Posts Categorized: The Piano Files

When I first started collecting records, Harold C Schonberg’s book The Great Pianists was my training manual. I dutifully read through it (more than once), making a list of names of pianists he recommended and revisiting his beautiful descriptions of their playing. In my regular jaunts to second-hand stores in my hometown of Montreal, I succeeded to find lots of LP reissues of historical recordings by artists mentioned in Schonberg’s tome and I listened attentively to their playing. One such artist of whom a single LP was produced – because that virtually all that he recorded – was the Russian pianist Josef Lhévinne.

It didn’t take long for me to find several different pressings of Lhévinne’s recordings, as the hour’s worth of gems that he’d set down had been reissued many times over the years by the RCA label for whom he’d produced his handful of discs. Although all of the works were on the shorter side, the quality of the playing was evident and matched Schonberg’s descriptors perfectly: the author wrote of ‘the finish of his playing, his extraordinary technique and ease of delivery, his innate musicality’, adding that ‘his tone was like the morning stars singing together, his technique was flawless even measured against the fingers of Hofmann and Rachmaninoff, and his musicianship was sensitive.’

In 1988, a few years after I read the book and heard these recordings, Schonberg visited Montreal and gave a lecture-presentation in which he shared recordings by some of the great ‘golden age’ pianists, Lhévinne included. CDs had only just begun to be produced with some of these historical recordings, but overall these were far more difficult to access than they are today. The sound quality of his own recorded 78s on the sound system in the hall was extraordinary, and I remember him playing Lhévinne’s legendary 1928 account of the Schulz-Evler Arabesques on The Beautiful Blue Danube’ by Johann Strauss and being mesmerized by the playing.

Lhévinne’s recording has been so universally praised and played that many were and still are unaware that he played a truncated version of the transcription in order to fit the work onto the two sides of the 12-inch RCA 78rpm discs – this record should have allowed for up to 9 or 10 minutes of playing but Lhévinne plays it in 7, so why he played an abridged version is unclear and a great shame, as his playing of the opening figurations in the score would surely have been magnificent. This popular record was the Russian pianist’s first disc for RCA, set down on May 21, 1928, yet Lhévinne would not produce another recording until 1935 (more about his discography further down this tribute page).

Here is a wonderful transfer of that recording produced by Tom Jardine, to whom all thanks (for this and another transfer below) :

 

The LP reissues gave us little insight into Lhévinne’s life and character, and I never really picked up on a key line in Schonberg’s book that offered a glimpse into something rather important: ‘he contented himself with teaching, playing far fewer recitals than many pianists who were infinitely less gifted.’ What hadn’t struck me was that he was not particualrly displeased with not having a big career and that this might be part of why he produced so few records. His name having been spoken of so highly amongst fans of historical recordings – and his few recordings having been reissued so frequently – I assumed that he had a significant career, not that he actually lacked ambition and was satisfied not being so active; however, it appears that the latter scenario is the case and that it was his wife Rosina Lhévinne – herself an incredible pianist and teacher (who outlived him by more than three decades) – who pushed him to be more active.

He certainly seemed destined for a career in music early on. Joseph Arkadievich Levin was born December 13, 1874, the ninth of eleven children in a musical family; he would later adopt the unconventional spelling Lhévinne from the more common Levin (and perhaps Josef from the original Joseph too) at the suggestion of a European manager. He showed signs of musical talent at a young age and he was clearly already adept when at age 11 he played at an event that was attended by Grand Duke Constantine, who expressed great interest in the child’s future and helped secure financing for his training in Moscow with Vassily Safonov.

His training progressed to the point that at age 14 he played for his idol Anton Rubinstein, who was greatly impressed. He was then invited to play at a golden jubilee concert in honour of Rubinstein, after which the legend invited him to play at a benefit event at which he would conduct him in Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. He graduated from the Conservatory in 1892 at the top of a class that included Rachmaninoff and Scriabin. The 18-year-old spent that summer with Rubinstein, whose interest Lhévinne stated ‘was an inspiration to me and helped me more than anything could.’

His career was well and truly launched in 1895 when he won the Anton Rubinstein prize in Berlin, and the resulting initial tour saw success in Paris and Amsterdam before being interrupted due to compulsory military service. In 1898 he married Rosina – six years his junior and herself a gold medalist in her class in Moscow – and thus began a long personal and professional partnership. They moved to Berlin in 1907 and then to New York in 1919, where they would both become among the most famous (and longtime) teachers at Juilliard.

It has become more clear with the release of a handful of recordings of Rosina Lhévinne that she was an absolutely astounding pianist in her own right and it appears that she deliberately put her own performing career on hold as she attempted to get her husband to play more regularly and widely; they played as a two-pianist team both in recital and with orchestra but Rosina would otherwise avoid resuming solo performances until quite some time after he husband’s premature death. Josef did continue to play – making solo, chamber music, and concerto appearances – but it seems he did so far less than fans of historical recordings might assume given his legendary status to collectors. He died of a heart attack on December 2, 1944 – less than two weeks before his 70th birthday.

The Recordings

Josef Lhévinne’s sanctioned discography consists of about an hour’s worth of solo and duo recordings. These consist of four short solo works recorded with the acoustical (horn-based) recording process in December 1920 & January 1921 for French Pathé; solo recordings for RCA Victor set down in merely four sessions in 1928, 1935, and 1936; and two-piano recordings with Rosina. Only one of the duo performances was approved for release – Debussy’s Fêtes (arranged by Ravel) – which brought the total number of issued performances during his lifetime to one hour; however, after his death, the couple’s attempt at a Mozart Two-Piano Sonata was published, a significant addition of about 17 minutes to both artists’ meagre discographies.

We are fortunately living at the most incredible time to enjoy recorded history, as in 2020 the amazing Marston label put out a three-disc set that includes not only the complete approved commercial recordings in the best transfers ever released but also a number of broadcast recordings; while airchecks of some shorter works had previously been available for a while (first on APR back in the early 1990s), these are now supplemented by some absolutely incredible discoveries previously unknown to even the most dedicated collectors, among them a nearly complete 1936 Tchaikovsky Concerto in wonderful sound (much better than the rather uninspired 1933 broadcast of the last two movements in constricted sound) and a vivacious 1942 broadcast of the Brahms Piano Quartet No.1 in absolutely incredible sound. The video below that I prepared for this phenomenal set (which is available here) includes some representative excerpts:

 

The pianist’s first efforts in the studio – four short solo works released on two French Pathé discs – are the most overlooked of his official discography, given their poor sound and their relative rarity, in no small part due the lack of a parent company who would release such a small volume of performances in the LP era, whereas RCA’s longevity led to Lhévinne’s studio discs for that company being regularly reissued. Despite their relatively faded and constricted sonic framework – a given due to the lack of microphone-captured sound in the recording process used at the time – the playing is superb, and one can appreciate Lhévinne’s subtlety of articulation, voicing, and pedalling in his account of his classmate Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G Minor Op.23 No.5:

 

His recording of the Tchaikovsky Trepak Op.72 No.18 is all the more interesting when one considers that the pianist had met the composer by chance on the street in Moscow. Tchaikovsky asked Lhévinne if he would learn some of the works in the suite that contains the particular work on this early disc, and thehy planned to meet at a later date to discuss the score but unfortunately the composer died before returning to Moscow. Even with the faint sound of this early recording, we can hear some great intensity in Lhévinne’s playing, with a strong rhythm, deep sound, and crisp articulation.

 

The rest of Lhévinne’s official solo discography was set down in RCA’s studios, first in Camden (New Jersey) and then in New York. After the success of his May 1928 account of the Schulz-Evler Blue Danube paraphrase above, the pianist did not produce another record for seven years – whether it was a lack of ambition, economics, or something else (or a combination of these factors) – is unclear. In 1935 and 1936 Lhévinne had three more sessions for his solo recordings (June 7 & 10, 1935 and January 6, 1936) during which he set down performances of two works by Schumann and several by Chopin – all shorter compositions that fit on one or two sides of a 78rpm disc.

It is a great shame not only that he didn’t produce more records but that the works chosen were all so short; there’s no doubt that the playing is of great interest regardless, but knowing more about the pianist’s repertoire and capabilities makes one rightly long for more. Harold C Schonberg wrote about his legendary octave glissandi in the Brahms Paganini Variations, but unless a broadcast performance miraculously materializes, we will have to continue to imagine his combination of virtuosity and musicality in this treacherous passage and others in the repertoire. (Although Lhévinne did produce mechanized player-piano ‘rolls’ with some longer works, I have yet to hear a reproduction in this medium that accurately captures the crisply defined articulation, phrasing, pedalling, rhythmic pulse, and tonal palette that can be heard on his audio recordings.)

The playing that has been preserved on disc, however, is eminently worthy of attentive listening and appreciation. Lhévinne’s pianism is extraordinarily refined, the most immediately noticeable characteristic being the purity of his sonority and the phenomenally clear articulation and voicing of primary and secondary voices, regardless if played in the left or right hand. His rhythm is ironclad, yet his timing is anything but rigid, with wonderful yet restrained timing adjustments. In short, all is judiciously proportioned. If one were to find fault, it might be the lack of risk-taking or pushing the limits of creativity and imagination as one might hear in, say, Hofmann, Friedman, Barere, or others from that generation: the performances are so tasteful, clean, and ‘correct’ that they aren’t particularly revelatory in an interpretative sense. However, when it comes to a balance of pianistic refinement and musical taste, they are most certainly exquisite – he was a craftsman.

His June 7, 1935 disc of the Schumann Toccata in C Major Op.7 is considered by many to be a reference recording, not notable for its speed (which is rather modest) or flashy displays of virtuosity, but for its measured good taste, with clarity of legato melodic voicing and amazing transparency of texture throughout. Here is that record in yet another fine transfer provided by Tom Jardine:

 

The only other Schumann work we have on disc (recorded on the 2nd side of the Toccata 78rpm disc) is Liszt’s arrangement of the song Frühlingsnacht, which is astounding in so many ways: the incredible evenness and voicing of repeated figurations, the wonderful combination of dynamic variation and timing at the ends of phrases, and the beautiful tone throughout … all are exquisite. Two and a half minutes of magic, in a glorious new transfer by Tom Jardine:

 

All of the other solo records that Lhévinne produced are of shorter works by Chopin – would that we had Sonatas, Ballades, Scherzi, and the like, but the few Etudes and Preludes that he put on disc are, as all his performances, masterfully controlled and pianistically flawless. It is particularly worth noting how in a work like the Winter Wind Etude (the towering Etude in A Minor Op.25 No.11) he avoids overt attempts at speed and the loudest sound one might imagine; however, the tension brews from within as a result of his measured tempi, flawless voicing, and full-bodied singing tone at all dynamic levels – never a harsh sound. Here, yet again in a beautiful transfer by Tom Jardine, we can hear him play this Etude and two more, Op.10 No.11 (not Op.10 No.6 as listed on the record label shown in the video) and Op.25 No.6 from Victor disc 8868 … and if you listen closely you can hear Lhévinne singing along in the first few seconds of the Winter Wind!

