The rocky road from prodigy to star

 

One of those Australian pianist pupils of Leschetizsky, Fritz Müller, particularly aroused my curiosity.

 

Raised in Melbourne in an immigrant German-Australian home, his early years followed the usual path – fêted child prodigy at eleven in 1899; a committee of the great and good formed to fund his further development in Europe; and he left for Berlin, where he was heard later that same year by the great Australian diva Nellie Melba, who was bowled over by his talent, writing to her sister in Melbourne: ‘I don’t wonder you rave about him. He is a wonder.’

By this time young Fritz was under the wing of the conservatoire head, one of the greatest violinists of the era, Joseph Joachim. All predicted a glittering future for the boy.

But what then? Following a return to Melbourne to raise further funding and a move back to Vienna to finish his studies with Leschetizky – virtually nothing. I even came to the tentative conclusion that he might have been killed in the First World War (in which he did in fact serve in the German Army).

But not so. Eventually I found some answers in Patricia Fullerton’s biography of the Australian artist Hugh Ramsay. The Ramsays and the Müllers were close friends in Melbourne. To the disappointment of his Melbourne siblings, who had made great sacrifices to support his career, it seems that Fritz never made much of a splash on the concert platform in Europe, being content to earn a living playing in the hotels of Munich.

Perhaps Melba had had an intuition that he might not make the expected grade, noticing that he was ‘rather like a butterfly’. And another contemporary, the pianist-composer Percy Grainger commented that Fritz lacked ‘a strong mother behind his career.’

Are those factors still the secret to success in making the transition from prodigy to stardom – driven focus and a strong mother?

 

The ghastly Dance Moms on current TV suggests that they might still represent a potent cocktail.

Grandchildren of Leschetizky

 

I notice that the wonderful pianist who came to play for us with the Soloists of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on Sunday, Sam Haywood, is not only a pupil of the renowned Austrian Paul Badura-Skoda, but also of someone less well known to the general public, Maria Curcio.

Italian-born Curcio was an astoundingly successful teacher ‒ her pupils including many of the finest pianists of the past half century, including Martha Argerich, Radu Lupu, Mitsuko Uchida, Leon Fleisher and Peter Frankl. She herself was the last pupil of the great Artur Schnabel ‒ himself one of the later pupils of the great piano pedagogue of the late nineteenth century, Theodor Leschetizky.

Budding young pianists came from all over the world to study at Leschetizky’s piano school in Vienna, among these a steady stream of pupils from Australia – and it is these that I have particularly been researching in recent times. It seems that, if you were a promising player in that country, you would seek to study with the finest teacher in Europe – and for many that was Leschetizky.

His name became firmly established in Australian consciousness as a result of concert tours there made by two of his most famous pupils – Mark Hambourg (several times from 1895) and Ignacy Jan Paderewski in 1904, plus Jan Cherniavsky with his two brothers, who formed the Cherniavsky Trio, who made six extensive tours.

In all some ten Australians found their way to Leschetizky’s school, the earliest in 1897 being Yvonne Leverrier from Sydney. She was followed the next year by another Sydney-based pianist, Frederick Barron Morley. Then came Laurence Godfrey Smith, Violet Balmain, a mysterious ‘Miss Lewis’, Fritz Müller (who gained the support of Dame Nellie Melba), Florence Taylor, Maude Puddy, Rita Hope and Emily Dyason.

Although many of them were regarded as child prodigies, none of these pianists became famous as performing artists. Many returned to Australia, where they gave occasional concerts, but mostly earned their livelihoods as teachers.

So my speculation is that the country will now have dozens, maybe hundreds, of pedagogical grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Leschetizky. I wonder how many of them are aware of this, and if any of the great pedagogue’s teachings survive there? I think this must be so. Peter Goldsworthy’s novel of 1989, Maestro, is based around a fictional pupil of Leschetizky (and as such treated with awe), who teaches in Darwin. 

I briefly thought about all this as Sam Haywood played Schubert so persuasively in King’s Sutton last Sunday.