Posts Categorized: The Piano Files

There was quite a bit of excitement when a Youtube upload was made of a 1927 test pressing of Alfred Cortot playing the Dance Russe from Stravinsky’s Petrouchka Suite. Those who didn’t read the details on the upload missed the fact that this had been put out by Marston three years ago. I have a bit of background into the story, so thought it’s as good a time as any to share it.

In October 2007 Gregor Benko (co-founder of the International Piano Archives) told me that this Cortot test pressing showed up on eBay. The photo of the label showed it to be an HMV test pressing and certainly looked authentic. Marston of course wanted to secure it for a release, and resources were somehow pooled to ensure that their bid would be the winning one – and fortunately it was. I was asked to keep information about this quiet, which I did. [Unfortunately I can’t find a photo of the label, which I thought I’d saved from the eBay auction but evidently not.]

In May 2008 I went to New York, at which time Gregor and I paid a visit to Ward. This took place the day after Gregor and I had visited someone in Brooklyn who had obtained what appeared to be private recordings of Dinu Lipatti when this collector had cleared out an estate sale in Geneva. Gregor and I saw that the records were clearly authentic, with Lipatti’s distinctive signature on them. As Gregor tried to explain to the somewhat cagey fellow, the real value of the records would only be known once the playing had been extracted from their surfaces (some of which were peeling off), and otherwise they simply had autograph value. He told him that we were going the following day to visit the best transfer engineer and extended the invitation to join us so that he wouldn’t need to leave the records out of his sight, but he declined. (We eventually only got the records when the fellow died – another long story.)

So, back to the Cortot. The next day we visited Ward and we went up to his studio that had massive shelves of records, very organized. When he asked if there was anything I wanted to listen to, the first thing I said was ‘THE CORTOT STRAVINSKY TEST PRESSING’, not having forgotten that he had obtained the recording. So he sauntered over to the shelves, felt along the sides of the record stacks (if you didn’t know, Ward is blind), pulled out a record, walked to the turntable, put it on – and then I had the privilege to be one of the first people to hear this performance.

I was, to be honest, not initially overly enthused. I am most definitely a great Cortot admirer and I don’t generally have too much of an issue with his dropped notes but in this case I found that too many of the bass notes being missed were more impactful (I wasn’t concerned as much with the upper drops). Of course as a Cortot fan, I agreed that it should be released for its historical interest (far worse Cortot recordings have been issued) and they both agreed (Gregor loves the performance, while Ward shared some of my apprehensions). And listening again, there is for sure much to appreciate, his glistening tone in the upper registers and the beautiful tone with the clearly forged melodic line among them.

Another note: when the Cortot Anniversary Edition came out on EMI France – the great producer Rémi Jacobs came out of retirement to produce it – it did not include this recording for the simple reason that there was no sign that a pressing existed in EMI documents. Unfortunately, Jacobs did not reach out to the piano collectors underground (I’d met him a few times previously and we got on famously), as if he had, I would have connected him with Ward and they could have negotiated its inclusion in the set. I also would have let him know that the two Mazurkas on the set are definitely not Cortot – they come from a Japanese CD that used the Concert Artist cassettes ostensibly of Cortot playing the Mazurkas: that’s the label that released the Joyce Hatto recordings, not one to be trusted. If anything, these might actually be Joyce Hatto – they sound nothing like Cortot and do not appear to be professionally played or recorded.

If some other Cortot recordings were to be found, my hope would be for his 1935 Schumann Fantasy, a 1939 Gaspard recorded on a day when he was in very fine form (the recording sheets suggest that there was a technical glitch on one of the discs), and his 1940s Chopin Polonaises and Scherzi. He also did record the Chopin Mazurkas in the 1950s – there is a letter I’ve seen in which he discusses this – but there was no trace of them in the EMI archives when Rémi Jacobs looked for them when producing the anniversary set. I’d first come across news of the Gaspard in 1991 when I was allowed in the EMI Archives and given free access to all the documentation I’d wanted for my Lipatti research; I asked to look at the Cortot files and you can imagine how I was almost trembling holding the recording sheets for the Gaspard. Alas – no pressing has ever been found. It’s not impossible that a copy coul be found – certainly no one expected that the 1927 Stravinsky take would be! (I can’t recall if I had seen the session sheet for that one when searching his file – it’s 30 years ago and I had to focus my attention on Lipatti.)

