Clara Haskil, In Spite of Herself

However bad your life has been or is, you might be cheered to know that Clara Haskil probably had it worse.

Not that she didn’t have some advantages; she started out life as a musical prodigy, and seemed equally gifted at the piano as at the violin. Here’s one description of her powers:

She was not yet five when a professor at the Bucharest Academy visited her parent’s home and played a Mozart sonata. When he finished she repeated the sonata perfectly, while simultaneously transposing it into another key, all without having had any musical instruction.

Right—not your average five-year old….

Later, she graduated with the Premier Prix from the Paris Conservatory, where she studied with Alfred Cortot (she had earlier stuided with Busoni). She began to tour, but then, at the age of 18, everything grounded to a halt: she spent four years in a plaster cast, trying to correct curvature of the spine.

Her health, it seems, was never great. In 1941, she had a tumor on her optic nerve, and had to have surgery by a doctor smuggled out of Paris. And all through her life, by all accounts, she was frail.

She also had a phenomenal memory, once playing four pages of a composition she had never seen but only heard years before. And also—very nice for a pianist—she had large hands.

Then, in about 1920, she was afflicted with stage fright; here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

Frequent illnesses, combined with extreme stage fright that appeared in 1920, kept her from critical or financial success. Most of her life was spent in abject poverty. It was only after World War II, during a series of concerts in the Netherlands in 1949, that she began to win acclaim.

Born in 1895, she would have been 54 before “winning acclaim.”

But what acclaim it was—everyone was raving about her: here’s Charlie Chaplin:

"In my lifetime I have met three geniuses; Professor Einstein, Winston Churchill, and Clara Haskil. I am not a trained musician but I can only say that her touch was exquisite, her expression wonderful, and her technique extraordinary." (Swiss Radio interview, 19 April 1961.)

Well, everyone was raving but Clara; here’s  one account:

In years to come I heard her many times, both publicly and privately. For these experiences I remain eternally grateful. As I left the hall, a friend who knew Haskil offered to take me backstage. She seemed inconsolable and unhappy, excusing her poor performance to anyone who congratulated her.

She lived through two world wars, and not without adventure. Here’s a vivid description of her escape from Paris (she was born a Sephardic Jew):

We left Paris at night from the Gare Montparnasse, which was plunged into murky darkness, and before dawn we left the train at Angoulême. Our luggage had gone ahead of us, since, as we expected to have to do a lot of walking, we did not want to be heavily laden. In the sinister railway station, cold and dark, we huddled together, speaking in hushed tones; then we met the guide who was to lead us through fields and woods to the free zone. A taxi drove us to the edge of a forest, where we listened to the scarcely reassuring advice of our guide. He was obviously frightened and told us that the prisons in the neighborhood were full of people like us who had been caught. One road was especially dangerous; we had to crawl across it for, not very far away, as we could see, was a German police station. It was the end of march. The wind was cold but spring had come; there were violets in the woods and birds were singing, but we were not in a mood to enjoy that particular morning walk. On every signpost was a skull and crossbones and a menacing warning to anyone who ventured into this forbidden zone. Our guide wheeled his bicycle ahead of us and we followed in a single file. Le Guillard carried his viola and Clara’s suitcase since she, after a night without sleep, was physically and emotionally exhausted. Each of us wore several overcoats and my wife carried our cat in its basket. Our hearts beat wildly; at last we had crossed that terrible road. I remember that at the exact moment that our cat started miaowing our guide showed us the road we should take to rejoin the railway; he claimed his fee, mounted his bicycle and rode off as fast as he could. Relieved and reassured at having survived this disagreeable experience we soon found a farm whose hospitable owners were used to groups of people in our situation and gave us something to eat.

At last, in 1960, she fell down a staircase in a Brussels rail station, and died in a matter of days.

May her death be happier than her life!