Who was Delia Sacerdote?

Delia Sacerdote

The refined and talented pianist who shone on the Buenos Aires music scene in the 1930s. A disciple of Wanda Landowska in France and Vicente Scaramuzza in Argentina, she presided over one of Buenos Aires’ prominent musical salons, hosting the most distinguished figures of the era.

By Cecilia Scalisi

What can I listen to while reading this interview? MusicaClasicaBA recommends:

The black-and-white photos, as if taken from a Fritz Lang film during the golden age of silent cinema. The portrait of a refined woman on the yellowed pages of a rediscovered album and clippings from a dazzling career referring to a “young lady of remarkable talents” speak not only of the era but also of the breadth of an exceptional trajectory. That trajectory began in 1931, the year of Delia Sacerdote’s debut with a recital at the now-dissolved Sociedad Cultural Diapasón—an outstanding performer who left her mark on the history of piano in Argentina.

Following in the footsteps of this figure, a meeting took place in Buenos Aires with her daughter, Graciela Beretervide, also a pianist and a distinguished professor at the National Conservatory. The encounter occurred on the first floor of the stately French-style building on Pueyrredón Avenue, in the Barrio Norte neighborhood, where for nearly fifty years Delia Sacerdote presided over her musical gatherings. Who was Delia Sacerdote? is the question that begins the following conversation.

“She was a famous pianist,” her daughter recalls, leafing through the album’s pages with admiration and affection, rediscovered after Delia’s passing in 2008 at the age of 96. “She was famous and respected, above all as a great specialist in the classics. Of course, we knew about her career,” she notes, “but it was only when going through her folders of memories—filled with reviews, photographs, and concert programs showcasing an incredible number of extraordinarily difficult works—that I truly grasped not only who she was as a pianist but also what she left behind for us. Because, evidently, her life as a concert performer changed when she got married.”

“Among her memories, the only two recordings of her performances have recently been recovered, both at the Teatro Colón: the Concerto in D minor for Two Pianos and Orchestra by Francis Poulenc in 1956, alongside the talented Uruguayan pianist Nybia Mariño, with the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by the renowned Polish maestro Paul Klecki; and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, K. 467 in 1965, conducted by the Romanian maestro Constantin Silvestri with the Philharmonic. The remarkable feat of recovering both recordings from the original shellac discs was achieved! A technical marvel that allows us to appreciate her distinguished touch.”

Delia Sacerdote

Musical development

-How did she discover music and decide to dedicate herself to the piano as a profession in an era when it was uncommon?

I honestly don’t know how she discovered music or made the decision to pursue it. I only know that she played the piano her entire life, and at the age of eighteen, she went to France to study with the great Wanda Landowska for nearly two years. She was accompanied by my grandmother, Matilde Haupt. She was so beautiful in her youth that they used to say Landowska would tell my grandmother: “You’d better not leave her here with me!” They would often describe her youthful beauty as that of a Greek goddess.

They also recounted how Wanda could be unpredictable—like deciding to record a piece at four in the morning and summoning everyone to her house at that hour, or hosting costume parties. She could even stop a concert mid-performance if a man in the front row fanned himself off-beat, as the movement would exasperate her. She was a fantastic figure, and my mother became the only pianist in all of Latin America to be a “disciple of the great Wanda Landowska.”

What followed after France?

Scaramuzza in Buenos Aires. Her entire life with Maestro Scaramuzza! She took lessons with Robert Casadesus and several other great pianists from whom she received guidance, including the beloved and admired Claudio Arrau, who encouraged her to study the complete works of Johannes Brahms in depth. But she always spoke of Landowska with great esteem and respect, both as a musician, a teacher, and as a person. During a trip we took to Paris, she took me to visit the house where she had lived during those student years when she attended the École de Musique Ancienne in Saint Leu-La-Forȇt.

The pianist

Rigor, perfectionism, and expression

What virtues stood out in her playing, and what were her milestones as a performer?

