Józef Hofmann

Jósef Kazimierz Hofmann (January 20, 1876 - February 16, 1957) was a Polish-American pianist and composer. Born in Krakow, Poland; he died in Los Angeles.

Related Topics:
January 20 - 1876 - February 16 - 1957 - American - Pianist

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Famous as a child prodigy who played a long series of sensationally received concerts throughout Europe and Scandinavia at the age of ten. This phase culminated with a series in America in late 1887 and early 1888 at which he became an early media sensation. He then retired and studied with Russian virtuoso and composer Anton Rubinstein, becoming his only private pupil and later, his leading disciple. Hofmann was also gifted mechanically and invented mechanisms for the piano and especially automobiles, with numerous patents to his credit.

Related Topics:
Child prodigy - Anton Rubinstein

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hofmann spent most of his later career in the United States, where he taught at the Curtis Institute of Music, of which he was Director until 1938. His pupils included several of the most talented students of the day, but only Shura Cherkassky went on to an international career. Cherkassky shared Hofmann's sovereign technique and tone, but not his intellectual depth.

Related Topics:
United States - Curtis Institute of Music - Shura Cherkassky

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hofmann made a few commercial recordings beginning in 1903 through the 1930s. He also made the some of the earliest recordings of classical music for Thomas Edison that have been lost, but some cylinders he made in Russia a few years later have recently been discovered. He made two series of reproducing piano rolls and reaped a huge income from their issue, but never trusted rolls as accurate representations of his playing. This distrust also extended to acoustical recordings. In part this was because Hofmann claimed he never played any piece the same way twice. Recordings of broadcasts of several of Hofmann's live performances have survived, and all of these recordings have been published on compact discs. These are cherished by most connoissuers, but because of differences of opinion about performance, reviled by others.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He had very small (but exceptionally strong) hands, and like several other famous pianists, he found the situation more of a nuisance than a handicap. Steinway eventually built him a custom piano with narrower keys (an eighth-inch narrower per octave), which he said was slightly more comfortable.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Rachmaninoff considered Hofmann his superior as a pianist and dedicated his Piano Concerto No. 3 to him. Hofmann never played it, however, a fact mis-attributed by many to his small hands; another of Hofmann's teachers, Moritz Moszkowski, also dedicated a piano concerto to Hofmann which he never played. More than likely, Hofmann did not want to play concertos by pianist-composer rivals. Besides, according to his first wife, he did not care for the Rachmaninov's Third Concerto, which he considered lacking in form (see "The Amazing Marriage of Josef Hofmann and Marie Eustis"). Considered to be one of the first "modern" pianists because of his respect for the printed score, unlike other Romantic pianists who used the text as a jumping off point for their often extreme interpretations (famous examples of this include Ignacy Paderewski and Vladimir de Pachmann), his playing nonetheless possessed extraordinary technical skill, poetry, color, and imagination. On the other hand, volcanic interpretations of pieces like Chopin's Fourth Ballade (performed in the "Historic Casimir Hall Recital" of 1938) show just how much Hofmann's playing had in common with Anton Rubinstein, and how different his interpretations are from any of the pianists who emerged/recorded after the Cold War.

Related Topics:
Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 3 - Moritz Moszkowski - Romantic - Ignacy Paderewski - Vladimir de Pachmann - Chopin

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hofmann made history in 1911 when he played over 256 different works in ten consecutive concerts to astounded Russian audiences. Only a small part of his encyclopedic repertoire has survived on recordings because of his great distrust of the medium. He is now regarded as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th Century.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hofmann's invention of pheumatic shock absorbers for cars and planes earned him a fortune in the early twentieth century, and his inventions included medical devices, a furnace that burned crude oil, a device to record dynamics in reproducing piano rolls that he perfected just as the roll companies went bust, and a house that revolved with the sun. He spent his last years working on improvements in piano recording.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~