But the recording found an ideal home in the first volume of Landmarks of Recorded Pianism produced by Marston in 2018. Those interested in the set including this amazingly rare recording can find it by clicking this link. 

And here is the performance itself:

Many pianists lived fascinating lives whose biographical details are forever fused to their legacy. Sadly, for several artists it is sometimes the circumstances around their deaths for which they are most immediately remembered. One such case is the tremendous Russian pianist Simon Barere, who died partway through a performance of Grieg’s Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall on April 2, 1951, aged only 54.

I first heard of Barere from my high school physics teacher, who used to assign a problem for the class to solve and then chat with me while I stood at his desk, telling me about which pianists I should listen to and why. It was he who told me about Barere’s tragic death and that I needed to hear his Don Juan Fantasy – a work I had not yet encountered. It wasn’t long before I found a few of Barere’s LPs in the second-hand shops: one of his Remington LPs and a Turnabout Vox vinyl with his Liszt Sonata from Carnegie Hall. Although I would have to wait before I would get his Don Juan Fantasy, I could tell right away that this was a supremely powerful pianist, with technique to burn but also more than just fingers.

A year or two later, I would go to the McGill University Library (I wasn’t a student there but was able to get in) and go through their amazing collection of 78s, with a listening station that included a turntable with a fantastic pickup that fit the grooves of these old shellac discs perfectly. While recording cassettes using the connected player, if you timed the lift of the pause button well, the machine would somehow do a perfect crossfade to join sides of the records (this could be considered my early DJ training). They had an impressive array of piano recordings, among them Barere’s HMV disc of Balakirev’s Islamey (another work new to me). I was able to effect a flawless transfer and listened over and over to the cassette – the playing blew my mind.

I had visited the UK in the summer of 1987 and seen an LP release of Barere’s 1930s HMV recordings (including that Islamey) but they were priced out of my student-budget range (as were most things in England) so I hadn’t purchased it. Little did I know that the producer of that ‘Archive Piano Recordings’ release would soon become a very close ally: Bryan Crimp, who would rename the label Appian Publications & Recordings (APR, as it is currently known), who over the course of the coming years provided tremendous support to my Lipatti research. Soon after our correspondence began in 1989, he released recordings of Barere Live at Carnegie Hall, which I ordered (along with those HMV recordings) and listened to voraciously. I was hooked.

It appears that Barere’s son was making recordings of his father’s annual Carnegie Hall recitals, which the pianist paid for himself (the real way to Carnegie Hall isn’t just practice, it’s an open chequebook). While a few of these had been issued on LP (such as that terrific Liszt Sonata), the vast majority remained unheard until APR got involved around 1990. Hearing Barere in a vaster array of repertoire than he recorded commercially – and in live performance – one can appreciate a good deal more of his artistry. Barere’s playing was greeted by rapturous ovations, but his career sadly had long gaps of inactivity.

It is almost inconceivable to us that a pianist of such astounding talent should have had such a hard time making a career but sadly that is the case. Born in Odessa on September 1, 1896, Barere was recognized for his brilliance by the composer Glazunov, who reportedly had him play for two great teachers – Anna Essipova and Isabella Vengerova. The colourful tale states that things got quite heated between the two ladies due to their profound desire to teach the young musician. Essipova had won that feud but upon her death in 1914 Barere would train with pianist-composer Felix Blumenfeld (whose other pupils included Horowitz, Neuhaus, and Grinberg). Glazunov – who said that “Barere is an Anton Rubinstein in one hand and a Liszt in the other” – was a great support to the young pianist during his seven years at the St. Petersburg Imperial Conservatory, making it possible to sidestep limitations that his Jewish roots might have caused and also helping him avoid mandatory military conscription.

