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Documentary Lovingly Captures the Legacy of Rosina Lhévinne By JOANNA FARRER
What defines a great teacher? When Rosina Lhévinne spoke to her piano students about producing a singing tone from the instrument, she would put her hands over theirs and show them how to draw the sound from each of the keys. One was never to hit the notes, she told them; one had to "caress the piano, like a friend." Similarly, in her 76 years of teaching, she drew from each of her students the best that they could achieve, with equal degrees of discipline, passion, and love. As her former student Van Cliburn said: "A great teacher is a guide and must work to help that young person, that shining new page ... to be as independent and self-confident as possible."
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| Pianist and Juilliard faculty member Rosina Lhévinne at a celebration of her 80th birthday on March 28, 1960. (Photo by Charles Wendt) |
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Mme. Lhévinne's work guiding countless Juilliard piano students during her 51 years on the piano faculty—as well as the remarkable solo career on which she embarked in her 70s and 80s—is documented in The Legacy of Rosina Lhévinne, a film made by Juilliard alumna Salome Ramras Arkatov. The Juilliard School will present a special screening of the documentary, hosted by another Juilliard alumnus and Lhévinne student, Jeffrey Siegel, on Tuesday, April 12, at 5 p.m., as part of the Starr Doctoral Forum series.In a recent telephone interview with Mrs. Arkatov, who lives in Los Angeles, she spoke lovingly of Mme. Lhévinne and the making of the film, a project to which she dedicated more than 15 years. Arkatov had remained close to Mme. Lhévinne long after completing her studies at Juilliard, and in the 1950s, began recording Mme. Lhévinne's thoughts on her life and work when she visited Arkatov in California. "I was just collecting the material so that it wouldn't be lost," she said. "I had thought someone else would make the film by her 100th-birthday anniversary." In 1980, Arkatov was asked to create a four-hour radio tribute to Mme. Lhévinne that was broadcast nationwide. She collected hundreds of hours of former students' remembrances; all still felt connected to Mme. Lhévinne by the familial atmosphere their teacher had created in her studio. Arkatov also came across recordings of Mme. Lhévinne that had never before been heard by the public. "I knew these couldn't just keep sitting there, going unheard. There was something in her music and her life that needed to be shared," she said. After the success of the radio tribute, she set out to create a video documentary, which was made possible by a grant from U.C.L.A. The resulting film has already received awards at numerous film festivals around the country, including the Ojai Film Festival, the Marco Island Film Festival, and the Palm Springs International Film Festival. It is acclaim for the legacy of a woman whose life was anything but usual.
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| Rosina Lhévinne at the piano, rehearsing chamber music with (left to right) Joseph Fuchs, Lillian Fuchs, and Felix Salmond. |
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Born in Kiev in 1880, Rosina Bessie began studying the piano at the age of 6. During her studies at the Moscow Conservatory, she met and fell in love with fellow pianist Josef Lhévinne. Both graduated as gold medal winners (at 18, Rosina was the youngest girl ever awarded this honor) and both were considered equally formidable musicians. But after her marriage to Josef in 1898, Mrs. Lhévinne firmly decided against pursuing a solo career and instead dedicated herself to her husband's work. The documentary suggests that without his wife's insistent influence, Josef may never have achieved international success. Early in his career, when Mr. Lhévinne wished to return to a comfortable yet static teaching position in the Russian town of Tiflis for another season, Rosina stoically told him, "You can go, but I'm not going anymore." Before the year was out, the couple had moved to the musical mecca of Berlin, where she continued her budding teaching career.Rosina's skills as a teacher had been recognized early, and after moving to New York, she and her husband joined the Juilliard faculty in 1924. After Josef's death at the age of 69, Mrs. Lhévinne took his place at the head of the Juilliard piano department. In the words of Arthur Rubinstein, who appears in the film, "After one or two or three years, The Juilliard School discovered that she was not at all the widow of the great pianist but that she was a great pianist in her own right. And she turned out to be the most brilliant professor they had."This brilliance was not simply characterized by the precision and excellence of technique she demanded; as Van Cliburn explained, it was how "she could do so much for a student and get so much out of a student through inspiration." Robert Mann, a current Juilliard violin faculty member and a founding member of the Juilliard String Quartet, described her in the film not as a dictator, but as someone who demanded that each student develop his or her abilities as completely as possible, "and in that demand, she was very specific."
