Mieczyslaw Horszowski

Mieczyslaw Horszowski (June 23, 1892 – May 22, 1993) was a Polish-American pianist and music teacher. He was born in Lemberg in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Lviv) and later lived and worked in the United States, where he became especially associated with Philadelphia.

His father, Stanislaw Horszowski, owned a musical-instrument shop specializing in pianos. Horszowski received his first piano lessons from his mother, Roza Horszowska (née Roza Janina Wagner), a pupil of Karol Mikuli. He later studied in Lviv with Henryk Melcer and more thoroughly in Vienna with Theodor Leschetizky.

He began concertizing at the age of nine, but by 1911—tired of the life of a child prodigy—he decided to abandon music and study literature and philosophy in Paris. Pablo Casals persuaded him to reverse this decision, after which Horszowski settled in Milan and toured internationally.

In 1940 he moved to New York and later to Philadelphia, where he taught at the Curtis Institute of Music. Among his pupils were Richard Goode, Murray Perahia, Cecile Licad, Anton Kuerti, and others. Born into a Jewish family, Horszowski converted to Catholicism when he was young.

Horszowski’s repertoire prominently included Mozart and Beethoven as well as 20th-century composers such as Vincent d’Indy, Arthur Honegger, Karol Szymanowski, Igor Stravinsky, Bohuslav Martinu, and Heitor Villa-Lobos. His final public performance took place in 1991, completing an extraordinary performing career that spanned about 90 years.

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