Look Who it Was Random video

Landowska and Prokofiev play for the 1st Anniversary of the Smoleńsk Catastrophe 2010- 2011.

2,695 views · Published 9 April 2011 · 7:52 · Indexed 10 November 2026

Channel: 240252 · 2011 · Music

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1.Wanda Landowska, harpsichord solo  -- J.S. Bach: Prelude in d-minor No 2, Das wohltemperierte Klavier Vol 1, RCA 1949 (repressed by Melodija, Soviet Union ca 1970)
2 Gennadi Rozhdestwenski & Great Radio Symphony Orchestra of the USSR -  Sergey Prokofiev's Symphony No2 d-moll op.40, Largo & Vivace (fragm.), Melodija 1971 (Soviet Union)
NOTE 1: Wanda LANDOWSKA (b. 1879 in Warsaw, Poland -- d. 1959 in Lakeville, Connecticut) Polish harpsichordist whose performances, teaching, recordings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century. Landowska was born in Warsaw, her father was a lawyer, mother a linguist who translated Mark Twain into Polish. She began playing piano at the age of four, and studied at the Warsaw Conservatory with Jan Kleczynski and Aleksander Michałowski. In 1900 she married Polish folklorist Henryk Lew and they settled in Pari.  Deeply interested in musicology, and particularly in Bach, Couperin and Rameau, she toured the museums of Europe looking at original keyboard instruments; she acquired old instruments and had new ones made at her request by Pleyel. These were large harpsichords with a 16-foot stop and owed much to piano construction. Responding to criticism by fellow Bach specialist Pablo Casals, she once said: "You play Bach your way, and I'll play him his way." Important works were written for her by  Manuel de Falla's: El retablo de maese Pedro, and Poulenc (Concert champêtre). In 1925 she established the École de Musique Ancienne at Paris. When the German Army invaded France, Landowska fled with her assistant Denise Restout to southern France, and finally sailed from Lisbon to New York in Dec 1941. All her instruments and manuscripts were robbed from her house in Saint-Leu so she arrived in the US  without any assets. She settled in Lakeville in 1949 and soon she re- established herself as a performer and teacher. 
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NOTE 2: These two pieces of the highest artistry I dedicate to memory of Polish President Lech Kaczyński and his Wife Maria, and all other 94 representatives of the elite of Poland, who died in a mysterious catrastrophe of Polish military plane over the Smoleńsk airport (territory of Russia) on 10th of April, 2010. 
12 months passed, yet nothing has been cleared to the Polish society, on the contrary, all circumstances are made opaque by the evasive and offensive for the memory of the Polish President and all the plane's crew, interpretations from the side of Russian "investigators". 
The fundamental fault of the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk -- for which he will hopefully be sued by Polish Tribunal of State -- was ignoring Poland's membership in the NATO structures and assigning the whole investigation to the Russians. Their results -  which skipped  the analyses of  the basic proofs, to mention only lack of the professional autopsy of 96 victims' bodies or the detailed control over all remnants of the plane, the soil, trees, bark specimens etc. -  had been easy to foretell.  Gen. Tatiana Anodina, who was assigned by Wladimir Putin the head of Russian "Investigative" Commission informed international media on a presses conference, that full and only responsibility for the "crash" was Polish pilots' mistake and the pressure made on them by the "Polish VIP-s" present on the board with some of them  "under influence of alcohol" ( - that elegant detail our Russian friends could not prevent themselves from adding). Only ill-will people could pay attention to such set of misinformation that was brutally deforming the obvious facts which derived straight from films and  phoptographs taken in situ, reviews with eye wittnesses, aviatic analyses of the flight parameters or the recordings from "black boxes" (which Russians never returned to Poles).  
In these days, Poland is in mourning again. God, have Mercy on the Victims, on their Families. And let Your Justice bring before the fair Court all, who should be called responsible for that greatest Polish tragedy since the end of the 2nd WW.

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