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| Filmmaker and Juilliard alumna Salome Ramras Arkatov with Lhévinne, the subject of her documentary, c. the mid-1960s. |
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Arkatov spoke of "certain fundamental principles that she knew always worked. Her students never had tendinitis because she always insisted that we have the correct technique, that we practice the same exercises that she did every day of her life." She was described by several students as an excellent amateur psychologist, a necessary skill for most teachers. In the film, John Browning relates the story of a lesson in which, after he played a new piece for Mme. Lhévinne, she simply smiled and told him, "You know dear, that's really not your piece." Rather than being discouraged, he found himself more determined than ever to perfect the work. Her teaching methods were always tailored to the individual personalities and motivations of her students.Her attention to individuality also extended to the interpretive ideas of her students' work. However, if a student was not respecting the composer's intentions, or didn't have a clear musical idea of his or her own, in her own words, "then, I move in." She also stated: "It is just your own personality and individuality that counts. I try as much as possible to develop the student with the idea that they must be interesting personalities in their own right, and that will show in their music." A wide variety of pianists passed through her studio, each with unique talents that she recognized and encouraged. John Browning remarked that "she was one of very few people whose students did not sound stamped out of one mold." In the documentary, former students James Levine and John Williams speak of the support she offered for their orchestral interests. Her encouragement also convinced Van Cliburn to venture into Russia for the International Tchaikovsky Competition, where he made history as the first American to take first prize in that competition.Mme. Lhévinne's involvement with her students extended far beyond competition advice. Many described her studio as a family, and a spiritual center for their lives as college students. Martin Canin, Mme. Lhévinne's former student, her teaching assistant from 1959 to 1976, and current piano faculty member, recalled in an interview that she likened her two-room studio on Claremont Avenue to "Grand Central Station. ... There were always people coming and going." She arranged trips to Jones Beach with students who had cars (John Williams was one of them), dispensed fashion advice for concert attire, gave dance lessons, and loved to be surrounded by students who, though 30, 40, or 50 years her junior, never noticed her age. Her strength and youthfulness carried her through battles with cancer and frequent depression, each of which, as Canin described, "she overcame by sheer force of will. She was really like a force of nature."
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Starr Doctoral Forum
Screening of The Legacy of Rosina Lhévinne
Hosted by Jeffrey Siegel
Morse Hall
Tuesday, April 12, 5 p.m.
Open only to the Juilliard community.
The final Doctoral Forum of the season will be on Tuesday, April 19, at 5 p.m. in Morse Hall. Juilliard faculty member Lionel Party will give a talk titled “For What Instrument Did Scarlatti Compose His 550 Sonatas.”
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The film also includes rare audio and video footage demonstrating Mme. Lhévinne's considerable skills as a pianist. She was a great collaborative artist who played chamber music with many of her fellow faculty members. Mann described her as "one of the most ideal chamber music pianists I've ever played with." Her solo career began when she was in her 70s, and though she admits to being intimidated when first approached to perform a concerto with orchestra, after decades away from the stage as a soloist, she accepted. The crowning achievement of this new career came in 1963, when, at the age of 82, she made her New York Philharmonic debut under the baton of Leonard Bernstein. When asked if she considered her performance some kind of record, she quipped, "Well, I think so myself. ... You know, I couldn't be more excited than if I was 18."This remarkable woman's legacy is impossible to capture in words, but Arkatov's film is a moving introduction to a teacher whose presence at Juilliard can still be felt. Canin remarks: "It's all a great sense of continuity. As she taught, so I teach." As she loved each of her students, taking pride in their work and their individuality, so her students have passed that love onto their students. The gifted pianist Tong Il Han said: "She was Mme. Lhévinne, my teacher, my grandmother, my dance instructor, my shrink, my everything. And that's what 'teacher' in the truest sense means, because she taught all the human qualities. Music is just an outlet through which these human qualities are taught." Perhaps it was Mme. Lhévinne's innate understanding of these qualities that set her apart, and has allowed her legacy to continue echoing in the music of all her students.JoAnna Farrer is a fourth-year student in violin.
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