Mieczysław Horszowski

Mieczysław Horszowski (June 23, 1892 – May 22, 1993) was a Polish-American pianist who had one of the longest careers in the history of the performing arts.

Horszowski was born in Lwów (Lemberg), Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine) and was initially taught by his mother, a pupil of Karol Mikuli (himself a pupil of Frédéric Chopin). He became a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna at the age of seven; Leschetizky had studied with Beethoven's pupil Carl Czerny. Leschetizky's sister-in-law, Angele Potocka, referred to Horszowski as "a wunderkind of high order".

In 1901 he gave a performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 in Warsaw and soon after toured Europe and the Americas as a child prodigy. In 1905 the young Horszowski played for Gabriel Fauré and met Camille Saint-Saëns in Nice. In 1911 Horszowski put his performing career on hold in order to devote himself to literature, philosophy and art history in Paris.

While Horszowski's family was of Jewish origin (which made him a fugitive from Europe in the 1930s), he was himself an early convert to Roman Catholicism, and was very devout. As the French critic André Tubeuf has written, "Horszowski was both very Jewish and very Catholic, in both cases as only a Pole could have been."

Horszowski, who was barely five feet tall, had rather small hands. Thus, he avoided much of the virtuoso repertoire (one possible reason he never attained the "superstar" status of Horowitz or Rubinstein). Horszowski's performances were known for their natural, unforced quality, balancing intellect and emotion. He was frequently praised for his tonal quality, as was common for pupils of Leschetizky.

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