In January 1934 he caused such a sensation with his Aeolian Hall debut in London that he was immediately invited to EMI’s studios to begin a series of recordings under the watchful eye and ear of legendary producer Fred Gaisberg that would span two years. We can see the pianist, producer, and engineers together in this remarkable photograph of the pianist in the studio, preparing to record his stunning account of Blumenfeld’s Etude for Left Hand, one of the gems of his discography.

An invitation by the Baldwin piano makers would take him to the US, where he would settle after his great success at his Carnegie Hall debut in 1936. The war would not make things easy and although he lived in a musically rich culture, Barere’s career did not fully take off (indeed, despite having been brought to the country by a piano manufacturer, Barere never owned a piano of his own). Things started to improve towards the end of the 1940s, including an Australiasian tour in 1947 (there’s a New Zealand radio interview and he visited Jascha Spivakovsky’s home in Melbourne and signed the piano there), but this kind of international success was rare.

Barere seems to have had few opportunities to play with orchestra (although a few live recordings of these rare appearances exist) and it was sadly during one of these few occasions that he perished: a performance of the Grieg Concerto in A Minor with Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on April 2, 1951. It has been said that on the day of the concert he had been rehearsing with Guiomar Novaes (who was playing the orchestral part) and complained about not feeling well; he debated whether he should cancel, but Novaes convinced him to play, saying that it could be the break that he wanted and that he needed the income. Alas, partway through the first movement at the concert, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and collapsed on stage. Novaes never forgave herself, for decades carrying the guilt for having urged the pianist to keep this engagement.

Critic Olin Downes was at the concert and described what transpired: “Mr Barere seemed to be in top form. His entrance solo was brilliantly delivered. But presently this writer was puzzled by the pace of his performance, which seemed excessively fast. Then comes the passage after the violin-cellos have announced the second theme of developments discoursed between the piano and the orchestra. A moment later it seemed as if Mr Barere were bending over to one side, listening with special attention to the instruments as he matched his tone with theirs. In another moment his left hand fell from the keyboard and in another second he fell senseless from the stool to the floor. The orchestra stopped in consternation, someone shouted from the stage for a doctor, and with some difficulty the unconscious man was carried from the stage.” An intermission was called while they attended to the pianist, but Barere died backstage. The audience was called back in and told that the rest of the concert was canceled; the Nielsen 5th Symphony was to be featured in the second half and they rescheduled it for a month later. (Another detail: apparently, Barere’s last words to the conductor were,”Mr. Ormandy, this is the first time that we are playing together. I hope it won’t be the last.”)

While the nature of Barere’s premature passing is forever linked to his name, it is his artistry that should be front and foremost. The fact that he had such an astounding facility at the keyboard has led to his being dismissed as ’empty’ and ‘just fingers’. The fact is he could indeed play pretty much everything faster than anyone else, and in a few works he got ahead of himself and the results are not terrific (the Schumann Toccata, for example – Horowitz asked him why he played it so quickly, to which Barere responded, “I can play it even faster.”) But listening to the bulk of his recordings one is aware of mastery that extends far beyond speed and agility. His tonal colours were exquisite and his dynamic gradations as precise as his fingerwork, while his lyrical phrasing was marvellously refined and beautifully timed. While a good deal of his studio repertoire consisted of more impressive showpieces, there are works that demonstrate his astounding sensitivity, such as the Liszt Sonetto del Petrarca No.104 and the Blumenfeld Etude for Left Hand.

