Brussels. I had come to visit libraries, the conservatoire and the Ysaÿe foundation. I was tracing a narrative that had its origins here. This thread started with one of the Conservatoire Royal de Musique de Bruxelles’ earliest representatives, Henryk Wieniawski and was followed by his student Ysaÿe, and Ysaÿe’s student, Enescu. At the Conservatoire, Wieniawski had stepped into a distinguished lineage within the Belgian School – previous holders of the post had been the school’s founder, Charles-Auguste de Bériot, then Vieuxtemps and thereafter Wieniawski. As I followed the trail of violinist after violinist, I suddenly discovered a name in the lineage that was not connected directly to the Conservatoire – that of a certain “Poldowski”. Poldowski was the professional pseudonym of Belgian-born Irène Régine Wieniawski, daughter of Polish-born Henryk. Irène was a composer whose music is instantly recognisable and carries the sculpted edge of ironic humour of someone observing and questioning how things unfold. Tellingly, she chose a family name’s masculine ending rather than a feminine one, as if to emphasise her point. The path that I was on also shed light on Józef – Henryk’s brother – whose stellar career faded away after his passing rather than being completely eclipsed by that of his sibling.
A pandemic was silently raging outside, leaving the music department of the Royal Library of Belgium eerily silent. I read the cover of a manuscript embellished with cursive handwriting and opened it to the first page. My inner ear heard three notes rise in succession, gaining amplification through repetition – the opening bars of a work by Ysaÿe, who was trying his hand at something new: a string quintet. I leafed through the autography, aware that I was at once a curious musician reading the personal musical thoughts of an icon and at the same time something of a sleuth.
There are those in the field of music who suggest there is a reason why a work is not frequently played or recorded. The ellipses in their voice as they lilt the end of the sentence hint at the idea that it is so because it is not worthy of recognition. It is deemed not good enough.
I see an unfortunate relationship with this way of thinking and the neglect that works of female composers have suffered – works unknown, not worthy of recognition, not good enough. In the words of Nadia Boulanger, “an artist and their music can never be more or less than they are as a human being”. The composers featured on this recording were exceptional – their compositions equally so.

Gwendolyn Masin

Legends is described by Gwendolyn Masin as a “mosaic” of elements: family ties and teaching lineages overlap to create a rich impression of an interconnected musical world. This programme shines a light on neglected repertoire, and particularly on the role of women as integral to the creative achievements heard here. Throughout, the different implications of the word ‘legend’ are felt: iconic figures and works rub shoulders with those who, unjustly, remain in a shadowy, mythical realm, deserving of greater prominence.
Eugène Ysaÿe was born into a family of violinists in Liège and, like his teacher Henryk Wieniawski, showed a prodigious aptitude for the instrument. Ysaÿe’s formative years were cosmopolitan, sowing the seeds for his view that “real art should be international.” At the age of 16 he travelled to Brussels, where he studied with Vieuxtemps and Henryk Wieniawski. Gwendolyn Masin’s parents also studied at the Brussels Conservatory, and through them she has inherited its extraordinarily rich musical lineage. In Paris, Ysaÿe met Russian composer-pianist Anton Rubinstein (another figure these musicians had in common; it was on Rubinstein’s invitation that Henryk Wieniawski went to St Petersburg and they later toured the USA together). At his best, Ysaÿe was considered the finest violinist of his generation and his violin works remain staples of the repertoire, but his other works are less frequently played.
This recording of Ysaÿe’s single-movement String Quintet in B minor (1894) is all the more remarkable as the work is relatively new on the recording scene; it received its Swiss premiere in May 2022 as part of Gwendolyn Masin’s GAIA Music Festival, and this particular version has never been recorded before. Masin went to the Brussels Royal Library where she found the work’s manuscript, discovering that some of what he had written in this source does not coincide with the separate parts Ysaÿe wrote for each instrument. Detective work ensued, with all the musicians who play on this recording getting involved, aided by a Ukrainian scholar Volodymyr Kotliarov, who laid out the material for them. Based on a study of the autography, the group painstakingly deduced what makes most sense vertically – in other words, harmonically and texturally.
