Jubilee

Authentic musical Wunderkinder were something new to U. S. audiences when, one evening in 1887, a sturdy n-year-old boy, 4 ft. tall and dressed in a sailor suit, marched out on the stage of Manhattan's new Metropolitan Opera House. The solemn youngster seated himself on a high chair at a piano whose pedals had been built up to be within reach of his short legs. In the wings offstage stood the boy's mother, an opera singer of Warsaw, and his father, who had taught him to play the piano so well that he was already the talk of Europe. Soon, from out front where 3,500 witnessed the boy's performance of man-sized works, Casimir. Hofmann and his wife heard thunderous applause, cheers and bravos for small Josef Casimir Hofmann.

Last Sunday evening, Pianist Hofmann, now 61, his grey hair encircling a bald spot, his gentle face still distinguished by the cleft chin of his youth, walked upon the Metropolitan stage and 4,000 applauding people rose to their feet. It was 50 years, less a day, since he had made his debut before the U. S. public. For this Golden Jubilee concert the 4,000 had bought out the house long ago, at $15 for the best seats, the proceeds (some $22,000) going to the Musicians Emergency Fund. In the audience were New York's Mayor LaGuardia, Polish Ambassador Count Jerzy Potocki, ubiquitous Manhattanites like Novelist Fannie Hurst, scads of musicians, among them Conductor Artur Rodzinski, Pianist Leopold Godowsky, Violinist Albert Spalding. There were 20 oldsters, including kindly Dr. Walter Damrosch, who had heard the Hofmann debut concert, 50 years before. In a box sat Pianist Hofmann's daughter and granddaughter by his first wife, and his comely young second wife--whom he had married in 1924, amazingly managing to keep it a secret for four years-- and their two oldest sons. (The baby, ten months old, seemed too young to bring along.)

Not present, because Pianist Hofmann had felt she was now too feeble to make her first transatlantic trip in 50 years, was his 87-year-old mother. For her, the pianist arranged that the whole Jubilee concert should be recorded. Also not present, to his regret, was the most celebrated member of the honorary, specially-formed "Hofmann Fifty-Year Club" of people who had heard the prodigy during his first months in the U. S. Franklin D. Roosevelt (six years younger than Josef Hofmann) was taken by his mother to hear Hofmann play in 1887, and, as Dr. Damrosch said gracefully as he introduced Pianist Hofmann at the Jubilee, the future President of the U. S. had asked: "Mother, if I practiced ever so hard could I be a great pianist like that when I grow up?" Added Dr. Damrosch: "I am afraid that the muses did not stand by his cradle as they did by the cradle of Josef Hofmann, but still he did pretty well. . . ."

If the program of the Hofmann Jubilee was not one to excite musicians, it was nonetheless admirably suited to the occasion. Pianist Hofmann is the businesslike, hard-working dean and director of Philadelphia's 14-year-old Curtis Institute of Music. For the Jubilee, Mrs. Mary Louise Curtis Bok, its benefactor and his good friend, paid the expenses of an orchestra of Curtis students, faculty members and 29 Curtis graduates now playing in major U. S. orchestras, and with the Institute's Fritz Reiner on the podium they played the pompous Academic Festival Overture of Brahms. The date of the Hofmann Jubilee was also Rubinstein's birthday (Nov. 28). For this reason, and because Josef Hofmann was the only private pupil Rubinstein ever took--after the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children had his first U. S. tour cut short, and Financier Alfred Corning Clark came to the rescue with $50,000 to subsidize the boy in seclusion until he was 18--Pianist Hofmann and the orchestra performed Rubinstein's shopworn but showy Concerto in D Minor. Still one of the world's great pianists, despite his small hands,* and a brilliant technician who excels at interpreting Chopin, Hofmann next played a group of Chopin solo pieces and many an encore. One of them was the "Minute" Waltz which Hofmann--his humor not deserting him even on so dressy an occasion--tacked impishly on the end of a languishing Chopin nocturne. No excuse was needed to end the program with one of the works of Michel Dvorsky--a rhythmic, vigorous Chromaticon or "duologue for piano and orchestra." For Michel Dvorsky, as everyone in the audience knew, was Josef Hofmann.

* Hofmann spares his hands by letting an assistant help him at lathes and drill presses in the pursuit of his avocation, machinery (see cut). In his three laboratories he has developed, and marketed profitably, pneumatic springs, hydraulic snubbers, oil burner gadgets, piano sound amplification devices.

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