In honour of the anniversary of Barere’s tragic death, a selection of recordings that demonstrate his remarkable artistry – not comprehensive, of course (for the bulk of his recorded output, investigate APR’s release of his HMV and Carnegie Hall performances), but a worthy tribute to this incredible pianist.

First off is that Don Juan Fantasy that my physics teacher had spoken of so highly, with agility that seems to defy the laws of science. This performance is notable not only for its stunning pyrotechnics but also for the lovely singing lines and attentive voicing in lyrical sections, as well as marvellous rubato and dramatic climaxes. Most certainly, when it comes to passages requiring dexterity, Barere certainly takes things to another level, with the most dazzling runs, filigree fingerwork, and towering octaves, all accomplished, it should be noted, with a clear, full-bodied sonority (even in the loudest fortissimo, his tone doesn’t ‘crack’). Miraculous!

Barere’s October 10, 1935 account of Chopin’s Scherzo No.3 in C-Sharp Minor is my favourite interpretation of the work and one of his finest recorded performances. Certainly thrilling pyrotechnics are in full abundance, but it is his delivery of the opening sequence that is most arresting to me, so beautifully conceived with creative timing telling a story with the repeated figurations. Barere’s light octaves are attentive to voicing, the middle section is lyrically presented with sumptuous tone and masterful pedalling, and his proportioned rubato is beautifully coordinated with his elegant phrasing.

Barere’s account of Balakirev’s knuckle-busting Islamey referred to above is as legendary as his Don Juan Fantasy. He plays at a breakneck pace well beyond what most virtuosos can manage, yet with absolute clarity (something his son said he did without even trying). Despite the extreme speed, he has a remarkably light touch and always plays a wonderful singing tone. I’ve often said that if a pianist can play quickly but not with beautiful tone, they actually don’t have good technique, that it is dexterity together with beautiful tone production together are a sign of good technique. As with the previous recordings, as thrilling as his virtuosity is, the lyrical middle section – with a beautifully formed melodic line, elegantly shaped phrasing, and lush timing – is clear evidence that he was not ‘just fingers.’

Barere’s October 2, 1935 HMV reading of his former teacher Blumenfeld’s Etude for Left Hand is thoroughly remarkable in many ways: not only is the pianist able to navigate the keyboard at a tempo that makes it all the more challenging to believe that he is playing with one hand (and he certainly was – there’s also a live recording of him playing this at the same tempo), but he does so while voicing with incredible consistency and poetry, with a gorgeous burnished sonority, marvellous pedal effects, and lyrical phrasing. Astonishingly beautiful!

Chopin’s Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Op.22 is a perfect vehicle for Barere’s sensitive musicianship: this February 7, 1949 Carnegie Hall traversal reveals  fluid phrasing, magnificent timing, gorgeous colours, and refined nuancing – the gorgeous glow in the opening section, with that soaring burnished line, is just magical.

One of the highlights of Barere’s discography is his thrilling account of Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor, recorded at his November 11, 1947 Carnegie Hall recital, one of the concert performances that was issued on LP soon after he died. He plays here with a varied tonal palette and seemingly effortless facility, his dramatic gestures and sensitive nuances serving his grand vision of this titanic work. The grand recitativo delivery of the main theme in the opening section is extremely effective and in wonderful contrast to the fleetness of the section that immediately follows. A mesmerizing performance!

And this is quite a treasure: a January 31, 1949 home recording of Barere practicing a number of compositions. We hear the great Russian pianist playing (at times while speaking and singing!) excerpts of the Liszt First Piano Concerto, Gounod-Liszt Faust Waltz, Scriabin Etude Op.42 No.3 (a work of which no other recording by Barere is known to exist), Chopin Etude Op. 10 No. 5 and the Andante Spianato & Grande Polonaise. At the beginning of the clip, I thought for a moment it was Art Tatum playing before I was able to recognize Liszt’s writing! The lush phrasing of some lyrical excerpts from the Faust Waltz demonstrates his sensitivity and refined nuancing. I’m not sure of the provenance of this recording but it appears to be a wire recording of some people listening to the original private disc (we can hear them give their assessment of the playing after Barere finishes playing and refer to the wire recording). Fascinating stuff!

