Background
Josef Casimir Hofmann was born on January 20, 1876 in Podgorze (a district of Krakow), Poland. He was the son of Casimir Hofmann, a prosperous conductor and gifted pianist, and Matylda Wysocka, an opera singer.
Josef Casimir Hofmann was born on January 20, 1876 in Podgorze (a district of Krakow), Poland. He was the son of Casimir Hofmann, a prosperous conductor and gifted pianist, and Matylda Wysocka, an opera singer.
Hofmann was privately tutored and received his early musical instruction from his parents, beginning the study of the piano and composition at the age of four.
In Berlin Hofmann studied composition with Heinrich Urban and the piano with Moritz Moszkowski. From 1892 to 1894 he was the only pupil of Rubinstein, whom he venerated above all other pianists.
Hofmann gave his first public recital when he was five, and concertized throughout Europe from 1884 to 1887. Anton Rubinstein heard the eleven-year-old boy's first appearance as soloist with orchestra, in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1, which he played in Berlin with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Hans von Bülow.
Hofmann's first American tour began on November 29, 1887, with a recital at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. A long series of concerts was planned, but the tour was interrupted by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which charged that the child was being exploited and his health impaired. The American banker Alfred Corning Clark gave Hofmann $50, 000 on the condition that he withdraw from concertizing and study uninterruptedly until the age of eighteen.
Ironically, Hofmann gave his first adult recital, in Cheltenham, England, on November 20, 1894--the day of Rubinstein's death. From 1898 through 1907 he made solo tours of the United States and played chamber music with the violinist Fritz Kreisler, among others. Around 1900 he settled in the United States. Because of the enormous number of Hofmann's appearances in America, and less favorable reviews than he had received in Europe, success came more slowly. Critics lavished praise on Hofmann's staggering technical gifts and enormous sonority, as well as on his musical insights. The physical feats seemed all the more impressive because he was quite short and delicate of feature. Yet an interviewer for the Philadelphia Enquirer wrote in 1898 that when he touched the pianist's arms, ". .. muscles bulged forth as though they contemplated bursting. Steel couldn't feel any harder. "
Between 1907 and 1917, Hofmann wrote a column for the Ladies' Home Journal in which he answered queries from amateur pianists. In Cincinnati, on November 24, 1916, he premiered a piece for piano and orchestra entitled "Chromaticon" and attributed to Michel Dvorsky, "a mysterious young French composer. " After repeated denials Hofmann admitted four years later that he and Dvorsky were one. Under that pseudonym he produced several concerti and a symphony, but his later compositions were published under his own name. While exploiting the strongest points of Hofmann's piano style, these works are of little musical moment and were performed mainly by Hofmann and his students. They are no longer in the concert repertoire.
Hofmann contracted in 1918 to record 100 pieces over a fifteen-year period for the Aeolian Company. In the late 1920s he said that he would not continue to record, since he did not wish to be represented by small works and feared that recordings would hurt his box-office grosses. Although he made twenty-nine commercial recordings from 1903 through 1925, most have been lost, except for two long-playing reissues.
In 1924 the newly founded Curtis Institute in Philadelphia appointed Hofmann director of piano and, in 1926, general director and dean. On November 6 of that year he became an American citizen. He held these posts until September 1938, teaching a generation of gifted pianists that included Abram Chasins, Shura Cherkassky, and Nadia Reisenberg.
On November 28, 1937, Hofmann returned to the Metropolitan Opera House, the site of his American debut, in his golden jubilee concert. A phonograph recording of that concert exists because Mrs. Hofmann had a friend record it on home equipment. In 1939 Hofmann moved to Los Angeles, California. He gradually withdrew from the concert stage to devote himself to perfecting his inventions. He had a lifelong fascination with mechanical devices and held more than sixty patents on such diverse items as shock absorbers, an electronic piano, air springs, and precision-tool shop instruments. He played in public only sporadically, and gave his last New York City recital on January 19, 1946. He became increasingly reclusive until his death in Los Angeles.
Hofmann had few mannerisms while performing, and his repertoire was huge. Although a poor sight reader, he could memorize by ear with almost immediate retention. He dazzled his musical friends by learning, after three casual hearings, Leopold Godowsky's immensely difficult "Kunstlerleben" and played it faultlessly without ever seeing the music. His playing was often compared with that of Sergei Rachmaninoff, whom contemporaries considered Hofmann's only peer.
Quotes from others about the person
"Something has gone out of the world of music with the death of Josef Hofmann. He was a symbol, a landmark--almost an institution. It is hard to imagine the piano in our time without him. " - the New York Times
In October 1905 Hofmann married Marie Clarisse Eustis, a New Orleans society belle. They had one daughter. The Hofmanns were divorced in 1925, and the following year Josef announced that he had secretly married Elizabeth Adelade Short, a piano student some thirty years his junior. They had three sons.