The theme of family and musical heritage pervades this work and this performance: the Quintet is dedicated to Ysaÿe’s younger brother, “mon frère Théophile”, and is here played by the brothers Martin and Patrick Moriarty – who were taught by both Masin and her parents – alongside another Master’s student, Belgian violinist Jiska Lambrecht; Masin believes passionately in fostering unjaded, “unbounded young talent”. The Quintet, with its restless nature, by turns intense and wistful, is a kind of musical patchwork, in keeping with this programme’s structure; its dense textures and chromaticism might almost recall Richard Strauss, but in this new version we hear Ysaÿe’s authentic voice above all.
This recording also features three members of the Polish Wienawski family, whose musicality stemmed from its matriarch, mother of Henryk and Józef and grandmother of Irène: Regina Wolff, a professionally trained pianist and sister of pianist Edouard Wolff. The mysterious connotations of the word ‘legend’ find their apotheosis on this programme with Irène Wieniawska, aka Poldowski. Daughter of Henryk, who died six weeks before she was born, Irène felt burdened by her father’s legacy and adopted a masculine-sounding pseudonym – one of several versions of her name used at various times – to escape the association. She was christened Régine after her paternal grandmother and, after moving to London with her mother, Isabella Hampton, married Sir Aubrey Dean Paul. Aspects of Poldowski’s biography are shrouded in mystery; she claimed to have studied at the Brussels Conservatory, but no record of her time there survives. In the 1920s she led a colourful life in London, entertaining guests including the conductor Eugène Goossens and fellow composers Peter Warlock and George Gershwin.
Sir Henry Wood considered Poldowksi to have “exceptional talent” and conducted the premiere of her orchestral Nocturne at the 1912 Proms. Poldowski said of her compositional style that she was “always restless and dissatisfied under any scholastic influence”, but she was particularly drawn to French composers such as Debussy, Ravel and Fauré, and to the poetry of Verlaine. For Gwendolyn Masin, Poldowski’s “language is clearly recognisable, taking ownership of an authentic signature, a creation of her own making, more contemporary than her father and uncle.”
Premiered by her friend the French pianist Lazare Lévy, Poldowski’s piano suite Caledonian Market is for Masin “unusual and exciting”. We hear ‘Bloomsbury Waltz’, hypnotic with its impressionistic parallel chords, and the ‘Musical Box’, crystalline in texture and almost painfully wistful, while Pierrot seems to inhabit the ‘Picture of Clowns’. Poldowski’s Tango for violin and piano has also been neglected, largely, Masin argues, on account of its “fiendishly difficult” demands – greater in part even than those of her father’s music. The piece opens with arresting piano chords and muscular violin writing before the tango proper – Argentine in flavour. The violin seems to be possessed by different voices: that sinewy, gruff opening manner and a higher-pitched, soaring lyricism in answer – an equality of dialogue and status that Poldowski enjoyed to some extent in her lifetime, but which her reputation deserves still. As Masin puts it: “The fact that she took a male alias draws us back to this idea of something mythical, intangible and, sadly, unfamiliar”: a legend.
Henryk Wieniawski was a legend in his own lifetime: he was the most widely celebrated member of the family and showed prodigious talent. When the Czech violinist Heinrich Panofka heard the eight-year-old Henryk play, he declared: “He will make a name for himself”. Henryk’s ascent was giddying, and after winning a number of accolades he set off for St Petersburg, just after giving a concert with Józef in Paris in 1848. Once in Russia, Henryk earned the praise of the great Vieuxtemps, among others. According to the Hungarian violinist Joseph Szigeti, Ysaÿe considered Wieniawski to be “the greatest of his contemporaries”. Anton Rubinstein agreed, saying that Wieniawski was “without doubt the greatest violinist of his time”.