One of his few American performances with orchestra was a Carnegie Hall reading of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No.1 with David Brockman conducting New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. Barere’s son Boris recalls that this concert took place without a rehearsal: the conductor went over to Barere’s apartment, they talked it over, and then they played the concert. When Barere heard the private discs his son had recorded, the self-deprecating pianist listened to it and said, “You know, I think the best part of the whole concerto is the applause…” The reading is a pretty wild one, but despite the tremendous speed – just under 16 minutes! – there is plenty of poetry at the right times.

There is only one other concerto of which we have a recording of Barere: Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto, another reading that features his deeply emotive playing. In addition to his lovely singing tone (appreciable despite the amateur recording), Barere plays with an individual rubato, wonderfully highlighted voices, and beautifully shaped phrasing. The exact date of the recording is unknown, though Barere’s son believed that this was a 1944 performance.

After Barere made his 1934-36 series of discs for HMV, he produced no more studio recordings until a session for the American label Remington 15 years later, in the month prior to his death. The label would issue these performances, as well as some of his Carnegie Hall recordings, soon after he died. These final recordings are just as staggering as the earlier ones, with rapid-fire fingerwork that needs to be heard to be believed but also a wonderful sonority throughout. Here in one clip is the sum total of those studio performances, a matter of weeks before his untimely passing.

While it is impossible for Barere’s sad and shocking death not to be part of how he is remembered, it is to be hoped that the incredible richness of recordings now available – a good deal more than was ever the case in the LP era – will allow the pianist’s playing to stand more prominently, and not for the superficial perception of his astounding dexterity (which admittedly in a few cases got the better of him) but for the full power of his music-making.

The German-born Dutch pianist Egon Petri has been a favourite of mine from my earliest years of collecting records. The APR label had put out the bulk of his 78rpm recordings on three double-CD sets and I was particularly mesmerized by his Liszt and Schubert-Liszt performances; my high school physics teacher, from whom I had learned a ton about historical piano recordings (but precious little about physics), had waxed rhapsodic about Petri’s Mazeppa and Ricordanza.

However, it was experiencing some of his 78s on an old turntable with built-in tube-amplified speakers that made me realize the power of his playing. A pianophile friend was visiting from Europe and we put on one of the Petri 78s I had on this system and it felt like Petri was in the room; the beauty and grandeur of his tone were more apparent to us than ever, despite the fact that we were both familiar with the recordings we listened to.

The more I explored Petri’s discography, the more I became aware that some of his studio discs were far more inspired than others and that his concert recordings seemed to capture his playing at its impassioned best. That said, he could still deliver stunning performances in the studio. This page will feature, in celebration of the pianist’s 140th birthday, a selection of his finest commercial and concert recordings.

Here are his first commercial discs, made at a studio session for German Electrola on September 17, 1929, and featuring some dazzling pianism. As I wrote about these performances in the booklet notes for the APR reissue of Petri’s entire 78 discography and first LPs (a commission for which I was truly honoured and grateful), ‘throughout, one marvels at his even articulation, sparkling tone, subtle pedalling, and gloriously shaped phrasing.’

The 78rpm disc that I consider his most successful is his glorious September 27, 1938 recording of Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s lied ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade.’ What exquisitely-shaped phrasing, a beautifully sculpted line, wonderful layering, impassioned climaxes, and gorgeous nuancing – the long arc of his trajectory in this performance is magnificently achieved.

A few days before setting down that account, the pianist made on September 22, 1938 a recording of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No.2 in A Major, with Leslie Heward conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. This is a reference recording for this work and also one of Petri’s more successful studio efforts, with a wonderful balance of passion and sensitivity on display thanks to his beautiful sonority (his tone in lyrical sections is exquisite), broad dynamic range, refined phrasing, and impressive technical capacity (his octaves are terrific!).