 

In his final solo session of January 6, 1936, Lhévinne recorded a mere two Chopin Preludes – would that he had committed the entire set to disc! – but what glorious performances they are. In the Prelude No.17 in A-Flat Major below, long lines with lyrical phrasing, impeccable timing, and gorgeous tonal colours all make for a superb interpretation.

 

The longest Chopin work that Lhévinne recorded was the once-ubiquitous Polonaise No.6 in A-Flat Major Op.53, and this traversal of the work eschews the bombast and aggression that have often masqueraded as strength, power, and nobility in generations of pianists’ performances. Throughout we can experience his sumptuous jewel-like tone, masterfully voiced chords, steady but never boxy rhythm, and impressive dexterity – how those famous octaves are so light, clear, and consistent while the melodic content above is presented so transparently, and the left-hand lines that follow are also marvellously shaped.

 

While all the few solo broadcasts of Lhévinne that have surfaced regrettably duplicate repertoire from his studio recordings, there are important differences that indicate that as fine as the pianist’s officially released performances are, he could clearly be far more impassioned in public; this is the case with many artists, for whom the studio was not fully conducive to inspiring their most heart-felt playing. Particularly fascinating is a comparison of the A-Flat Major Polonaise: as beautiful, noble, and powerful as the 1936 studio recording above is, an aircheck from the previous year (shared below) is on a completely different plane. The November 3, 1935 broadcast performance account features a blazing intensity, strength and depth of tone, and impulse that are not evident in the more controlled yet still powerful studio account. It is hearing a live recording like this that we can better imagine the power that Lhévinne’s playing must have had in live performance. After the amusingly stilted introduction by the radio program host, Lhévinne delivers one of the most fiery accounts of the work that I’ve heard.

 

There is regrettably no known surviving film footage of the pianist with audio – only this fascinating 1931 silent film of Lhévinne practicing at the Hollywood Bowl on August 21, 1931, prior to a concert … if only we had the sound that went with it!

 

It is remarkable to consider that the following account of Mozart’s Sonata in D Major for Two Pianos K.448 that Josef & Rosina was not approved for release, only being issued many years later. After their initial attempt of June 11, 1935 they returned to the studio on May 23, 1939 (which yielded no other recordings that I am aware of) to give the work another try: that too was not sanctioned for release. The eventually issued performance consists of takes from both sessions and there is nothing in this recording that strikes me as unworthy of publication – a wonderful performance by both pianists.

 

To close, a fascinating video by American pianist John Browning that provides insight into the teaching methodology of both Josef and Rosina, with a clear demonstration of how they produced the beautifully burnished sound for which their playing continues to be esteemed.

 

 

The French pianist and pedagogue Marguerite Long was born on November 13, 1874. Over the course of her 91 years, she would become among the most prominent pianists and teachers of her generation.

Long’s elder sister Claire had a great influence on Marguerite. In 1883, Claire became Professor of Piano at the Nîmes conservatory and a nine-year-old Marguerite was able to enter her class. She received a Prix d’Honneur three years later and then played Mozart’s D Minor Concerto prior to her twelfth birthday. In 1889 she began her studies at the Paris Conservatoire with Henri Fissot, earning her Premier prix in 1891; she additionally studied privately with Antonin Marmontel (the son of the more famous pedagogue Antoine François Marmontel, who is at times incorrectly credited as being her teacher).

She started her long career as a teacher at the Paris Conservatoire in 1906, taking over Louis Diémer’s position in 1920 and remaining there until 1940. Among her famous pupils are Philippe Entremont, Jean Doyen, Jacques Février, Jeanne-Marie Darré, Samson François (who had previously studied with Cortot), Daniel Ericourt, and Nicole Henriot-Schweitzer. A legendary and amusing story: Long had once slapped François in class, and years later she apologized to him, adding that it was the only time she had ever done so, to which he replied, ‘But Madame, what an honour to have been the only one!’

She opened the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud School in October 1941, and a competition named for the same two musicians began in 1943. She continued to teach late into her long life – ‘My joy in life is work, because it will never betray you’ – but had largely retired by the 1950s even though she set down some recordings early in that decade. On May 4, 1956, she played at a tribute concert where, aged 81, she played Fauré’s Ballade with Charles Munch conducting while the orchestra played a number of works dedicated to her (the concert apparently was recorded but has not seen the light of day). She was invited to be on the jury of the 1966 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow but she died beforehand, on February 13, 1966, at the age of 91.

Long is particularly remembered for having known three legendary composers – Debussy, Fauré, and Ravel – and wrote books about her work with each of them. Ravel wrote his iconic Piano Concerto in G Major for Long, having introduced the concept to her by saying, ‘I’m thinking of writing a piano concerto for you. Do you mind if it ends softly with trills?’ As it turns out, that’s how the second movement ended, the final one being far more vivacious and wild; and apparently when Long said to the composer how beautifully the second movement flowed, he responded intensely, ‘I struggled writing every note!’ They toured performing the work together, with Ravel on the podium, and three months to the day after the January 14, 1932 world premiere – April 14 – they recorded it.

Or so we thought: in the 1990s it was revealed that Ravel did not in fact conduct the recording but rather Portuguese conductor Pedro de Freitas Branco, whom the composer had coached in conducting the work (and who conducted other orchestral works at the concert during which the first performance took place). Nevertheless, Ravel was present for the recording session and this world premiere account on disc features the pianist for whom he composed it, and is therefore of great historical interest. (The upload below also features Branco’s recording conducting the orchestral version of Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte that filled the final side of the 78rpm disc set.)

 

Long would rerecord the work 20 years later, this time with George Tzipine conducting, and despite being 78 years old at the time, she plays with remarkable agility for her age and impressive refinement.

 

Long’s recordings for the Columbia label on both 78s and LP are regrettably scant and inconsistent in their scope. She recorded no solo Ravel, Le tombeau de Couperin being a particularly egregious omission given that she premiered it (as one of the six movements was dedicated to her late husband). She set down a handful of Fauré and Debussy works but no complete cycles (although one might consider Debussy’s two Arabesques to be such), and in fact she recorded more Chopin – but not a great deal – than she did of either Fauré or Debussy. In all of these she demonstrates the epitome of French jeu perlé, with a light touch, evenness of articulation, and great clarity.

Here is her 1935 account of Chopin’s Fantasie-Impromptu Op.66.

 

Here is a wonderful transfer effected by Tom Jardine (to whom all thanks) of her July 1936 recording of Fauré’s Nocturne No.6 in D-Flat Major Op.63. Her playing in this superb recording is notable for its subtle dynamic shadings, fluid phrasing, and elegant timing.

 

This link below features other solo Fauré recordings (in addition to the one above) set down between 1933 and 1937: the Barcarolle No.6 in E-Flat Major Op.70, Impromptu in F Minor Op.31, Impromptu in F-Sharp Minor Op.102, Nocturne No.4 in E-Flat Major Op.36, and Nocturne No.6 in D-Flat Major Op.63. Her playing is characterized by unostentatious, direct delivery with clear textures, natural pacing, and legato phrasing.

 

Long only set down four short solo works by Debussy: the two Arabesques, Jardins sous la pluie, and La plus que lente. Here is a wonderful transfer (effected from 78rpm discs by Tom Jardine) of her July 10, 1930 account of the two Arabesques.

 

With concerted works, Long was more active in the studio: Mozart’s 23rd, Beethoven’s 3rd and 5th were set down, as was Chopin’s F Minor and then works more associated with her by French composers plus Halffter’s Rapsodia Portugesa.

Below is her June 28-29, 1929 recording of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.2 in F Minor Op.21 with Philippe Gaubert conducting the Orchestre De La Société Du Conservatoire, Paris. The transfer here was effected by Tom Jardine, with a bit of editing done by yours truly: one of the discs for some reason began with the same orchestral tutti that closed the previous record, so I edited out 20 seconds of this duplication so that the music is now presented as in the score (minus a brief cut in the orchestral introduction, as noted in the booklet accompanying the 78s).

Long’s playing here features clarity of texture, as well wonderful use of rubato and dynamic gradations to shape phrasing.

 

A fascinating account she left is of a work that is seldom played today: a May 24-25, 1934 recording of the rarely-played Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français for Piano and Orchestra in G Major Op.25 by Vincent d’Indy. Accompanied by Paul Paray and the Orchestre Concerts Colonne, Long plays with a lovely singing melodic line, sparkling tone, attentive pedalling, and a beautifully graded pianissimo – a wonderful reading of a work that should be heard more.

 

Long made two recordings of Fauré’s Ballade for Piano and Orchestra Op.19, one on April 1, 1930 (a 1929 attempt was not issued) and twenty years later on October 30, 1950 (not 1952 as has often been stated, including in the upload below). Both are featured sequentially below.

 

 

Another authorized account that she set down is her April 5, 1935 recording of Milhaud’s Piano Concerto No.1 Op.127, which was dedicated to her and which is conducted here by the composer. Long plays throughout with a clear light touch (what sparkling runs), rhythmic verve, wonderful pedalling, and beautiful dynamic shadings.

 

Long also set down some chamber music recordings, though not as much as we might like. One overlooked recording is a July 1943 account of Mozart’s Violin Sonata No.42 in A Major, K.526 which she recorded with her colleague Jacques Thibaud the same year that their competition began – a wonderfully vivacious account.

 

She also recorded both Fauré Piano Quartets, though regrettably no other chamber works by the composer, the 2nd being set down first in 1940 and the second only in 1956, by which time she was generally active in concerts. Her playing is still remarkable at this late stage, as evidenced by the first movement here.

 

Long’s studio recordings are being impeccably reissued by the APR label, with Volume 1 featuring Fauré and d’Indy and Volume 2 being focused on Chopin, Debussy, Milhaud, and Ravel.

To end this tribute, a few interviews with the great pianist and pedagogue. First, film footage of Long speaking about Fauré (which includes some outtakes prior to the official interview).

And an interview recorded in 1964 prior to her 90th birthday, presented in two parts.

 

 

 

Many thanks to Tom Jardine for the superb transfers of some of the Chopin, Fauré, and Debussy recordings shared (as noted above) and to Frederic Gaussin for the superb photographs and other details shared in this feature. 

