The Piano Teaching Legacy of Solomon Mikowsky
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The Piano Teaching Legacy of Solomon Mikowsky A Thesis by Kookhee Hong In Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Musical Arts Manhattan School of Music New York January 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface..................................................................................4 Part I: Biography ..................................................................5 Part II: Pedagogy................................................................63 Part III: Appendices .........................................................140 “I would not enjoy teaching if I thought my work was reduced to showing students how to preserve museum pieces. Although I cannot stand carelessness with the score, I thrive on creativity and using the imagination.” —Solomon Mikowsky (Clavier, September 2001) Hong / Solomon Mikowsky 4 PREFACE After attending the Curtis Institute, I transferred to the Bachelor of Music degree program at Manhattan School of Music as a scholarship piano student of Solomon Mikowsky. Little did I know that I would remain his student through the Bachelors, Masters, Professional Studies and Doctor of Musical Arts degree programs. For eight years I have enjoyed the benefit of his talent, wisdom, experience, dedication, generosity and personal guidance. I am sure that every other pupil of his has had a like experience. His class of students has been as close to being a family as a group of competitive young professionals could possibly be. Dr. Mikowsky is a master of his art and represents the continuation of a great pianistic and pedagogical tradition. He has been often honored through awards, articles, and the successes of his students. In selecting a topic for my doctoral dissertation, it seemed to me timely and relevant to record for posterity whatever he was willing to share with us about his life and teaching ideas. We both agreed to cover the subject by way of informal dialogue. There was no attempt to superimpose any structure but the most general, allowing recollections to flow unimpeded and conclusions to come about naturally. I appreciate the many hours that Dr. Mikowsky has spent with me in wide-ranging and probing discussion, as well as his friendly candor throughout all our meetings. It is my intent that future readers of these pages will come away with special insight into the labor of love that has been his life’s calling. Kookhee Hong Los Angeles July 23, 2012 Hong / Solomon Mikowsky 5 Part I BIOGRAPHY KH: When I originally discussed with you my intentions to dedicate my doctoral dissertation at Manhattan School of Music to your life and teaching legacy, your response was guarded as to sharing many aspects of your private life. You clearly let me know that the subject matter would be limited strictly to your pedagogical ideas. So, a bit surprised and pleasantly so, I now look forward to your sharing with the readers as much as possible about your life. As you have stated in the past, there is a close relationship between it and your career as a teacher. We have to start somewhere, and my first question has to deal with something you never wanted to openly declare: your birth date! Are you now ready to tell us? SM: I am very bad at remembering dates. Our readers will notice, I am sure, that all my life experiences will be fully described but seldom placed in a time frame. The date of my birth I actually do remember. You should know by now about my vanity and my hopes all along that my students would falsely believe that I am much younger than I actually am. But at this point in my life, I think it’s best for everything to be in the open, as I am neither looking for a job, nor competing in a beauty contest. I was born in Havana, Cuba on March 10, 1936. My official documents state that I was born the year before because of a mistake in the Cuban birth certificate used in order to become a United States citizen. I was not a typical Cuban raised in Cuba. I was born there, but my parents were Jews who had come to Cuba to escape from anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe. KH: When your parents arrived in Cuba, were they already married? SM: They had not yet met, and came separately and independently to Cuba. My father’s name was Shimon Gadles (1903–1979) and he was born in a small town or shtetl called Grodno in what is now Belarus, near the border with Poland. At that time Belarus was part of Imperial Russia. Because of prevailing anti-Semitism, Jews in Eastern Europe were segregated into thousands of shtetls that spread all over many countries for centuries. They spoke Hong / Solomon Mikowsky 6 Yiddish, an old dialect of German written with the Hebrew alphabet which was studied in the synagogue. My father received almost no education and knew very little about the outside world beyond the confines of his shtetl. In Cuba he adopted the name of Israel as a result of switching his passport back home with his younger brother. As a child, I also spoke Yiddish at home, which I studied at the Centro Israelita in Havana, the Jewish-Cuban elementary school I attended. My family and I also spoke Spanish, of course, which my parents had learned by the time I was born. KH: How come your parents decided specifically to immigrate to Cuba? SM: When my father was ordered to serve in the Russian Army cavalry in the late 1920s, he decided to emigrate, as anti-Semitism prevailed. The preferred country for immigration was the United States. However, because of labor unrest in the U.S. and other factors, Jews were not given immigration visas to the U.S. at that time. KH: I am really surprised that this was the case. In the years I have lived in New York I have witnessed the very important role played by the Jewish community in all aspects of the city’s life. I imagine this is also true throughout the United States, although possibly to a lesser extent. SM: Don’t be surprised! The President of the United States followed his political instincts. Granting visas to immigrants seeking work during the American Depression would have been a politically unwise move for re-election. Even the news coming from Europe about the extermination of the Jewish people by Hitler and the Nazis did not move the President at that time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to take any action against Germany until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, in spite of the pleading of several close Jewish advisors, including Treasury Secretary Morgenthau, Supreme Court Justice Brandeis and future Justice Frankfurter. I learned this information from a lecture by Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel. KH: Is that why your parents had to immigrate to Cuba? SM: Yes. The island of Cuba, in the Caribbean and near the U.S. mainland, became one of the attractive places to consider for immigration as a stepping stone towards eventual immigration into the United States. However, upon finding out how wonderful life could be in Cuba, where the people did not harbor any hatred towards the non-Christian members of the community, as was the case in most European countries, my father and many other Jews decided to stay in Cuba and make their lives there. That was the case for up to 15,000 Jews who finally settled in Cuba. It was a sizable community. KH: What about your mother? Hong / Solomon Mikowsky 7 SM: Her story is somewhat different. She was called Rochl in Yiddish and Raquel later on in Spanish, but her Cuban citizenship documents listed her as Maria Ruchla Mikowska (1904–1967). She was born in Warsaw as part of a family comprised of her parents and eight siblings. Her lifestyle was different from my father’s. Jews in Warsaw were somewhat segregated but they still lived in the city and not in a small shtetl. Her parents were well-off enough before the First World War for her to be able to receive private instruction from a tutor at home. Although my mother was permitted later on to receive some formal education in the public school system, she confessed to me that, as a child, she was not allowed to sit at a desk like the other Polish children, but was forced to stand for hours during lectures. After the War, they lost everything! Similar to my father, she and her family were subjected to the intense anti-Semitism prevalent in devout Catholic countries such as Poland. The economic situation of the family became desperate, having to live in one single room in a fourth-floor walk-up. At least one of her brothers became very ill with tuberculosis. KH: I can see that there were more than enough reasons for your mother to want to emigrate from Poland. SM: Although my mother was involved in an intense romance with a Jewish Zionist who eventually immigrated to Palestine in order to work on the creation of a permanent homeland for the Jewish people there, she decided to follow the invitation of her childhood friend, Ana Rubinstein, and also immigrate to Cuba. My mother’s goal was to be able to work in Cuba and save money in order to return to Poland and bring her whole family to Havana with her. Soon thereafter, she arrived in Havana, the same year my father arrived. They met and were married a few months later. KH: Being Korean I can relate to the loneliness that your parents must have felt, getting married in a distant land far away from their own families. SM: My mother was aware that her parents back in Poland needed some kind of reassurance that she was marrying a nice and decent man.