As great as that studio recording is, the live account below shows how much more intensity he could bring to his playing in concert and makes for a fascinating comparison. I was less familiar with this live 1945 performance that circulated on a bootleg LP that eluded me for a long time, and now that it’s online, I can say that this version could well supplant Petri’s superb studio account in my estimation.

This performance has all the elegance, refinement, and dazzling technical mastery of his wonderful commercial recording with the bonus of more unbridled passion and propulsion. Aged 64 at the time of this reading, Petri sculpts his lines with burnished tone, mindful use of dynamics, and impeccable timing so as to highlight the emotional content of Liszt’s score – even though he lingers in lyrical passages, the faster sections are taken at quite a clip, resulting in a reading that’s a two minutes shorter than his commercial account and more animated and dramatic too.

Some magical broadcasts from 1930s reveal even more passion and vitality. Here is Petri playing the fourth movement of the Busoni Piano Concerto from a 1932 concert, with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by the great Hans Rosbaud. Petri was a disciple of the great Busoni – one of the pianist-composer’s three favourites – and so this recording is of particularly great historical importance.

Allan Evans, who discovered this performance and released it on his Arbiter label, recounted that he went to Melodiya’s offices in 1987: “Waited for a meeting room to be prepared (someone hurried inside with a reel of tape – not so subtle.) Met their archivist who claimed the entire 1936 broadcast [of the same concerto] existed minus the 1st movement, in a private collection. The Red Army took everything in 1945. Two years later during Perestroika the 1932 Busoni movement and most of Totentanz emerged. The 1936 performance seems to be missing unless an army officer will ‘fess up. Took a while to get them. Worth the effort.”

Worth the effort indeed. It is staggering that a 1932 broadcast should exist at all and in such amazing sound, and one shudders to think of the whole performance played this way by this great student of the composer; the 1936 Totentanz (with the opening missing) referred to above was also released by Allan on one of his Arbiter CDs and features equally stunning pianism (as shall be heard below the Busoni clip). This is absolutely thrilling playing, with the easily surmounting the technical challenges of this work despite playing at breakneck speed – what octaves, with incredible voicing and rhythmic vitality. A truly remarkable document!

And here is that other supremely important discovery by Evans, a stellar 1936 reading by Petri of Liszt’s Totentanz, again with the great Rosbaud on the podium. The first 78 transcription disc was not in the archive when Allan Evans rescued the rest of this performance from oblivion, but what a performance it is: thrilling passagework, massive tone, and rhythmically and emotionally charged playing.

One of Petri’s granddaughters told me that in the late 1950s, the pianist had gone to Switzerland in the hopes of teaching as his career was not going at its best, but that enrolment for his masterclasses was disappointingly far less than had been expected: it is sad and staggering to consider that only three students enrolled (one of whom was John Ogden). This recital given before those classes shows no sign that the pianist was in his late 70s at the time: his tone is rich and lush, articulation clear and precise, phrasing beautifully shaped, and timing natural and spacious.

Below is another marvellous concert performance of Petri late in life, a glorious account Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4 in G Major Op.58. This recording was originally issued on a private LP Encore PHS-1277 which gave no date nor indication of the orchestra or conductor – a kind commenter on my YouTube upload has stated that it is the Carmel Symphony Orchestra, with an unidentified conductor, from a December 8, 1959 concert.

Petri put a few concerted works on disc in the 1930s and 40s, and several Beethoven Sonatas in both the 78rpm and LP eras, but he never recorded any of his concertos. A performance of the Emperor Concerto circulated much more widely than the interpretation of the Fourth below, which is a fascinating and insightful performance worthy of attention despite the unfortunately harsh sound of the amateur recording of this concert reading. His left hand voicing in the first movement cadenza, for example, is wonderfully highlighted with a level of robust dramatic inflection, in addition to a few personal touches that highlight the emotional depth of the work. Throughout the entire performance, we hear Petri’s bold emphases tempered by fluid legato phrasing, refined nuancing (what a wonderful pianissimo), and attentive voicing (notice the balance of his chords).

