him,
giving nearly symbolical goodbye to this greater Artist in the name of
tradition and culture, the whole refinement, fullness, taste and charm Prof.
Neuhaus so generously sowed around in his legendary lessons. His book,
translated into majority of languages the manhood is used to speak in, should
been not only read, but as well understood: Prof. Neuhaus' work should
actually be continued; its Author strongly believed in possibility to make
better, make more and generally – to develop anybody and anything. His
optimism should work in us, too. As Vladimir
Horowitz said, I cite after the famous David Dubal's book, "After
Blumenfeld - Neuhaus was the artist, whom I owe most of all". Writing these
comments, I would like to express my very profound esteem and love to
Professor Neuhaus and his great piano idea. At the end of this very short
notice I would like, Dear Reader, to invite you to the Internet Site that
publishes some thoughts of V. Horowitz, related to refining of technique of
playing the piano. His point of view represents equally the same great line
in thinking about our instrument that could be found in the whole positive
piano tradition from Bach, via Mozart, Chopin, older (so, not young) Liszt,
Debussy, Anton Rubinstein, Joseph Hofmann and other great masters. Lately, I
have found the actually parallel phrases reading the introductory article to
the Maestro Lang Lang's DVD, recorded in Carnegie
Hall in 2004. Mr. Lang Lang considered his
American mentor, Prof. Gary Graffman, a former student of Vladimir Horowitz, who spoke to
him about extraordinary significance of making clear the Idea of the
performed piece and necessity to convey it to the listeners. One could say:
nothing new, factually...! This is, factually - the truth, but as well, this
idea probably is the most forgotten thing in the piano education worldwide.
The Site you actually visit tries to change such upsetting situation. Even a little
bit... Thank you for your visit on this page - SK
Published:
2015-03-24 |
