Wanda (Louise) Landowska

Harpsichordist and music teacher, born in Warsaw, Poland. After studying at the Warsaw Conservatory, she became a prominent concert pianist in Europe until about 1910, when she decided to devote her career to playing the harpsichord. She taught in Berlin and then in Paris, promoting older music, particularly that of Bach, and commissioning new works for the harpsichord. Although she made her first concert tour in the USA in 1923, she did not settle there permanently until 1940, going first to New York City and then to Connecticut (1949). Teaching, playing, recording, writing, and proselytizing extensively, and often imperiously, she is regarded as a leader in the 20th-c revival of the harpsichord.

Wanda Landowska (July 5, 1879 – August 16, 1959), harpsichordist whose performances, teaching, recordings and writings played a large role in reviving the popularity of that instrument in the early 20th century. She was the first person to record Bach's Goldberg Variations on the harpsichord (1931).

Landowska was born in Warsaw, where her father was a lawyer, and her mother a linguist who translated Mark Twain into Polish.

She later taught harpsichord at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik (1912-1919). These were large, heavily-built harpsichords with a 16-foot stop and owed much to piano construction.

A number of important new works were written for her: Manuel de Falla's El retablo de maese Pedro marked the return of the harpsichord to the modern orchestra. Falla later wrote a harpsichord concerto for her, and Francis Poulenc composed his Concert champêtre for her.

She established the École de Musique Ancienne at Paris in 1925: from 1927, her home in Saint-Leu became a center for the performance and study of old music. When Germany invaded France, Landowska, a naturalized French citizen of Jewish origin, escaped with her assistant and companion Denise Restout, leaving Saint-Leu in 1940, sojourning in southern France, and finally sailing from Lisbon to the United States. The house in Saint-Leu was looted, and her instruments and manuscripts stolen, so she arrived in the United States essentially without assets.