I was delighted to be asked to write the booklet text for yet another superb release on the magnificent Eloquence label: a 21-CD set featuring an array of 1950s & 60s recordings by a range of great pianists from several generations. Several of these pianists are very dear to my heart, while others I have come to appreciate more recently, and I am thrilled to have my words printed as part of a presentation of such incredible pianism. Below are my notes, shared with the agreement of producer Cyrus Meher-Homji, along with the official playlists for each artist’s recordings featured in the set. You can also download the complete elegant booklet here, and order the set here and here. 

Eloquence’s Deutsche Grammophon edition of Piano Library is another wonderful set, featuring 22 CDs of recordings by many great pianists and a wonderfully informative booklet written by my colleague Jonathan Summers. You can download the complete booklet here and order the set here or here.

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The advent of the long-playing record led to significant changes in both the music and recording industries. Its 33rpm speed enabled each disc to hold significantly more music than the five-minute limit of its 78rpm predecessor, so listeners could hear longer works – and substantial collections of shorter works – without interruption on a single record, whereas the older format required these to be divided across several discs. Thanks to this and other technological advancements, more companies became involved in producing records, adding to the global catalogue more performances of the classical repertoire by both emerging and established musicians.

This Piano Library anthology is a fascinating compilation of ten pianists at various stages of their careers in a wide range of repertoire, in recordings from the Westminster and American Decca labels in the 1950s and ‘60s. Some of these artists were in their early years as performers whereas others were already well known, while a few others were somewhere in between. In the 60 to 70 years since these performances were set down, some of these pianists have still been esteemed while others have been less remembered by posterity. What they all have in common is consummate artistry and dedication to their craft, wonderfully preserved by recording technology.

Austrian pianist Jörg Demus (1928-2019) released an enormous number of discs in his seven-decade-long career, dozens of them for the Westminster label. While he is primarily remembered for his authoritative readings of Baroque works and Viennese classics, his repertoire went well beyond these parameters, as evidenced by the two Westminster LPs in this collection that feature the young artist playing works by the French composers Franck and Fauré.

Demus would produce only one LP of piano music of Fauré, recording these performances at the Mozartsaal of the Konzerthaus in Vienna in September 1955. (Although he set down the Ballade for Piano & Orchestra for Westminster with conductor Arthur Rodzinski in October 1954, it was not issued.) [full playlist here]

 

His May-June 1952 readings of Franck’s seminal Prélude, choral et fugue and Prélude, aria et final were not published until 1957, by which time Demus already had a multitude of albums in the Westminster catalogue. Both of these releases are rare examples of the pianist in this repertoire, captured in the first decade of his extensive recording career. [full playlist here]

 

Edith Farnadi (1911-1973) was, like Demus, a regular fixture in the Westminster catalogue, producing a substantial number of discs for the label, primarily of Liszt and Bartók but also of other composers like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, accounts that were many a listener’s introduction to these works in the early years of the LP. Nelson Freire was a great fan, collecting her records as a teen in his native Brazil, in later years praising her as “unique, with a certain gypsy quality in her playing that reminds me of Cziffra… she certainly deserves to be remembered.”

The Hungarian pianist’s 1955 recording of five Strauss transcriptions includes three of the knuckle-busting paraphrases by Leopold Godowsky that few pianists of the time would dare to play, in addition to one each by Dohnányi and Schulhof. [full playlist here]

 

Her 1956 album of the complete Schubert-Liszt Soirées de Vienne appears to be the first of very few recorded accounts of the complete set; the sixth was a popular encore amongst golden age pianists and continues to be played today, but the others have been somewhat overlooked. Farnadi plays them all with the fusion of suppleness and bravura that graces her prodigious recorded output. [full playlist here]

 

At the time that Romanian pianist Clara Haskil (1895-1960) produced her three LPs for Westminster, she was entering the last decade of her 65-year life. She had for years been plagued by illness, bad luck, and the horrors of wartime in Europe, and when she was contracted by Westminster to record three concertos and a solo piano album, she was just on the cusp of receiving the widespread acclaim had long eluded her.

Haskil spent the full day of Sunday October 1, 1950 recording eleven Scarlatti Sonatas for what would be her only solo LP for the label, one week after setting down two Mozart Concertos. She had in previous years produced only a handful of 78s, and these Westminster releases played a significant role in making her playing more available to what would become a very appreciative public. Never again would Haskil record so much Scarlatti (merely three of these pieces were redone for Philips the following year) and these readings are among the least-known gems of her magnificent studio discography. [full playlist here]

 

Youra Guller (1895-1980) was a friend of Haskil’s, born Rose Guller in Marseille to Russian-Romanian parents. She studied in Paris and had quite a colourful if challenging life: she lived in Shanghai in the 1930s before returning to Europe, where she was sheltered during the Holocaust by Countess Lily Pastré, who also protected at least two other great pianists – Clara Haskil and Monique Haas. While the latter two would move on to successful careers, recognition continued to evade Guller. Although greatly admired by colleagues and well-informed music lovers, she had the poor luck of not being at her best when major critics were in the hall and she continued to be plagued by personal and professional challenges. Recordings of the artist are scarce, so the three Chopin Mazurkas shared here – not published by Westminster in the 1950s as intended – provide an opportunity for present-day listeners to appreciate the refined pianism of this sensitive artist. [full playlist here] (The image shows the Clara Haskil album because these few minutes of Guller recordings were added to that particular CD as a bonus – a lovely tribute to their friendship.)

 

The four solo LPs for Westminster recorded in 1956 by Raymond Lewenthal (1923-1988) played a pivotal role in the American pianist’s life. After a brilliant 1951 Carnegie Hall recital and subsequent appearances garnered rave reviews, things took a tragic turn: the pianist’s hands and arms were broken when he was assaulted in Central Park in 1953. The psychological toll was significant as well, and by the time he recovered physically, Lewenthal’s name had already faded from public memory. His contract with Westminster helped renew his sense of purpose and the records featuring these May & June 1956 performances helped bring him back into the public sphere. (In 1959 he would also record Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for the label.)

In the 1960s, Lewenthal would help pioneer a revival of 19th century romanticism, with an emphasis on more obscure composers – he is widely credited with bringing the music of Alkan back to the repertoire – so these early albums are an opportunity to hear the artist both in his early career and also in some more popular works than he would usually play in later years. [Beethoven playlist here] [Moonlight & Keyboard album playlist here]  The pianist’s future focus is somewhat foreshadowed with the Scriabin [full playlist here] – at that time just starting to become more popular thanks to Vladimir Horowitz – as well as by the brilliantly conceived collection of Toccatas that includes one by Alkan, the pianist’s first recording of this composer’s music. [Toccatas playlist here]

 

Moscow-born Nina Milkina (1919-2006) emigrated to the UK via Paris with her family in the 1920s, making her first appearance at Wigmore Hall at the age of 8 as Nina Milkin. The pupil of Harold Craxton and Tobias Matthay (the legendary teacher of Dame Myra Hess) also studied composition in Paris with Glazunov, who was like a grandfather to her. Milkina played at Dame Myra Hess’s legendary wartime concerts at the National Gallery in London and was among the first pianists to broadcast with the BBC when Radio Three transmissions started up again after the war. Although she made appearances at major festivals and venues over the years, her focus on raising her two children resulted in her concert activity being largely limited to the UK.

Milkina’s Westminster records devoted to Scarlatti and CPE Bach were the first of the handful of discs that she produced in her career. Recorded in April 1956 and released in May 1958 and June 1959 respectively, these long-neglected albums are among the all-too-few recorded testaments of the crystal-clear pianism of a selfless artist. [full Scarlatti playlist here] [full CPE Bach playlist here]

 

The great Benno Moiseiwitsch (1890-1963) recorded for the HMV label for some 40 years, from acoustical discs in 1916 through to stereo LPs in the late 1950s. His three final records were made for American Decca two years before he died, capturing the artist in the twilight of his career still playing with the sumptuous tonal colours and lush phrasing that made him an international headliner for over half a century.

These valedictory recordings were set down in a New York studio in August 1961, the blistering heat exacerbated by windows being kept closed to eliminate the city’s relentless traffic noise. There is little sign of the strain of these adverse conditions in the artist’s playing, however: while some demanding passages lack the command Moiseiwitsch possessed in his prime, his playing is more cohesive here than in some unofficial recital recordings from earlier that year, and the poetic passages are exquisite.

Moiseiwitsch’s accounts of Schumann’s Carnaval and Kreiseleriana are, together with Beethoven’s Les Adieux Sonata, important additions to his sizeable discography. Schumann was the pianist’s favourite composer (he played at least one of his works in each recital) yet of his big-scale compositions he only released accounts of Kinderszenen, the Fantasiestücke, and the Fantasy (an early attempt at Carnaval was never issued). These final recordings of the great musician are the glorious swan-song of an artist whose grand, noble pianism has enthralled generations of listeners. [Pictures at an Exhibition & Carnaval playlist here] [Beethoven Sonatas playlist here] [Schumann Kreisleriana, Kinderszenen, and Encores playlist here]

 

The legendary Guiomar Novaes (1894-1979) produced her only record for American Decca in February 1963, less than a decade before her retirement. A letter from April 1962 in the collection of the Brazilian Piano Institute reveals that after the pianist’s acrimonious departure from the Vox label, Decca hoped hoped to engage Novaes to produce several discs of solo and concerted works; however, for reasons unknown, she only recorded this single LP for the label.

This little-known album by the legendary pianist has never been reissued and is a jewel in the crown of her extensive discography, one that her younger compatriot Nelson Freire highlighted amongst his favourites of his idol. The original LP’s sleeve notes by Abram Chasins – a pianist-composer who had studied with Josef Hofmann – referred to Novaes as a “beloved and remarkable artist whose performances have demonstrated a pianism that deserves to be called unique,” adding that “such is her simplicity and lucidity that one grasps immediately what any piece she plays is all about.”  Although Novaes wrapped up five days of sessions two weeks before her 70th birthday, her playing reveals no compromise to either her formidable technique or interpretative powers. Of particular interest are the five works by Liszt, whose music Novaes had not recorded since 1923 – forty years earlier. [full playlist here]

 

Egon Petri (1881-1962) was 76 when he set down his four Westminster LPs in June 1956 at the Esoteric Studios in New York, though two of these would not be released until 1960. The disciple of the great pianist-composer Ferrucio Busoni was still possessed of his transcendental technique and intellect, still capable of despatching titanic accounts of big-scale masterpieces, as evidenced by his reading of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata in this compilation. [full playlist here]

 

Petri had been before the microphone since 1929 (he had also privately recorded a few cylinders in 1923) and although he could be a bit dry and clinical in some of commercial recordings, when inspired he played with an incredible synthesis of intellectual perspective and volcanic emotional expressiveness. These late recordings capture him in splendid form and excellent recorded sound, making these accounts an important part of this outstanding musician’s legacy. [full Beethoven 3 Sonatas album playlist here] [full Bach & Busoni album playlist here] [full Bach-Busoni album playlist here] [full Liszt transcriptions album playlist here]

 

Another disciple of Busoni was the great Carlo Zecchi (1903-1984), who would in World War II abandon his career as a soloist to focus on chamber music and conducting. He had already changed course by the time he recorded this LP of piano works for Westminster in the autumn of 1955: he conducted Haskil’s 1947 Decca account of Beethoven’s 4th Concerto and was the pianist in some of cellist Antonio Janigro’s 1950s Westminster recordings.

