Grandma Bachante

Each Saturday and Sunday for the past three months, a little procession has arrived punctually at 6:30 p.m. at RCA Victor's midtown Manhattan recording studios. The routine never varies. The youngest, Mlle. Denise Restout, goes straight to the harpsichord, yanks open her tool kit, and starts tuning. The huskiest, Mlle. Elsa Schunicke, carries the pillows and the hamper, loaded with sandwiches, a vacuum jug of coffee, and a supply of specially blended horehound drops. Then, her hands folded before her, and her craggy features blissfully composed, Mme. Wanda Landowska herself floats in like a tiny wraith, nods her greetings and disappears into the dressing room.

Last week, comfortable in blue knee-length socks, red fur-trimmed bedroom slippers and a loose-fitting smock, the great harpsichordist was finishing up the first sixth of a monumental recording task begun in her 70th year. In the darkened studio, her eyes closed, she began to play the great Prelude and Fugue No. 3 in C Sharp of Johann Sebastian Bach. Before the weekend was over, she had also played the rippling No. 6 in D Minor and the fugue of No. 7 in E Flat to complete the first eight of the 48 brain-and finger-cracking preludes and fugues--two in each of the 24 keys--that constitute the musician's bible and byword: Bach's great Wohltemperirtes Clavier (Well-Tempered Clavier).

Perfection. To Landowska, "this is my last will and testament. I have to make it perfect." She was taking plenty of time to make it that way--to make sure that exactly the balance and quality she wanted to hear would come off the wax. In her weekly sessions, she had worked 42 hours, making retake after retake, to record 45 minutes of music. At 70 (her birthday is actually July 5), the somewhat mystic, sometimes earthy little Polish-born woman is the acknowledged high priestess of the harpsichord, the sweet-sounding, twangy-bangy instrument she rescued from oblivion 50 years ago. She did not need much preparation before sitting down to record.

She had been playing Bach on the harpsichord in public for 46 years: the great Hungarian conductor, Arthur Nikisch (1855-1922) had long ago punningly tagged her "The Bachante." And she had performed all of Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier last year in a series of Town Hall recitals to which her worshipful disciples--musicians, students and teachers alike--had flocked, music in hand. Some were occasionally surprised at her interpretations; Bach himself gave few hints of exactly how fast and how loud his music should be played. But few had failed to be impressed with her magnificent authority--and delighted with her puckish platform informality. (Between numbers, she chats confidentially with her audience: "I have worked so hard to make this pleasure for you . . .")

Pep. Although she is as spry and sparkling-eyed as ever ("I feel as young as a child"), Landowska has given up touring. In the last few years, she has also given up the idea of returning to her once-famed Ecole de Musique Ancienne at picturesque Saint-Leu-La-Foret near Paris, from which she fled in 1940 before the Nazis took over.

At home in her apartment by Manhattan's Central Park, she pads in & around her instruments (two concert-grand pianos, two harpsichords, a clavichord) in simple, loose-hanging gowns and soft, low-heeled slippers. As at Saint-Leu, her home here is still a mecca for musical greats: last fall, English Pianist Clifford Curzon dropped in for three lessons on a Mozart concerto before playing it with the Little Orchestra Society in Town Hall.

Although she seldom goes out, she keeps up with the music and art worlds, mainly by voluminous reading. Listening to a playback after a recent recording session, Landowska cracked to a studio technician: "Sounds like old Grandma Moses here still has pep."

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