If Petri wasn’t always at his peak in the studio, it does not mean that his studio performances are not worth hearing. This 1956 account of Beethoven’s titanic Hammerklavier Sonata Op.106 for Westminster (for which label he produced several LPs) is a grand and noble reading, capturing with great fidelity the pianist’s gorgeous tonal palette (including a massive bass sonority), transparent voicing, and refined nuancing.

One of the greatest recordings we have of Petri is one that could very well have disappeared into thin air: a 1950s practice session of Alkan’s treacherous Symphony for Solo Piano Op.39 that was captured on tape in a Mills College practice room by his pupil Daniell Revenaugh, who told me about the experience when I met him about a decade ago. Revenaugh had to pull the microphone away from the piano partway through the first movement because the levels were peaking due to Petri’s volcanic playing.

This is indeed some utterly stupendous pianism here, the kind that gives us a much better idea of Petri’s true capabilities. The playing throughout features soaring phrasing, grandly shaped lines, clearly balanced voicing, wonderfully weighted chords, and rhythmic dynamism. The dramatic content and progression of the first movement is absolutely mesmerizing, and I’ve often listened over and over to that single section of the work in absolute awe. And this was simply a practice session – and at a time when Alkan’s music was not being widely played at all (this is before Raymond Lewenthal helped revive interest in the composer’s works). Stunning pianism by a grand master!

To close, Petri playing two of his own Bach transcriptions in a 1958 recording that showcases his beautiful full-bodied tone, fluid phrasing, and transparent voicing – a master musician at work, one whom we are fortunate to be able to appreciate in so many hours of superb recordings.

The German-born Dutch pianist Egon Petri has been a favourite of mine from my earliest years of collecting records. The APR label had put out the bulk of his 78rpm recordings on three double-CD sets and I was particularly mesmerized by his Liszt and Schubert-Liszt performances; my high school physics teacher, from whom I had learned a ton about historical piano recordings (but precious little about physics), had waxed rhapsodic about Petri’s Mazeppa and Ricordanza.

However, it was experiencing some of his 78s on an old turntable with built-in tube-amplified speakers that made me realize the power of his playing. A pianophile friend was visiting from Europe and we put on one of the Petri 78s I had on this system and it felt like Petri was in the room; the beauty and grandeur of his tone were more apparent to us than ever, despite the fact that we were both familiar with the recordings we listened to.

The more I explored Petri’s discography, the more I became aware that some of his studio discs were far more inspired than others and that his concert recordings seemed to capture his playing at its impassioned best. That said, he could still deliver stunning performances in the studio. This page will feature, in celebration of the pianist’s 140th birthday, a selection of his finest commercial and concert recordings.

Here are his first commercial discs, made at a studio session for German Electrola on September 17, 1929, and featuring some dazzling pianism. As I wrote about these performances in the booklet notes for the APR reissue of Petri’s entire 78 discography and first LPs (a commission for which I was truly honoured and grateful), ‘throughout, one marvels at his even articulation, sparkling tone, subtle pedalling, and gloriously shaped phrasing.’

The 78rpm disc that I consider his most successful is his glorious September 27, 1938 recording of Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s lied ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade.’ What exquisitely-shaped phrasing, a beautifully sculpted line, wonderful layering, impassioned climaxes, and gorgeous nuancing – the long arc of his trajectory in this performance is magnificently achieved.

A few days before setting down that account, the pianist made on September 22, 1938 a recording of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No.2 in A Major, with Leslie Heward conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. This is a reference recording for this work and also one of Petri’s more successful studio efforts, with a wonderful balance of passion and sensitivity on display thanks to his beautiful sonority (his tone in lyrical sections is exquisite), broad dynamic range, refined phrasing, and impressive technical capacity (his octaves are terrific!).