This album was the only long-playing disc that Zecchi produced as a solo pianist, heralded at the time as his “triumphant return to piano records.” While his performances as a collaborative musician are certainly admirable, the glorious playing on this record makes one regret that Zecchi did not produce more – yet another release that is a significant addition to the discography of a remarkable and under-appreciated pianist. [full playlist here]

 

As noted in the booklet text, I extend my gratitude to Frederic Gaussin and Alexandre Dias (the Brazilian Piano Institute) for providing some invaluable information for these notes.

I was delighted to be asked to write the booklet text for yet another superb release on the magnificent Eloquence label: a 21-CD set featuring an array of 1950s & 60s recordings by a range of great pianists from several generations. Several of these pianists are very dear to my heart, while others I have come to appreciate more recently, and I am thrilled to have my words printed as part of a presentation of such incredible pianism. Below are my notes, shared with the agreement of producer Cyrus Meher-Homji, along with the official playlists for each artist’s recordings featured in the set. You can also download the complete elegant booklet here, and order the set here and here. 

Eloquence’s Deutsche Grammophon edition of Piano Library is another wonderful set, featuring 22 CDs of recordings by many great pianists and a wonderfully informative booklet written by my colleague Jonathan Summers. You can download the complete booklet here and order the set here or here.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The advent of the long-playing record led to significant changes in both the music and recording industries. Its 33rpm speed enabled each disc to hold significantly more music than the five-minute limit of its 78rpm predecessor, so listeners could hear longer works – and substantial collections of shorter works – without interruption on a single record, whereas the older format required these to be divided across several discs. Thanks to this and other technological advancements, more companies became involved in producing records, adding to the global catalogue more performances of the classical repertoire by both emerging and established musicians.

This Piano Library anthology is a fascinating compilation of ten pianists at various stages of their careers in a wide range of repertoire, in recordings from the Westminster and American Decca labels in the 1950s and ‘60s. Some of these artists were in their early years as performers whereas others were already well known, while a few others were somewhere in between. In the 60 to 70 years since these performances were set down, some of these pianists have still been esteemed while others have been less remembered by posterity. What they all have in common is consummate artistry and dedication to their craft, wonderfully preserved by recording technology.

Austrian pianist Jörg Demus (1928-2019) released an enormous number of discs in his seven-decade-long career, dozens of them for the Westminster label. While he is primarily remembered for his authoritative readings of Baroque works and Viennese classics, his repertoire went well beyond these parameters, as evidenced by the two Westminster LPs in this collection that feature the young artist playing works by the French composers Franck and Fauré.

Demus would produce only one LP of piano music of Fauré, recording these performances at the Mozartsaal of the Konzerthaus in Vienna in September 1955. (Although he set down the Ballade for Piano & Orchestra for Westminster with conductor Arthur Rodzinski in October 1954, it was not issued.) [full playlist here]

 

His May-June 1952 readings of Franck’s seminal Prélude, choral et fugue and Prélude, aria et final were not published until 1957, by which time Demus already had a multitude of albums in the Westminster catalogue. Both of these releases are rare examples of the pianist in this repertoire, captured in the first decade of his extensive recording career. [full playlist here]

 

Edith Farnadi (1911-1973) was, like Demus, a regular fixture in the Westminster catalogue, producing a substantial number of discs for the label, primarily of Liszt and Bartók but also of other composers like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, accounts that were many a listener’s introduction to these works in the early years of the LP. Nelson Freire was a great fan, collecting her records as a teen in his native Brazil, in later years praising her as “unique, with a certain gypsy quality in her playing that reminds me of Cziffra… she certainly deserves to be remembered.”

The Hungarian pianist’s 1955 recording of five Strauss transcriptions includes three of the knuckle-busting paraphrases by Leopold Godowsky that few pianists of the time would dare to play, in addition to one each by Dohnányi and Schulhof. [full playlist here]

 

Her 1956 album of the complete Schubert-Liszt Soirées de Vienne appears to be the first of very few recorded accounts of the complete set; the sixth was a popular encore amongst golden age pianists and continues to be played today, but the others have been somewhat overlooked. Farnadi plays them all with the fusion of suppleness and bravura that graces her prodigious recorded output. [full playlist here]

 

At the time that Romanian pianist Clara Haskil (1895-1960) produced her three LPs for Westminster, she was entering the last decade of her 65-year life. She had for years been plagued by illness, bad luck, and the horrors of wartime in Europe, and when she was contracted by Westminster to record three concertos and a solo piano album, she was just on the cusp of receiving the widespread acclaim had long eluded her.

Haskil spent the full day of Sunday October 1, 1950 recording eleven Scarlatti Sonatas for what would be her only solo LP for the label, one week after setting down two Mozart Concertos. She had in previous years produced only a handful of 78s, and these Westminster releases played a significant role in making her playing more available to what would become a very appreciative public. Never again would Haskil record so much Scarlatti (merely three of these pieces were redone for Philips the following year) and these readings are among the least-known gems of her magnificent studio discography. [full playlist here]

 

Youra Guller (1895-1980) was a friend of Haskil’s, born Rose Guller in Marseille to Russian-Romanian parents. She studied in Paris and had quite a colourful if challenging life: she lived in Shanghai in the 1930s before returning to Europe, where she was sheltered during the Holocaust by Countess Lily Pastré, who also protected at least two other great pianists – Clara Haskil and Monique Haas. While the latter two would move on to successful careers, recognition continued to evade Guller. Although greatly admired by colleagues and well-informed music lovers, she had the poor luck of not being at her best when major critics were in the hall and she continued to be plagued by personal and professional challenges. Recordings of the artist are scarce, so the three Chopin Mazurkas shared here – not published by Westminster in the 1950s as intended – provide an opportunity for present-day listeners to appreciate the refined pianism of this sensitive artist. [full playlist here] (The image shows the Clara Haskil album because these few minutes of Guller recordings were added to that particular CD as a bonus – a lovely tribute to their friendship.)

 

The four solo LPs for Westminster recorded in 1956 by Raymond Lewenthal (1923-1988) played a pivotal role in the American pianist’s life. After a brilliant 1951 Carnegie Hall recital and subsequent appearances garnered rave reviews, things took a tragic turn: the pianist’s hands and arms were broken when he was assaulted in Central Park in 1953. The psychological toll was significant as well, and by the time he recovered physically, Lewenthal’s name had already faded from public memory. His contract with Westminster helped renew his sense of purpose and the records featuring these May & June 1956 performances helped bring him back into the public sphere. (In 1959 he would also record Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for the label.)

In the 1960s, Lewenthal would help pioneer a revival of 19th century romanticism, with an emphasis on more obscure composers – he is widely credited with bringing the music of Alkan back to the repertoire – so these early albums are an opportunity to hear the artist both in his early career and also in some more popular works than he would usually play in later years. [Beethoven playlist here] [Moonlight & Keyboard album playlist here]  The pianist’s future focus is somewhat foreshadowed with the Scriabin [full playlist here] – at that time just starting to become more popular thanks to Vladimir Horowitz – as well as by the brilliantly conceived collection of Toccatas that includes one by Alkan, the pianist’s first recording of this composer’s music. [Toccatas playlist here]

 

Moscow-born Nina Milkina (1919-2006) emigrated to the UK via Paris with her family in the 1920s, making her first appearance at Wigmore Hall at the age of 8 as Nina Milkin. The pupil of Harold Craxton and Tobias Matthay (the legendary teacher of Dame Myra Hess) also studied composition in Paris with Glazunov, who was like a grandfather to her. Milkina played at Dame Myra Hess’s legendary wartime concerts at the National Gallery in London and was among the first pianists to broadcast with the BBC when Radio Three transmissions started up again after the war. Although she made appearances at major festivals and venues over the years, her focus on raising her two children resulted in her concert activity being largely limited to the UK.

Milkina’s Westminster records devoted to Scarlatti and CPE Bach were the first of the handful of discs that she produced in her career. Recorded in April 1956 and released in May 1958 and June 1959 respectively, these long-neglected albums are among the all-too-few recorded testaments of the crystal-clear pianism of a selfless artist. [full Scarlatti playlist here] [full CPE Bach playlist here]

 

The great Benno Moiseiwitsch (1890-1963) recorded for the HMV label for some 40 years, from acoustical discs in 1916 through to stereo LPs in the late 1950s. His three final records were made for American Decca two years before he died, capturing the artist in the twilight of his career still playing with the sumptuous tonal colours and lush phrasing that made him an international headliner for over half a century.

These valedictory recordings were set down in a New York studio in August 1961, the blistering heat exacerbated by windows being kept closed to eliminate the city’s relentless traffic noise. There is little sign of the strain of these adverse conditions in the artist’s playing, however: while some demanding passages lack the command Moiseiwitsch possessed in his prime, his playing is more cohesive here than in some unofficial recital recordings from earlier that year, and the poetic passages are exquisite.

Moiseiwitsch’s accounts of Schumann’s Carnaval and Kreiseleriana are, together with Beethoven’s Les Adieux Sonata, important additions to his sizeable discography. Schumann was the pianist’s favourite composer (he played at least one of his works in each recital) yet of his big-scale compositions he only released accounts of Kinderszenen, the Fantasiestücke, and the Fantasy (an early attempt at Carnaval was never issued). These final recordings of the great musician are the glorious swan-song of an artist whose grand, noble pianism has enthralled generations of listeners. [Pictures at an Exhibition & Carnaval playlist here] [Beethoven Sonatas playlist here] [Schumann Kreisleriana, Kinderszenen, and Encores playlist here]

 

The legendary Guiomar Novaes (1894-1979) produced her only record for American Decca in February 1963, less than a decade before her retirement. A letter from April 1962 in the collection of the Brazilian Piano Institute reveals that after the pianist’s acrimonious departure from the Vox label, Decca hoped hoped to engage Novaes to produce several discs of solo and concerted works; however, for reasons unknown, she only recorded this single LP for the label.

