Józef Hofmann
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Józef Kazimierz Hofmann (born January 20, 1876 in Kraków, Poland; died February 16, 1957 in Los Angeles), was a great Polish-American pianist and composer. Many connoisseurs consider him one of the greatest pianists of all time.
He was a child prodigy who played a long series of sensationally received concerts throughout Europe and Scandinavia at the age of ten, culminating with a series of concerts in America in late 1887 and early 1888 at which he became a media celebrity. Following controversy over alleged child exploitation, Alfred Corning Clark donated $50,000 for Hofmann to retire from the stage until he came of age. Clarke's donation made possible studies with the famous teacher and composer Moritz Moszkowski and Russian virtuoso and composer Anton Rubinstein, Hofmann becoming Rubinstein's only private pupil and later, his leading disciple. Hofmann was also a gifted inventor who invented mechanisms for the piano and automobiles, with numerous patents to his credit.
Hofmann spent most of his later career in the United States, where he directed the Curtis Institute of Music until 1938. His pupils included Jeanne Behrend, Abram Chasins, Shura Cherkassky, William Harms, Harry Kaufman, Nadia Reisenberg, Ruth Slenczynska and several other of the most talented young students of the day. While not a pupil, Jorge Bolet benefited from Hofmann's interest.
Hofmann made a few commercial recordings beginning in 1903 through the 1930s. He also made some of the earliest recordings of classical music for Thomas Edison. These 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 -in 1913 23 pieces for Welte-Mignon, but never trusted rolls as accurate representations of his playing. This distrust also extended to acoustical recordings, in part because Hofmann noted that he never played any piece the same way twice. Recordings of broadcasts of a number of Hofmann's live performances have survived, and all of these recordings have been published on compact discs under the auspices of Gregor Benko and audio restorer Ward Marston.
Hofmann's playing began to decline during the 1940s, mostly due to alcoholism. He recorded a Bell Telephone sound film in 1945 and gave his last concert in 1946.
He had very small (but exceptionally strong) hands, and like several other famous pianists, found the situation more of a nuisance than a handicap. Steinway eventually built him a custom keyboard with slightly narrower keys. It is said that once, following a concert, a woman asked Hofmann how he could possibly play so well with such small hands, and he reportedly answered: "Madam, what makes you think that I play with my hands?"
Rachmaninoff considered Hofmann his superior as a pianist and dedicated his Piano Concerto No. 3 to him. Hofmann never played it. According to his first wife, he did not care for the piece, which he considered lacking in form (ref. "The Amazing Marriage of Josef Hofmann and Marie Eustis").
Hofmann made history in 1911 when he played over 256 different works in ten consecutive concerts to astounded Russian audiences.
Hofmann possessed extraordinary technical skill, poetry, color, and imagination. 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 Rubinstein, and how different his interpretations are from any modern pianists.
Hofmann's invention of pneumatic shock absorbers for cars and planes earned him a fortune in the early twentieth century. His other 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.[citation needed]