From 1852 Wieniawski toured Europe, including Germany, Austria, Holland, Belgium, France, Ireland and England, culminating in a series of concerts in London. There, he played chamber music alongside another great violinist, Joseph Joachim – who described him as “the craziest risk-taking virtuoso I’ve ever heard”, echoing Henryk’s personal motto, “Il faut risquer” (“You have to take risks”). It was also in London that Henryk met Isabella Hampton (niece of Irish composer-pianist George Alexander Osborne), who would become his wife. To Isabella he dedicated his Légende Op.17 (1860), exclaiming that he loved her “more deeply than the finest Stradivarius or Guarneri”. Originally for violin and orchestra but often heard in its reduction for violin and piano, the Légende opens with an enigmatic, swirling piano introduction – in Masin’s words, “like thunder gathering in the sky” – before the violin unfurls a song-like melody embellished with folk-like gestures. The piece is characterised by a spontaneous, mystical and timeless quality that reflects its title.
Józef Wieniawski, Henryk’s younger brother, was a pianist and composer who, though less of a showman than his brother, was arguably a more versatile composer – possibly even more famous during their lifetimes but neglected since, with many of his works falling out of print. Where Henryk was charismatic and passionate, Józef was studious and understated. Józef studied at the Paris Conservatoire and later with Liszt in Weimar. As a pianist, he was adept at sight-reading, transposing and accompanying, marrying graceful nuances with excellent technique – qualities he brought to his role as a teacher, for which he provided instructions described by the conductor Hans von Bülow as a “veritable résumé of piano teaching”. Józef was particularly interested in his Polish roots and, as well as counting Chopin as an influence, frequently championed less widely known Polish music, especially that of Stanisław Moniuszko. Published in Leipzig in 1888, the Valse-Caprice Op.46 is dedicated ‘À Monsieur Paul de Schlözer’ or Paweł Schlözer, a Polish pianist and teacher. The piece is cast in a single movement but has distinct sections, like a musical mosaic – again echoing this programme’s structure: there is an Introduction; the nostalgic waltz theme, marked ‘graceful and singing’; a contrasting, introspective section; a charming, twinkly ‘capriccioso’ and finally a return to the opening tempo, culminating in a conclusion of imposing grandeur.
Romanian composer-violinist George Enescu was a student of Ysaÿe; Enescu in turn was hugely influential among the next generation of violinists. His compositions combined elements of Romanticism and Classical structures with motivic development, cyclical form, and folk music, especially that of Romania. He prized melody above all: “I’m not a person for pretty successions of chords … a piece deserves to be called a musical composition only if it has a line, a melody, or, even better, melodies superimposed on one another”. Yehudi Menuhin, one of his students, observed that: “However disciplined his knowledge of composition, it never lost that magic element of improvisation. He was bent on communicating the sacred fire…”.
In keeping with his formidable reputation as a violinist, Enescu’s violin works are well known, but his other output has been neglected by comparison. The Sept Chansons de Clément Marot (1907–08) are to texts by Clément Marot (1496–1544), a French Renaissance poet renowned for his humorous and elegant vernacular poetry. Marot’s texts were popular with his contemporaries but found a new champion in Enescu, whose neoclassical settings evoke the period in which the poems were written, with lute-like piano writing and supple vocal lines reflecting the immediacy of Marot’s style. Women are ever present in these songs, not merely as muses but as figures with agency and power, as in the third song in which they are “too lazy to write to their suitors” – a witty tone echoed in the sixth in which the poet exclaims: “Let’s change the subject, that’s too much singing of love.” There is something elusive about the women in these texts; they echo the mythical connotations of ‘legends’ – out of reach and veiled in ambiguity, prompting the poet to declare impatiently:
“If you don’t inform me soon
I’ll make up news of you all.
Since you are so recalcitrant,
I bid you good afternoon, good night,
Good evening, good day!”

© Joanna Wyld, 2022