Word: landowska
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...York Philharmonic (Sun. 3 p.m., CBS). Guest: Wanda Landowska...
...Chandler Thomas' job to tell you about all the news in music: the rise of an attractive new jazz singer like Mindy Carson (TIME, Aug. 1); an account of the monumental recording task which Harpsichordist Wanda Landowska undertook in her 70th year (TIME, June 20); the controversial case of Composer Arnold Schoenberg (TIME, Nov. 15, 1948). This week the news is the Sadler's Wells Ballet company, the impact it has had on New York and will have on all the cities on its tour...
...yanks open her tool kit, and starts tuning. The huskiest, Mlle. Elsa Schunicke, carries the pillows and the hamper, loaded with sandwiches, a vacuum jug of coffee, and a supply of specially blended horehound drops. Then, her hands folded before her, and her craggy features blissfully composed, Mme. Wanda Landowska herself floats in like a tiny wraith, nods her greetings and disappears into the dressing room...
Perfection. To Landowska, "this is my last will and testament. I have to make it perfect." She was taking plenty of time to make it that way-to make sure that exactly the balance and quality she wanted to hear would come off the wax. In her weekly sessions, she had worked 42 hours, making retake after retake, to record 45 minutes of music. At 70 (her birthday is actually July 5), the somewhat mystic, sometimes earthy little Polish-born woman is the acknowledged high priestess of the harpsichord, the sweet-sounding, twangy-bangy instrument she rescued from oblivion...
...Although she is as spry and sparkling-eyed as ever ("I feel as young as a child"), Landowska has given up touring. In the last few years, she has also given up the idea of returning to her once-famed Ecole de Musique Ancienne at picturesque Saint-Leu-La-Forêt near Paris, from which she fled in 1940 before the Nazis took over...