This little-known album by the legendary pianist has never been reissued and is a jewel in the crown of her extensive discography, one that her younger compatriot Nelson Freire highlighted amongst his favourites of his idol. The original LP’s sleeve notes by Abram Chasins – a pianist-composer who had studied with Josef Hofmann – referred to Novaes as a “beloved and remarkable artist whose performances have demonstrated a pianism that deserves to be called unique,” adding that “such is her simplicity and lucidity that one grasps immediately what any piece she plays is all about.”  Although Novaes wrapped up five days of sessions two weeks before her 70th birthday, her playing reveals no compromise to either her formidable technique or interpretative powers. Of particular interest are the five works by Liszt, whose music Novaes had not recorded since 1923 – forty years earlier. [full playlist here]

 

Egon Petri (1881-1962) was 76 when he set down his four Westminster LPs in June 1956 at the Esoteric Studios in New York, though two of these would not be released until 1960. The disciple of the great pianist-composer Ferrucio Busoni was still possessed of his transcendental technique and intellect, still capable of despatching titanic accounts of big-scale masterpieces, as evidenced by his reading of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata in this compilation. [full playlist here]

 

Petri had been before the microphone since 1929 (he had also privately recorded a few cylinders in 1923) and although he could be a bit dry and clinical in some of commercial recordings, when inspired he played with an incredible synthesis of intellectual perspective and volcanic emotional expressiveness. These late recordings capture him in splendid form and excellent recorded sound, making these accounts an important part of this outstanding musician’s legacy. [full Beethoven 3 Sonatas album playlist here] [full Bach & Busoni album playlist here] [full Bach-Busoni album playlist here] [full Liszt transcriptions album playlist here]

 

Another disciple of Busoni was the great Carlo Zecchi (1903-1984), who would in World War II abandon his career as a soloist to focus on chamber music and conducting. He had already changed course by the time he recorded this LP of piano works for Westminster in the autumn of 1955: he conducted Haskil’s 1947 Decca account of Beethoven’s 4th Concerto and was the pianist in some of cellist Antonio Janigro’s 1950s Westminster recordings.

This album was the only long-playing disc that Zecchi produced as a solo pianist, heralded at the time as his “triumphant return to piano records.” While his performances as a collaborative musician are certainly admirable, the glorious playing on this record makes one regret that Zecchi did not produce more – yet another release that is a significant addition to the discography of a remarkable and under-appreciated pianist. [full playlist here]

 

As noted in the booklet text, I extend my gratitude to Frederic Gaussin and Alexandre Dias (the Brazilian Piano Institute) for providing some invaluable information for these notes.

September 30, 2024 marks the 90th birthday of Canadian-born pianist Ronald Turini. The esteemed musician has the distinction of being one of handful of official pupils of the legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz.

Born in Montreal on September 30, 1934, Turini first studied with his mother and then at the McGill Conservatory with Frank Hanson; at the age of 9 he moved over to the Montreal Conservatory of Music, where his teachers were Yvonne Hubert (whose other Canadian pupils of note include André Laplante, Janina Fialkowska, Marc-André Hamelin, and Louis Lortie), Germaine Malépart, and the legendary French pedagogue and pianist Isidor Phillip. Turini played his concerto debut with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra under Wilfrid Pelletier at the age of ten (while WWII was still happening) and graduated from the Conservatory in 1950 at the age of 16.

Three years later, Turini entered the Mannes School of Music in New York, studying with the legendary Isabelle Vengerova (who had taught at Curtis under Josef Hofmann’s direction) and her assistant Olga Stroumillo, who then introduced the young pianist to Vladimir Horowitz. The Russian pianist was in his second retirement at the time and taught very few pupils, but was very impressed by Turini and remained a teacher & mentor from 1956 to 1965.

Turini’s 2nd prize placements in some major competitions during his time with Horowitz helped get his name before the public and anchored his reputation: in 1958 he came in second at the prestigious Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition, and the same year tied for second with Maurizio Pollini at the Geneva International Music Competition. Two years later he again placed second, this time at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, Belgium; apparently, jury member Emil Gilels sent a telegram to Horowitz that read, “Congratulations, ‘Professor’ – your Turini is wonderful.” You can listen here to Turini’s wonderful solo and concerto performances during the competition’s final round.

Turini’s debut recital at Carnegie Hall on January 23, 1961 was attended by a number of distinguished musicians and pianists, including Artur Rubinstein, Leonard Bernstein, and Rudolf Firkušný (who had also been on the jury in Brussels). Rubinstein was apparently the first to congratulate Turini, and Horowitz and his wife hosted a reception at their apartment after the recital. The f0llowing day, New York Times music critic Harold C. Schonberg stated in his review that Turini ‘was resplendent. For in addition to technical expertness, there was a quality of aristocracy to the performance.’ Indeed, the recording of the recital – only ever released to the public in the last decade or so – demonstrates truly superb pianism by Turini: soaring phrasing, natural timing, beautifully voiced chords, and refined nuancing.

Schumann: Novelette in F Major Op.21 No.1 & Piano Sonata No.2

Chopin: Études Op.10 No.10, Op.25 No.7, Op.25 No.1, Op.10 No.1; Ballade No.1

Hindemith: Piano Sonata No.2 in G Major

Scriabin: Étude in C-Sharp Minor Op.42 No.5

Liszt: Sonetto del Petrarca No.104 &  Hungarian Rhapsody No.12

Encores: Scarlatti: Sonata K 322 in A Major; Mendelssohn: Song without Words, Op.67 No.4 ‘Spinning Song’; Schumann: Fantasiestücke, Op.12 No.1 ‘Des Abends’; Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin: VI. Toccata

 

Turini’s debut album on RCA was was recorded not long after his Carnegie Hall recital 1961 (specifically on five days: February 15 and 16 & April 10, 12, and 14, 1961) but for some reason it was only released in 1965. This is the only major label solo recording that the pianist made (he produced one other disc for RCA: the Hindemith Viola Sonatas with violist Walter Trampler, set down in 1967), with other solo and chamber music outings appearing on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation records.

This album on RCA captures the pianist’s inspired artistry in wonderful sound, with superb readings of all of the works performed – all of which he had played at his Carnegie Hall recital not long before the sessions.

Schumann: Sonata No.2 in G Minor, Op.22

Liszt: Sonetto 104 del Petrarca & Hungarian Rhapsody No.12

Hindemith: Sonata No.2

Scriabin: Etude in C-Sharp Minor Op.42 No.5

 

Turini toured the USSR during the dark days of the Cold War in the early to mid-1960s, receiving rave reviews from critics and rapturous reception from audiences: when he played Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto with the Leningrad Philharmonic in the 1962-63 season, the audience apparently continually demanded more encores until the soloist was unable to continue. Here is a fantastic recording of Turini in Leningrad on March 4, 1965. His playing here is absolutely stunning, with impeccable pacing, gorgeous tonal colours, and seamless phrasing, capturing the character of each work to perfection. Unfortunately the Ginastera Sonata he played at this concert is not on this upload, but every moment of this recital is worth hearing! (The complete recital, as well as a number of other live performances – including several from this page – are now available either as CDs or digital downloads at St Laurent Studios: click here for the complete selection.)

Bach-Busoni: Nun komm der Heiden Heiland BWV 659 & Nun freut euch, liebe Christen BWV 734

Schubert: Piano Sonata in A D.664

Chopin: Ballade No.1 in G Minor Op.23

Ravel: Miroirs 1. Noctuelles; 2. Oiseaux tristes; 3. Une barque sur l’océan

 

Turini continued his mentorship with Horowitz until 1965 and performed internationally to rave reviews, yet not quite in the spotlight that many – including his famous teacher – believed his refined artistry warranted. Horowitz is said to have noted that Turini lacked the drive to make a big career, and so while he would tour and perform – and teach – for decades, he was not as recognized by the broader public as he was by the cognoscenti who appreciated his combination of power, intelligence, and refinement. Turini himself seemed content being less in the limelight – prior to his studies in New York, he considered a career in automobile engineering (like Michelangeli and other pianists, he retained his interest in luxury high-performance cars.) He moved to London, Ontario in the 1970s, teaching at Western University until his retirement in 2008.

 

Here is a March 9, 1967 recital of Turini with a varied programme of works by Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Hétu, Scriabin, and Ravel. He was 32 when he gave this recital in Halifax (the Canadian one) and we hear an amazing combination of passion and intelligence, without any ostentatious gestures. His playing here is characterized by masterful crafting of phrasing, clarity of texture, phenomenal pedalling, and beauty of tone.

Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 17 in B♭ major, K. 570

Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2

Liszt: Au bord d’une source

Hétu: Variation

Ravel: Miroirs 1. Noctuelles; 2. Oiseaux tristes; 3. Une barque sur l’océan

Scriabin: Poem, op. 32 no. 1 & Sonata no. 5

 

As an eminent Canadian pianist, Turini performed, broadcast, and recorded for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).A 1965 CBC record features Turini playing with a range of works in his repertoire at the time with beautiful tone and attention to both structure and mood, with clear voicing, mindfully crafted phrasing, and wonderful pedalling.

Beethoven: Sonata in F Minor Op.57, “Appassionata”

Scriabin: Etude p.42 No.5

Liszt – Sonetto del Petrarca 104 &  Un Sospiro

Ravel – Le Tombeau de Couperin: VI. Toccata

 

Here is an excerpt from a recital Turini played for the 1967 Expo in Montreal, transferred from a rather noisy pressing of a CBC record. He plays four works by Rachmaninoff: the Etude Tableau in E-Flat Minor Op.39 No.5, the Prelude in G-Sharp Minor Op.32 No.12, the Prelude in G Major Op.32 No.5, and the Prelude in A Minor, Op.32 No.8 with full-bodied tone, fluid phrasing, elegant timing, and exceptional refinement.

 

Also taken from the same noisy CBC LP is a superb account of a Liszt work not otherwise featured in his recordings thus far, the Sonetto del Petrarca No.123. As always, Turini plays with an impeccable balance of control, passion, and refinement.

 

Twenty years later, we hear Turini in magnificent form at a 1987 recital at McGill University in Montreal.

Beethoven: Sonata No.23 in F Minor Op. 57, Appassionata

Chopin: Four Ballades & Ecossaises

 

Turini often played chamber music and set down more collaborative performances on disc than he did of the solo repertoire.  Here is a 1977 performance from a CBC record of the Brahms Quartet No.2 in A Major for Piano and Strings Op.26, in which Turini is joined by Steven Staryk on violin, Gerald Stanick on viola, and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi on cello.