She had the gift of articulating each phrase with the appropriate gesture—being rigorous, yet expressive—and playing with very clear fingering. Critics often highlighted her technique and sound, particularly for Bach and the harpsichord composers, for whom she was particularly gifted “by temperament and training,” they said, “having absorbed the teachings of Wanda Landowska.” Mom knew an immense amount; she understood the styles and works profoundly and had an extensive repertoire. She was a perfectionist and highly demanding, both of others and, above all, of herself. Among the milestones that marked her career and are even cited in Argentina’s music history books, Alberto Ginastera often recalled how she performed Stravinsky’s Petrushka Suite for piano. She also premiered Ginastera’s Suite de Danzas Criollas, and of course, one of the achievements of her career was the Argentine premiere of Claude Debussy’s Twelve Etudes.

“Delia Sacerdote has long occupied a leading position among Argentine pianists,” wrote La Razón of Buenos Aires on the occasion of one of her recitals. “She has earned it with her meticulous and emotional interpretations, only possible when secure technique and refined sensitivity go hand in hand.” To this, El Mundo added: “An elegant and communicative musical temperament in her versions, full of nobility and pure style.”

 

Of disciples and masters

Did she have an inclination towards teaching?

She liked it, but never taught. However, she participated in many juries, and her opinion was highly respected. She didn’t give compliments freely. To anyone. Much less to me, her daughter, because she was very fair. No matter who played, she gave her honest opinion. Whether they were friends or strangers, and even when she sought to find the positive side, she always told the truth. She could recognize the touch of great musicians from the very first few bars. That’s why her authority was so valued in the musical world.

Beyond the mother-daughter bond, they were also united by the training of the feared maestro Vicente Scaramuzza, a prodigy of teaching who shaped Argentina’s most outstanding pianists.

I was eight years old when I started studying with the maestro. My mother, who had been his student long before I was born, I don’t know if she made herself heard by him when he gave his concerts. What I do know is that she insisted, as a condition before accepting me as a student, that she be present at all my lessons. He made me write, write, write… Taking note of all his instructions. He was an extraordinary teacher, but he wasn’t suited to teach children of that age. His images now seem fantastic to me, but at that time, at eight or nine years old, with the reasoning capacity of a child, his ideas were incomprehensible. When he said, “the horse shouldn’t go alone,” I would think, “What does that mean?” It meant “don’t play without weight, don’t let the horse run without the rider.” For a child, these associations were not easy to understand. It wasn’t easy to interpret what he was asking for through those complex metaphors. Another abstract idea he often repeated was that of the samurai with the sword. He said that the samurai has the sword and wants to kill his opponent. But the opponent also has his sword and wants to kill him. It’s a fantastic image! Though quite convoluted. The concept was: “hold the sword tightly, but with the arm free.” And my mother would repeat it to me when we went to the Colón to listen to a pianist. “Do you see how he’s holding the piano?” she would say. And I would think to myself: “How could he not be holding the piano, if he’s playing a concerto?!” It was the image of the samurai: firmly holding the sword, but with the arm loose for freedom. The maestro was tough, a Calabrian with a very strong character. I would walk into that legendary house on Lavalle Street (near Ayacucho) terrified. It was terrible. He would shout at the girls to go wash the dishes. And to this day, I remember Scaramuzza because of the terror I felt in his classes.

From Concerts to Family

It was only through this album, so rich in memories and information, that you became aware of the pianist Delia was before she married.

That’s right. As kids, we heard stories, but I didn’t know about this life. I didn’t know about this album, which was like a revelation, the confirmation that she gave everything for us. Being such an organized and perfectionist woman, once she got married, she gradually left the concert life and only performed a few isolated concerts, but never again the career she had before, playing such difficult works by Schumann, Beethoven, Chopin… And the fact is, it wasn’t easy to convince my father to marry her! He was a real bachelor, twenty years older than my mom. He lived with his mother and siblings in a house on Lavalle Street, right in front of the Church of the Savior [Note: a property next to Vicente Scaramuzza’s house-conservatory on the same side of Lavalle Street in the Balvanera neighborhood]. He wasn’t convinced about getting married; he had his career and was dedicated to his work and profession. In the end, my mom married him. My father was an important doctor who worked in this very house. He saw patients here from 2 to 9 p.m., so for my mother, with her constant need for order and perfection, the children (my siblings) and the patients receiving care in this house, and then my father going out to visit the sick, it must have felt like a madhouse to her. I think because of all that and all of us, she gradually stepped away from her concert life.

