Rafael Joseffy: Master of the Nuance

For the Chicago Orchestra’s inaugural concerts on October 16 and 17, 1891, founder and first music director Theodore Thomas led Wagner’s A Faust Overture, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Dvořak’s Husitská Overture and Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, featuring Rafael Joseffy (1852–1915).

Following the first Friday afternoon matinee, the reviewer in the Chicago Tribune noticed that Joseffy “brought no raiment from New York but an evening suit and a light gray make-up for the street, so he committed the glaring faux pas of appearing in a swallow-tail, vest, etc., before six o’clock in the afternoon. [This] was a matter of little importance, however, after he began to play. . . . Joseffy was distinctly the feature of the concert, and he was recalled three times.”

“Rafael Joseffy was the master who touched the keys and an orchestra able to reveal the beauties of the difficult score gave support,” continued the reviewer after the Saturday evening performance. “His mastery of every detail of the technique of his art was displayed in the first and the last movements of the work; in the climax of the latter his rapidity and ease of chord and octave playing being especially excellent. The middle division of the great composition he read with more poetry and feeling than have been revealed by him at any previous appearance in this city.”

A native of Hungary, Rafael Joseffy studied with Carl Tausig at the Berlin Conservatory and Franz Liszt in Weimar before moving to New York in early 1879. He made his U.S. debut on October 13 in Chickering Hall in New York City under Leopold Damrosch, performing the first piano concertos of Chopin and Liszt.

Joseffy toured soon thereafter and appeared in Boston on November 6, again in Chopin’s E minor concerto. “His pianissimo is something absolutely wonderful with its delicacy, purity of tone, and sweetness,” wrote a reviewer for the Musical Review. “It is difficult to imagine the composer himself imparting a more perfect elegance.” Three days later, Joseffy made his Chicago debut, giving a recital at McCormick Hall on November 9, 1879.

With Thomas, Joseffy made his New York Philharmonic debut on February 21, 1880, performing Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto at the Academy of Music. Over the next decade, the two collaborated on numerous occasions, both with the philharmonic and the Theodore Thomas Orchestra, Thomas’s traveling ensemble.

With a strong affinity for teaching, Joseffy was head of the piano faculty at the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York City between 1888 and 1906, where his colleagues included Antonín Dvořák and Victor Herbert.

Joseffy appeared in Chicago only once more, in March 1895, and was warmly received, “[proving] his absence had served to increase rather than diminish his hold on the public,” according to the Chicago Tribune. He performed Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto with the Chicago Orchestra and Thomas, and “the sympathy between pianist, conductor, and orchestra . . . was notable [and] the poetry which marks the andante was reflected in admirable spirit, and the allegro, in delicacy, taste, and polish, proved perfection.”

Soon thereafter, Joseffy shied away from concertizing and touring and devoted his time to composing, teaching, and writing. For G. Schirmer, he was the editor of multivolume editions of works by Chopin and Liszt and author of School of Advanced Piano Playing, a book of etudes that includes the entire range of piano technique. He never made any recordings.

“A cool, silvery touch of penetrating sweetness was Joseffy’s, a comminglement of magic and moonlight,” wrote James Huneker in Joseffy’s New York Times obituary. “No pianist, with the exception of Chopin, has paralleled his mastery of the nuance.”

This article also appears in the program book for the February 23, 24, and 27, 2024, concerts and here.

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