 

There are regrettably no concertos in Turini’s commercial discography, which makes the existence of live performances of such works exceedingly interesting. While both Turini and Malcolm Frager (who placed 1st in the 1960 Queen Elisabeth Competition in which Turini tied for 2nd) both had contracts with RCA, the label recorded no concertos with them (with the exception of Prokofiev’s 2nd Concerto with Frager), the bulk of such works being assigned to the headlining American pianist Van Cliburn after his sensational Tchaikovsky Competition win in Moscow in 1958. There are circulating live performances of Turini playing Liszt’s 1st (at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, linked above) and Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto (below), and one hopes that recordings will be found and made available of performances of the Schumann & Grieg Concertos, Brahms Second Concerto, and Rachmaninoff 2nd Concerto and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

The final musical selection this tribute is a fabled 1968 concert performance of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto given by  Turini with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra conducted by Otto Werner-Muller. This elusive performance – once pressed on a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation transcription disc that was not for sale to the public – took me over a decade to obtain and finds the pianist in very fine form, playing with extraordinary clarity of texture and attentive voicing. Rapid passagework is despatched with apparent ease, with masterful highlighting of key motifs and voices that are often overlooked by pianists who emphasize the virtuosic aspects of these passages (his left hand voicing is incredible). Turini’s timing is impeccable as well, with phrases beautifully stretched to just the right degree to draw out emotion without any exaggeration, his timing and dynamic gradations seamlessly synchronized. This is one of the most astounding performances of the work that I’ve heard.

 

Closing this tribute, a three-part interview of Turini by Jeffrey Wagner in London, Ontario in 1984 – it is presented in three parts below.

 

 

 

Wishing Maestro Turini many happy returns on his 90th birthday!

Explore the St Laurent Studios releases of some of these and other Turini concert recordings, available on CD or as digital downloads, at this link.

I am delighted to have been invited to contribute a regular column to International Piano magazine. I have written several features about great pianists for the magazine, first in 1999 in its initial incarnation as International Piano Quarterly (a 4,000 word feature about Dinu Lipatti since updated on my website here) and several since its shift to a monthly publication (it is now back to a quarterly format). I am pleased that this new column will be an opportunity to provide a more regular reflection on historical recordings and their importance.

The first appearance of my new column Historical Perspectives was in the September 2023 issue – the announcement here refers to me as ‘the guru of historical recordings’, a description I consider somewhat too generous given how many experts I know are out there. My first column is longer than what will generally be the norm so as to provide a more general introduction to the importance of historical recordings.

The editors decided to make this first feature available for free online, and you can read the online version by clicking here (the web layout is somewhat different than the print version partially reproduced on the top right of this page).

I thought it might be of interest to readers for me to share in this post the recordings that I refer to in the article, and some representative ones in cases where I merely mentioned the artists’ names and the qualities of their playing … so here they are, in the order in which they are mentioned in the feature.

The cylinder that Brahms recorded in 1889 in which we can (barely) hear him play his own Hungarian Dance No.1 is almost inaudible, but I think that this upload enables one to hear more than any other transfer I’ve come across:

 

Other examples of artists playing their own music on cylinders includes Anton Arensky, heard below in excerpts of his Piano Trio No.1 in D Minor Op.32, recorded in 1894 – a fascinating document from the first decade of recording technology, issued on the Marston Records label’s invaluable set The Dawn of Recording (available here).

 

Here is one of the handful of recordings we have of the composer Isaac Albéniz, dating from 1903 – in faded sound, naturally, but still appreciable:

 

And, a decade later, we can hear the great Spanish composer-pianist Enrique Granados, recorded not long before his tragically premature death:

 

We are extremely fortunate that the composer Rachmaninoff recorded so much – about 10 CDs’ worth of performances of his own works and those of other composers. It is invaluable to hear his recordings of his complete works for piano and orchestra, as we can not only hear his vision of his own music – as I state in the magazine feature, much less sentimental than would be the case even a short time later – but also how different his playing is of works written not that long ago … which makes us wonder how different our playing might be of works written in the more distant past.

 

Among those who left us some important recordings of their own works are more contemporary composers like Prokofiev, Bartók, and Stravinsky. What is particularly fascinating is the lack of aggression in their playing: even though their music features dissonances, they do not use this harmonic quality as a reason to create an ugly sound. Here is Prokofiev in his popular Suggestion diabolique Op.4 No.4:

 

As I mention in my article, Bartók once asked a pupil to play “a little less Bartók-ish”, indicating that even in his lifetime his music was played more aggressively than he’d hoped. In the recording below we can hear him play his own Romanian Dance No.1 without producing ugly sounds even as he plays dissonances with strength.

 

Stravinsky was another contemporary composer I mention who did not play his music nearly as aggressively as it is played today – as suggested by his playing of his own Piano Rag Music:

 

While composers naturally had their own envisioned and preferred approaches to their own works, they usually still appreciated the varied styles of other performers. Rachmaninoff was a great fan of the playing of Benno Moiseiwitsch, whom he called his ‘spiritual heir’ (not, as some might assume, Vladimir Horowitz). This recording of Moiseiwitsch playing the Prelude that was both the Rachmaninoff’s and Moiseiwitsch’s favourite amongst the composer’s works – the Prelude in B Minor Op.32 No.10 – makes clear why this pianist was so admired by his legendary compatriot.

 

Horowitz was another pianist whose playing Rachmaninoff admired. The composer’s quote that ‘he swallowed it whole’ in reference to Horowitz’s performance of the Third Concerto is often taken as pure admiration (if one considers the wording, it’s not necessarily a whole-hearted endorsement – it might be, but it might not); however, there’s no doubt he admired the younger musician’s artistry. This gorgeous performance of the Prelude in G Major Op.32 No.5 was filmed during Horowitz’s first return to Russia, 43 years after Rachmaninoff’s death.

 

As I state in my article, composers naturally had their own perceptions of how their works should be performed yet were often still open to approaches that were radically different than their own. The unconventional account of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto played by Walter Gieseking comes from a New York concert that Rachmaninoff himself attended – far slower than the composer and most other pianists would play it, but still appreciated by the composer – even though his wife walked out after the first movement! After the concert, composer and pianist had an engaged and enthusiastic conversation backstage.

 

Ilona Eibenschutz and Carl Friedberg both coached with Brahms and he liked both of their playing, but their approach was still not the same. It’s interesting to compare Eibenschütz’s 1903 recording of the Brahms Ballade in G Minor Op.118 No.3 with (below) Friedberg’s from nearly 50 years later.

 

 

We are so fortunate to be able to access so many recorded treasures today, including some that were not intended to be preserved. One of the most miraculous early recordings to survive is a 1930 radio broadcast of the complete 1st movement of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto featuring pianist-composer Eugen d’Albert, who in 1896 had played both Brahms Piano Concertos in a single concert conducted by the composer. A wild, vivacious, passionate, and engaging interpretation, with a fiery temperament and freedom that are rarely encountered today. It should be utterly mindblowing that we can listen to the playing of an artist born 160 years ago in a 1930 radio broadcast of such a substantial composition – and playing that is so radically different from our current norms over 90 years later.

 

How audio recording connects us with bygone times is very clear when listening to the spoken reminiscences about Brahms that Ilona Eibenschütz recorded for the BBC in 1952, in which she shares details about Brahms giving her the private premiere of his Opp 118 and 119 sixty years earlier – which in a recording 70+ years old from our times means we are listening to the voice of someone who knew Brahms 130 years ago. Both the stories and the playing in this clip are otherworldly.

 

In the written feature I mention how some university students at one of my presentations found Rachmaninoff’s 1927 recording of Chopin’s once-ubiquitous Nocturne in E-Flat Major featured ‘extreme’ timing – and yet could he and others from his time perhaps make similar observations about the playing in our time? How might we find Chopin’s own playing 200 years ago if the playing of a major composer from 100 years ago seems so jarring?

 

Playing being different from our current norms in no means it is not musically valid (nor that it is inherently valid). I’ll never forget the face of a fellow student 35 years ago when I played him Josef Hofmann’s 1937 concert recording of Chopin’s Ballade in G Minor Op.23 – ‘I never knew that such playing was possible.’ Indeed, such playing today would be unimaginable.

 

I note in my article how some recordings from the past are not necessarily jarring to our ears but might simply be so different and of exquisite beauty that’s notable to both professionals and amateur’s alike. The beauty of Marcelle Meyer’s jewel-like sonority is easily appreciable in her Rameau:

 

Dinu Lipatti’s Bach features remarkably transparent voicing that is still admired by amateurs and professionals today:

 

The soaring melodic lines of Ignaz Friedman’s pianism have fascinated listeners for decades:

 

Maryla Jonas’s disarmingly direct phrasing brings intoxicating warmth and poignancy to her Chopin Mazurkas:

 

Alfred Cortot had inimitable yet distinctive timing – one can often identify his playing in a matter of seconds:

 

Géza Anda’s 1953 account of Schumann’s Études symphoniques features tonal colours so glorious that most have never heard anything similar:

 

I noted in my article that some pianists who were highly regarded in their lifetimes might not come across as well on recordings today. Paderewski was perhaps one of the most popular pianists but he was not always appreciated by critics or his colleagues – nevertheless, some of his many recordings show that he was indeed a marvellous musician and played with absolutely gorgeous tone.

 

As I write in the feature, many pianists played quite differently in concert than in the recording studio. Dame Myra Hess was not generally thought of as a heroic pianist, in part due to the repertoire choices made for her studio recordings and the manner in which her image was crafted – but in concert she played with great fire and bravura:

 

Egon Petri – one of the great Ferruccio Busoni’s three top pupils – was a titanic pianist who could at times sound a bit ‘cold’ in his studio recordings (many artists hated the process – Hess among them). In private settings and in concert, however, his playing could be volcanic, as with this 1951 rehearsal performance of an astonishingly difficult work, Alkan’s Symphony for Solo Piano, recorded in a college practice room as he gave a full run-through of the work.

 

Jascha Spivakovsky released no solo recordings before his death in 1970, and was only with the publication in the last decade of various home recordings and broadcast performances that his phenomenal artistry has become known. How many other great pianists have been forgotten because they did not produce commercial records?

 

There is a natural assumption that all old recordings are of poor fidelity but a number of them reproduce the instrument and artists’ subtlety with great clarity – in the article, I mention Mischa Levitzki’s late 1920s recordings as an example.

 

As stated in the article, I consider many of the piano recordings made at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in the 1950s to be superior in sound (and certainly in playing) to much of what we hear today. Among the artists who produced discs there at the time (the ones mentioned in my article) are Géza Anda, Benno Moiseiwitsch, and Solomon.

