Josef Hofmann

Did You Know?

• Hofmann gave 21 consecutive concerts in St. Petersburg in 1912–1913, playing 255 different works from memory without repeating a piece.
• He invented a windscreen wiper, a furnace that burned crude oil, and a house that revolved with the sun.
• His eldest son, Josef Anton Hofmann, became a noted audio engineer.

Childhood

Josef Hofmann was born in Podgórze, then part of Austro-Hungarian Galicia, in 1876. His father, Kazimierz Hofmann, was a composer, conductor, and pianist; his mother, Matylda Pindelska, was a singer. He had an older sister, Zofia Wanda. The family moved to Berlin in 1886 to ensure his musical education. A child prodigy, Hofmann gave his debut recital in Warsaw at age five and subsequently performed across Europe and Scandinavia. A series of concerts in America in 1887–88 drew comparisons to the young Mozart and Mendelssohn. He studied composition with Heinrich Urban and piano with Moritz Moszkowski. Anton Rubinstein heard the seven-year-old play Beethoven's C minor Piano Concerto in Warsaw and declared him an unprecedented talent. At Rubinstein's suggestion, impresario Hermann Wolff offered career management, but Hofmann's father refused to let the boy travel until he was nine. At that age, Hofmann gave concerts in Germany, France, Holland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Great Britain. At age twelve, he was probably the first noted pianist to record on Edison's phonograph.

Musical career

Hofmann published over one hundred works, many under the pseudonym Michel Dvorsky, including two piano concertos and ballet music. He made the United States his base during World War I and became a US citizen in 1926. In 1924, he became the first head of the piano department at the newly founded Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia; he served as its director from 1927 to 1938. He helped recruit many illustrious musicians to the Curtis faculty, including Efrem Zimbalist, Fritz Reiner, Marcella Sembrich, and Leopold Auer. His pupils included Jacques Abram, Shura Cherkassky, and Abbey Simon. In 1937, the 50th anniversary of his New York debut was celebrated with a 'Golden Jubilee' recital at the Metropolitan Opera. By the early 1930s, Hofmann had become an alcoholic but retained exceptional pianistic command through the decade. After leaving the Curtis Institute in 1938, a combination of drinking, marital problems, and loss of interest in performing caused a rapid decline in his abilities. Sergei Rachmaninoff commented that Hofmann was the greatest pianist alive if sober and in form. From 1939 to 1946, his artistic eminence deteriorated further. He gave his last recital at Carnegie Hall in 1946 and retired to private life in 1948.

Technique and style

Josef Hofmann’s approach to piano playing, including his thoughts on technique and artistry, appears in his book Piano Playing with Questions Answered. Though his hands were small, they were exceptionally strong, leading Steinway to craft custom keyboards with narrower keys for him. His personal concert pianos featured subtle action modifications for quicker repetition, only two pedals instead of three, and flawless regulation. He traveled with a specially built recital chair that had a short folding back and a one-and-a-half-inch slope from rear to front. At the keyboard, Hofmann sat still and struck the keys with a kneading motion, unlike Rubinstein. His finger staccato and orchestral sonority were unmatched in his time. His student Nadia Reisenberg noted that he blended finger pedaling with foot pedaling continuously. Critic Harold C. Schonberg, with Godowsky’s approval, claimed Hofmann possessed all of Godowsky’s technique. Rachmaninoff admitted that in his forties he practiced over fifteen hours daily to reach Hofmann’s technical level. Hofmann’s guiding motto was “an aristocrat never hurries.”

Recordings

Josef Hofmann first entered a recording studio in the 1880s, but he never liked the results. After 1923, he stopped making commercial records and only cut test pressings. The ones he made for His Master’s Voice in November 1935 he felt actually captured his playing well. In the 1940s, he performed on the Bell Telephone Hour radio programs, and some film survives, including his takes on Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp minor and Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto. According to Gregor Benko, by then Hofmann’s technical control had slipped badly, though his tone remained rich and his phrasing still provocative. Around 1890, he recorded cylinders for Thomas Edison—among the earliest classical recordings ever made—but those were lost in World War I. Four cylinders cut in Russia in 1895–1896, featuring works by Mendelssohn, Brassin, and Rubinstein, turned up recently and were released on CD. Hofmann also made reproducing piano rolls, including 23 pieces for Welte-Mignon in 1913, but he didn’t trust them as accurate. From 1912 to 1923, he recorded acoustic discs for Columbia and Brunswick. RCA Victor privately taped his 50th-anniversary concert at the Metropolitan Opera House on November 28, 1937. At least two other concerts from the 1930s were also recorded live. All these recordings have since been issued on compact discs.