Delia Sacerdote, Claudio Arrau y Graciela Beretervide

Delia Sacerdote, Claudio Arrau y Graciela Beretervide

The Friends and the Music Salon

And this overlap of family and professional life was joined by an intense social life centered around music and the distinguished visitors who came to Argentina. What memories could you share of that aspect of Delia Sacerdote in the public scene?

For almost fifty years, this house hosted many artists who came to Buenos Aires, including great pianists and singers. María Tipo, Nikita Magaloff, Claudio Arrau, Ralph Votapek, Alexis Golovin, and of course, Marthita! Martha Argerich, who as a young girl came to practice on this piano accompanied by her mother, Juanita. In the photo from this book [NR: points to a volume of “En la Edad de las Promesas. La infancia de los tres prodigios,” authored by this chronicler (Cecilia Scalisi, Editorial Sudamericana)], Marthita is seen sitting beside this home. Another frequent visitor was Witold Malcuzynski.

Even my father was witness to her Argentine citizenship. He wasn’t a pianist like Backhaus, one of the greatest, but he was the best interpreter of Chopin’s Mazurkas! Plus, he was incredibly handsome! He had an extraordinary pull with the audience, something even the greatest pianists couldn’t achieve, and here everyone went crazy for him! Nikita Magaloff was another great friend of my mother. He shared, sitting at the head of this table, that as an intimate friend of Vladimir Horowitz, both Russians, he was the one who had to deliver the brutal news that Horowitz’s daughter had committed suicide in Milan. What a dreadful piece of news! They said that poor Horowitz had sold paintings from his famous collection to pay for his daughter’s psychiatric hospitalizations and even returned to the stage to cover the debts he owed to that institution. And she committed suicide… His only daughter, buried in Milan alongside her famous grandfather, Arturo Toscanini. Alicia de Larrocha was very close to my mother and later became my close friend during the years we spent in New York when I went to study with Claudio Arrau. I was always by her side. She traveled so much! Her manager really exploited her in a brutal way, because even a twenty-five-year-old pianist couldn’t be made to play like that. She had about four years ahead of her with a completely packed schedule, not a free date! María Tipo was another great friend who frequented this house. When we were still in school, and María Tipo came to stay with us, she was a lovely young lady, a beautiful blonde girl with blue eyes, who still missed her mother. When María went on stage, it was like an apparition, and Marthita said, “I want to be like her.” That’s how immense the success she had in Argentina was. María was a lady, a refined pianist, trained by her own mother, an heir of that great Italian piano school from which Scaramuzza also came. This was the house of musicians, something beautiful from that time, a wonderful era I miss so much, just like my mother, that beloved and admired pianist with whom we shared a whole life of music, the operas, and the concerts we loved so much.

C.S.

11/12/2024


Delia Sacerdote de Beretervide Scholarship / 2025

Beca Delia Sacerdote

Created by the Center for Pianistic Studies (CEP) in homage to the great interpreter Delia Sacerdote de Beretervide, it has the approval of her daughter, pianist Graciela Beretervide.

Mrs. Sacerdote de Beretervide had an intense and important career and was linked to CEP for several decades. She served as vice president and artistic advisor of our institution, as well as presiding over numerous competition juries. She maintained a long friendship with Mrs. María Rosa Oubiña de Castro “Cucucha.”

The scholarship will include the participation of the selected individuals in in-person activities in Argentina:

  • Masterclass by Eduardo Delgado
  • Course by Bach Hugo Schuler
  • Online classes with teachers Ludovica Mosca and Kirill Monorosi
  • Additionally, this will be a MOBILITY scholarship, meaning it will support the travel of young musicians within the country by covering airfare and ground transportation costs to offer concerts.

For more information: Centro de Estudios Pianísticos

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