 

 

 

These recordings are but a handful of the rich legacy of audio documents readily available to today’s listeners. I hope that you will explore them and those I mention in my ongoing columns for International Piano.

 

I am delighted to have been invited to contribute a regular column to International Piano magazine. I have written several features about great pianists for the magazine, first in 1999 in its initial incarnation as International Piano Quarterly (a 4,000 word feature about Dinu Lipatti since updated on my website here) and several since its shift to a monthly publication (it is now back to a quarterly format). I am pleased that this new column will be an opportunity to provide a more regular reflection on historical recordings and their importance.

The first appearance of my new column Historical Perspectives was in the September 2023 issue – the announcement here refers to me as ‘the guru of historical recordings’, a description I consider somewhat too generous given how many experts I know are out there. My first column is longer than what will generally be the norm so as to provide a more general introduction to the importance of historical recordings.

The editors decided to make this first feature available for free online, and you can read the online version by clicking here (the web layout is somewhat different than the print version partially reproduced on the top right of this page).

I thought it might be of interest to readers for me to share in this post the recordings that I refer to in the article, and some representative ones in cases where I merely mentioned the artists’ names and the qualities of their playing … so here they are, in the order in which they are mentioned in the feature.

The cylinder that Brahms recorded in 1889 in which we can (barely) hear him play his own Hungarian Dance No.1 is almost inaudible, but I think that this upload enables one to hear more than any other transfer I’ve come across:

 

Other examples of artists playing their own music on cylinders includes Anton Arensky, heard below in excerpts of his Piano Trio No.1 in D Minor Op.32, recorded in 1894 – a fascinating document from the first decade of recording technology, issued on the Marston Records label’s invaluable set The Dawn of Recording (available here).

 

Here is one of the handful of recordings we have of the composer Isaac Albéniz, dating from 1903 – in faded sound, naturally, but still appreciable:

 

And, a decade later, we can hear the great Spanish composer-pianist Enrique Granados, recorded not long before his tragically premature death:

 

We are extremely fortunate that the composer Rachmaninoff recorded so much – about 10 CDs’ worth of performances of his own works and those of other composers. It is invaluable to hear his recordings of his complete works for piano and orchestra, as we can not only hear his vision of his own music – as I state in the magazine feature, much less sentimental than would be the case even a short time later – but also how different his playing is of works written not that long ago … which makes us wonder how different our playing might be of works written in the more distant past.

 

Among those who left us some important recordings of their own works are more contemporary composers like Prokofiev, Bartók, and Stravinsky. What is particularly fascinating is the lack of aggression in their playing: even though their music features dissonances, they do not use this harmonic quality as a reason to create an ugly sound. Here is Prokofiev in his popular Suggestion diabolique Op.4 No.4:

 

As I mention in my article, Bartók once asked a pupil to play “a little less Bartók-ish”, indicating that even in his lifetime his music was played more aggressively than he’d hoped. In the recording below we can hear him play his own Romanian Dance No.1 without producing ugly sounds even as he plays dissonances with strength.

 

Stravinsky was another contemporary composer I mention who did not play his music nearly as aggressively as it is played today – as suggested by his playing of his own Piano Rag Music:

 

While composers naturally had their own envisioned and preferred approaches to their own works, they usually still appreciated the varied styles of other performers. Rachmaninoff was a great fan of the playing of Benno Moiseiwitsch, whom he called his ‘spiritual heir’ (not, as some might assume, Vladimir Horowitz). This recording of Moiseiwitsch playing the Prelude that was both the Rachmaninoff’s and Moiseiwitsch’s favourite amongst the composer’s works – the Prelude in B Minor Op.32 No.10 – makes clear why this pianist was so admired by his legendary compatriot.

 

Horowitz was another pianist whose playing Rachmaninoff admired. The composer’s quote that ‘he swallowed it whole’ in reference to Horowitz’s performance of the Third Concerto is often taken as pure admiration (if one considers the wording, it’s not necessarily a whole-hearted endorsement – it might be, but it might not); however, there’s no doubt he admired the younger musician’s artistry. This gorgeous performance of the Prelude in G Major Op.32 No.5 was filmed during Horowitz’s first return to Russia, 43 years after Rachmaninoff’s death.

 

As I state in my article, composers naturally had their own perceptions of how their works should be performed yet were often still open to approaches that were radically different than their own. The unconventional account of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto played by Walter Gieseking comes from a New York concert that Rachmaninoff himself attended – far slower than the composer and most other pianists would play it, but still appreciated by the composer – even though his wife walked out after the first movement! After the concert, composer and pianist had an engaged and enthusiastic conversation backstage.

 

Ilona Eibenschutz and Carl Friedberg both coached with Brahms and he liked both of their playing, but their approach was still not the same. It’s interesting to compare Eibenschütz’s 1903 recording of the Brahms Ballade in G Minor Op.118 No.3 with (below) Friedberg’s from nearly 50 years later.

 

 

We are so fortunate to be able to access so many recorded treasures today, including some that were not intended to be preserved. One of the most miraculous early recordings to survive is a 1930 radio broadcast of the complete 1st movement of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto featuring pianist-composer Eugen d’Albert, who in 1896 had played both Brahms Piano Concertos in a single concert conducted by the composer. A wild, vivacious, passionate, and engaging interpretation, with a fiery temperament and freedom that are rarely encountered today. It should be utterly mindblowing that we can listen to the playing of an artist born 160 years ago in a 1930 radio broadcast of such a substantial composition – and playing that is so radically different from our current norms over 90 years later.

 

How audio recording connects us with bygone times is very clear when listening to the spoken reminiscences about Brahms that Ilona Eibenschütz recorded for the BBC in 1952, in which she shares details about Brahms giving her the private premiere of his Opp 118 and 119 sixty years earlier – which in a recording 70+ years old from our times means we are listening to the voice of someone who knew Brahms 130 years ago. Both the stories and the playing in this clip are otherworldly.

 

In the written feature I mention how some university students at one of my presentations found Rachmaninoff’s 1927 recording of Chopin’s once-ubiquitous Nocturne in E-Flat Major featured ‘extreme’ timing – and yet could he and others from his time perhaps make similar observations about the playing in our time? How might we find Chopin’s own playing 200 years ago if the playing of a major composer from 100 years ago seems so jarring?

 

Playing being different from our current norms in no means it is not musically valid (nor that it is inherently valid). I’ll never forget the face of a fellow student 35 years ago when I played him Josef Hofmann’s 1937 concert recording of Chopin’s Ballade in G Minor Op.23 – ‘I never knew that such playing was possible.’ Indeed, such playing today would be unimaginable.

 

I note in my article how some recordings from the past are not necessarily jarring to our ears but might simply be so different and of exquisite beauty that’s notable to both professionals and amateur’s alike. The beauty of Marcelle Meyer’s jewel-like sonority is easily appreciable in her Rameau:

 

Dinu Lipatti’s Bach features remarkably transparent voicing that is still admired by amateurs and professionals today:

 

The soaring melodic lines of Ignaz Friedman’s pianism have fascinated listeners for decades:

 

Maryla Jonas’s disarmingly direct phrasing brings intoxicating warmth and poignancy to her Chopin Mazurkas:

 

Alfred Cortot had inimitable yet distinctive timing – one can often identify his playing in a matter of seconds:

 

Géza Anda’s 1953 account of Schumann’s Études symphoniques features tonal colours so glorious that most have never heard anything similar:

 

I noted in my article that some pianists who were highly regarded in their lifetimes might not come across as well on recordings today. Paderewski was perhaps one of the most popular pianists but he was not always appreciated by critics or his colleagues – nevertheless, some of his many recordings show that he was indeed a marvellous musician and played with absolutely gorgeous tone.

 

As I write in the feature, many pianists played quite differently in concert than in the recording studio. Dame Myra Hess was not generally thought of as a heroic pianist, in part due to the repertoire choices made for her studio recordings and the manner in which her image was crafted – but in concert she played with great fire and bravura:

 

Egon Petri – one of the great Ferruccio Busoni’s three top pupils – was a titanic pianist who could at times sound a bit ‘cold’ in his studio recordings (many artists hated the process – Hess among them). In private settings and in concert, however, his playing could be volcanic, as with this 1951 rehearsal performance of an astonishingly difficult work, Alkan’s Symphony for Solo Piano, recorded in a college practice room as he gave a full run-through of the work.

 

Jascha Spivakovsky released no solo recordings before his death in 1970, and was only with the publication in the last decade of various home recordings and broadcast performances that his phenomenal artistry has become known. How many other great pianists have been forgotten because they did not produce commercial records?

 

There is a natural assumption that all old recordings are of poor fidelity but a number of them reproduce the instrument and artists’ subtlety with great clarity – in the article, I mention Mischa Levitzki’s late 1920s recordings as an example.

 

As stated in the article, I consider many of the piano recordings made at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in the 1950s to be superior in sound (and certainly in playing) to much of what we hear today. Among the artists who produced discs there at the time (the ones mentioned in my article) are Géza Anda, Benno Moiseiwitsch, and Solomon.

 

 

 

These recordings are but a handful of the rich legacy of audio documents readily available to today’s listeners. I hope that you will explore them and those I mention in my ongoing columns for International Piano.

 

Dinu Lipatti is justly celebrated for his performances of Bach. He had a remarkable capacity to vary the attack used by different fingers even within the same hand so that the voicing of each line was thoroughly consistent, to a degree rarely heard in other artists. Contrapuntal parts therefore sounded as though they were being played by different instruments, each line sounding like an individual voice with its own unique timbre, together highlighting the structure of the score in stunning detail while infusing it with warmth and life.

Lipatti himself spoke to Bach’s music being the closest to his heart, and it is most unfortunate that he did not record more than his miraculous take of the B-Flat Partita and four transcriptions. He was in fact scheduled to commit to disc four Preludes and Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier at the Geneva sessions in July 1950 that produced his most celebrated recordings of Bach, Mozart, and Chopin, but he sent the engineers home two days early, ostensibly because he wanted to give the EMI technicians a break, but most likely because he himself was exhausted from the ordeal of 10 days of recording as the temporary effects of the cortisone being used to treat his Hodgkin’s Disease started to fade.

There are few fans of Lipatti’s playing who would not wish for more recordings of him playing Bach, and there have been tantalizing leads. A rather disturbing one is the story that Lipatti’s biographer Grigore Bargauanu was at a Swiss radio station where the card catalogue showed that a studio-made disc of a Prelude and Fugue was in the collection, but when he and the archivist went to get it, it was missing from the stacks.

Around 1972, Opus Records released an LP of Lipatti performing the Bach D Minor Concerto with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Eduard van Beinum on October 2, 1947. The flip-side of the disc was Lipatti’s 1937 recording with Nadia Boulanger and her troupe of singers of Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes Op.52, which had never been issued in LP format by EMI. No notes indicated the provenance of the live recording.

Opus label releases were produced by the International Piano Archives, which was run by Gregor Benko, who informed me that he had obtained the tape of the performance in an exchange with a Swiss collector by the name of Marc Fleury. At the time that they traded tapes (though the Bach was originally recorded on acetates), Benko was unaware of the fact that Lipatti had played the Ravel G Major Concerto at the same concert (Lipatti had in fact played the same program on both October 1 and 2). He lost touch with Fleury and so it is unknown if the Ravel performance also survived in his collection. The prospect of that recording existing, given Lipatti’s exceptional commercial disc of Ravel’s Alborada del Gracioso, is certainly an exciting one. Despite the Dutch radio archives having a remarkable collection of their concert history preserved on disc, even the Bach seems not to exist in their library.

This record appeared without either the pianist’s widow Madeleine Lipatti or recording producer Walter Legge having previously known about it: Legge first heard about it via one John Jessett, who was fascinated with Lipatti and had tried finding whatever unpublished recordings of the artist he could (sadly Jesset did not live to see the current riches that are now available). Legge informed Madeleine about the Opus Records release, and she then placed advertisements in Dutch newspapers hoping for leads to the source material of the Bach and also the Ravel Concertos (even after the Bach had been issued), but sadly with no success.

This Bach Concerto recording is one of the most unusual recordings of Dinu Lipatti to have surfaced, as it reveals aspects of the pianist’s artistry that are inconsistent with how he is usually perceived. Lipatti is often held up as a pianist who held the score as sacrosanct, despite the fact that he made changes to the score in his Alborada disc and his concert performance of Schubert’s E-Flat Impromptu. He himself stated that fidelity to the Urspirit of a score, as opposed to the Urtext, was his priority: “Far be it for me to promote anarchy and disdain for the fundamental laws which guide, along general lines, the coordination of a valid and pertinent interpretation,” he wrote in notes for a planned Interpretation course to be co-presented with Nadia Boulanger. “But I find it a grave mistake to lose oneself in researching useless details regarding the way in which Mozart would have played a certain trill or grupetto…wanting to restore to music its historical framework is like dressing an adult in an adolescent’s clothes. This might have a certain charm in the context of a historical reconstruction, yet is of no interest to those other than lovers of dead leaves or the collectors of old pipes.” Note that Lipatti did not say we should not pay attention to these details but rather emphasized that we should not lose ourselves in them – that the music should still be primary.

Lipatti’s approach to the D Minor Concerto is so radically unconventional that it paints him as more of a firebrand than his somewhat staid reputation as a literalist and pianist of ‘purity’ might indicate. Lipatti uses some of the variants in Busoni’s edition of the concerto, among them passages where arpeggios occupy two octaves instead of one (or answer in a higher octave a statement in a lower one) and bass register notes are played lower than Bach wrote them. Lipatti’s rhythm is remarkably steady and his accenting pronounced, though the emphasis never breaks the line. His articulation is varied, he is more liberal with the pedal and the highlighting of left-hand figurations, and he makes some rather dramatic ritardandos.

The first movement is among the most fascinating performances that exist by Lipatti, with a number of passages in particular demonstrating his unusual conception of this work. The section from 5:22 to 5:44, where arpeggios are extended and played with the most delightful inner rhythmic pulse, is magnificent. Perhaps the most incredible moment begins at 6:39, where he starts a phenomenally graduated decrescendo that brings the audience to complete silence as he highlights a downward chromatic progression, creating a melting effect until his playing goes down to a whisper at 7:02 – miraculous.

This concert recording captures Lipatti’s playing at its peak (he was in relatively good health) and it is an important part of his discography. Despite its early appearance on IPA’s Opus Records label and subsequent releases on Jecklin and Turnabout/Vox, EMI did not issue the recording as part of Lipatti’s official discography. They had explored the possibility in 1981 but, as they often did, shied away from negotiations with orchestras and conductors that were signed to other labels. Finally in the year 2000, when they had realized that they had not prepared a commemorative release for the 50th anniversary of the pianist’s death, they accepted a proposal that I had initially made in 1991 to release this performance with the Liszt E-Flat Major Concerto and Bartok Third Piano Concerto. The disc was issued early in 2001 and these three concerto performances are now part of Lipatti’s official EMI discography.

Let us continue to hope that the recording of the Ravel G Major Concerto will surface, as it will surely be a stunning performance that also paints a different portrait of Lipatti’s pianism and interpretative genius.

Dinu Lipatti is justly celebrated for his performances of Bach. He had a remarkable capacity to vary the attack used by different fingers even within the same hand so that the voicing of each line was thoroughly consistent, to a degree rarely heard in other artists. Contrapuntal parts therefore sounded as though they were being played by different instruments, each line sounding like an individual voice with its own unique timbre, together highlighting the structure of the score in stunning detail while infusing it with warmth and life.

Lipatti himself spoke to Bach’s music being the closest to his heart, and it is most unfortunate that he did not record more than his miraculous take of the B-Flat Partita and four transcriptions. He was in fact scheduled to commit to disc four Preludes and Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier at the Geneva sessions in July 1950 that produced his most celebrated recordings of Bach, Mozart, and Chopin, but he sent the engineers home two days early, ostensibly because he wanted to give the EMI technicians a break, but most likely because he himself was exhausted from the ordeal of 10 days of recording as the temporary effects of the cortisone being used to treat his Hodgkin’s Disease started to fade.

There are few fans of Lipatti’s playing who would not wish for more recordings of him playing Bach, and there have been tantalizing leads. A rather disturbing one is the story that Lipatti’s biographer Grigore Bargauanu was at a Swiss radio station where the card catalogue showed that a studio-made disc of a Prelude and Fugue was in the collection, but when he and the archivist went to get it, it was missing from the stacks.

Around 1972, Opus Records released an LP of Lipatti performing the Bach D Minor Concerto with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Eduard van Beinum on October 2, 1947. The flip-side of the disc was Lipatti’s 1937 recording with Nadia Boulanger and her troupe of singers of Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes Op.52, which had never been issued in LP format by EMI. No notes indicated the provenance of the live recording.

Opus label releases were produced by the International Piano Archives, which was run by Gregor Benko, who informed me that he had obtained the tape of the performance in an exchange with a Swiss collector by the name of Marc Fleury. At the time that they traded tapes (though the Bach was originally recorded on acetates), Benko was unaware of the fact that Lipatti had played the Ravel G Major Concerto at the same concert (Lipatti had in fact played the same program on both October 1 and 2). He lost touch with Fleury and so it is unknown if the Ravel performance also survived in his collection. The prospect of that recording existing, given Lipatti’s exceptional commercial disc of Ravel’s Alborada del Gracioso, is certainly an exciting one. Despite the Dutch radio archives having a remarkable collection of their concert history preserved on disc, even the Bach seems not to exist in their library.

This record appeared without either the pianist’s widow Madeleine Lipatti or recording producer Walter Legge having previously known about it: Legge first heard about it via one John Jessett, who was fascinated with Lipatti and had tried finding whatever unpublished recordings of the artist he could (sadly Jesset did not live to see the current riches that are now available). Legge informed Madeleine about the Opus Records release, and she then placed advertisements in Dutch newspapers hoping for leads to the source material of the Bach and also the Ravel Concertos (even after the Bach had been issued), but sadly with no success.

This Bach Concerto recording is one of the most unusual recordings of Dinu Lipatti to have surfaced, as it reveals aspects of the pianist’s artistry that are inconsistent with how he is usually perceived. Lipatti is often held up as a pianist who held the score as sacrosanct, despite the fact that he made changes to the score in his Alborada disc and his concert performance of Schubert’s E-Flat Impromptu. He himself stated that fidelity to the Urspirit of a score, as opposed to the Urtext, was his priority: “Far be it for me to promote anarchy and disdain for the fundamental laws which guide, along general lines, the coordination of a valid and pertinent interpretation,” he wrote in notes for a planned Interpretation course to be co-presented with Nadia Boulanger. “But I find it a grave mistake to lose oneself in researching useless details regarding the way in which Mozart would have played a certain trill or grupetto…wanting to restore to music its historical framework is like dressing an adult in an adolescent’s clothes. This might have a certain charm in the context of a historical reconstruction, yet is of no interest to those other than lovers of dead leaves or the collectors of old pipes.” Note that Lipatti did not say we should not pay attention to these details but rather emphasized that we should not lose ourselves in them – that the music should still be primary.

Lipatti’s approach to the D Minor Concerto is so radically unconventional that it paints him as more of a firebrand than his somewhat staid reputation as a literalist and pianist of ‘purity’ might indicate. Lipatti uses some of the variants in Busoni’s edition of the concerto, among them passages where arpeggios occupy two octaves instead of one (or answer in a higher octave a statement in a lower one) and bass register notes are played lower than Bach wrote them. Lipatti’s rhythm is remarkably steady and his accenting pronounced, though the emphasis never breaks the line. His articulation is varied, he is more liberal with the pedal and the highlighting of left-hand figurations, and he makes some rather dramatic ritardandos.

The first movement is among the most fascinating performances that exist by Lipatti, with a number of passages in particular demonstrating his unusual conception of this work. The section from 5:22 to 5:44, where arpeggios are extended and played with the most delightful inner rhythmic pulse, is magnificent. Perhaps the most incredible moment begins at 6:39, where he starts a phenomenally graduated decrescendo that brings the audience to complete silence as he highlights a downward chromatic progression, creating a melting effect until his playing goes down to a whisper at 7:02 – miraculous.

This concert recording captures Lipatti’s playing at its peak (he was in relatively good health) and it is an important part of his discography. Despite its early appearance on IPA’s Opus Records label and subsequent releases on Jecklin and Turnabout/Vox, EMI did not issue the recording as part of Lipatti’s official discography. They had explored the possibility in 1981 but, as they often did, shied away from negotiations with orchestras and conductors that were signed to other labels. Finally in the year 2000, when they had realized that they had not prepared a commemorative release for the 50th anniversary of the pianist’s death, they accepted a proposal that I had initially made in 1991 to release this performance with the Liszt E-Flat Major Concerto and Bartok Third Piano Concerto. The disc was issued early in 2001 and these three concerto performances are now part of Lipatti’s official EMI discography.

Let us continue to hope that the recording of the Ravel G Major Concerto will surface, as it will surely be a stunning performance that also paints a different portrait of Lipatti’s pianism and interpretative genius.