As great as that studio recording is, the live account below shows how much more intensity he could bring to his playing in concert and makes for a fascinating comparison. I was less familiar with this live 1945 performance that circulated on a bootleg LP that eluded me for a long time, and now that it’s online, I can say that this version could well supplant Petri’s superb studio account in my estimation.

This performance has all the elegance, refinement, and dazzling technical mastery of his wonderful commercial recording with the bonus of more unbridled passion and propulsion. Aged 64 at the time of this reading, Petri sculpts his lines with burnished tone, mindful use of dynamics, and impeccable timing so as to highlight the emotional content of Liszt’s score – even though he lingers in lyrical passages, the faster sections are taken at quite a clip, resulting in a reading that’s a two minutes shorter than his commercial account and more animated and dramatic too.

Some magical broadcasts from 1930s reveal even more passion and vitality. Here is Petri playing the fourth movement of the Busoni Piano Concerto from a 1932 concert, with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by the great Hans Rosbaud. Petri was a disciple of the great Busoni – one of the pianist-composer’s three favourites – and so this recording is of particularly great historical importance.

Allan Evans, who discovered this performance and released it on his Arbiter label, recounted that he went to Melodiya’s offices in 1987: “Waited for a meeting room to be prepared (someone hurried inside with a reel of tape – not so subtle.) Met their archivist who claimed the entire 1936 broadcast [of the same concerto] existed minus the 1st movement, in a private collection. The Red Army took everything in 1945. Two years later during Perestroika the 1932 Busoni movement and most of Totentanz emerged. The 1936 performance seems to be missing unless an army officer will ‘fess up. Took a while to get them. Worth the effort.”

Worth the effort indeed. It is staggering that a 1932 broadcast should exist at all and in such amazing sound, and one shudders to think of the whole performance played this way by this great student of the composer; the 1936 Totentanz (with the opening missing) referred to above was also released by Allan on one of his Arbiter CDs and features equally stunning pianism (as shall be heard below the Busoni clip). This is absolutely thrilling playing, with the easily surmounting the technical challenges of this work despite playing at breakneck speed – what octaves, with incredible voicing and rhythmic vitality. A truly remarkable document!

And here is that other supremely important discovery by Evans, a stellar 1936 reading by Petri of Liszt’s Totentanz, again with the great Rosbaud on the podium. The first 78 transcription disc was not in the archive when Allan Evans rescued the rest of this performance from oblivion, but what a performance it is: thrilling passagework, massive tone, and rhythmically and emotionally charged playing.

One of Petri’s granddaughters told me that in the late 1950s, the pianist had gone to Switzerland in the hopes of teaching as his career was not going at its best, but that enrolment for his masterclasses was disappointingly far less than had been expected: it is sad and staggering to consider that only three students enrolled (one of whom was John Ogden). This recital given before those classes shows no sign that the pianist was in his late 70s at the time: his tone is rich and lush, articulation clear and precise, phrasing beautifully shaped, and timing natural and spacious.

Below is another marvellous concert performance of Petri late in life, a glorious account Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4 in G Major Op.58. This recording was originally issued on a private LP Encore PHS-1277 which gave no date nor indication of the orchestra or conductor – a kind commenter on my YouTube upload has stated that it is the Carmel Symphony Orchestra, with an unidentified conductor, from a December 8, 1959 concert.

Petri put a few concerted works on disc in the 1930s and 40s, and several Beethoven Sonatas in both the 78rpm and LP eras, but he never recorded any of his concertos. A performance of the Emperor Concerto circulated much more widely than the interpretation of the Fourth below, which is a fascinating and insightful performance worthy of attention despite the unfortunately harsh sound of the amateur recording of this concert reading. His left hand voicing in the first movement cadenza, for example, is wonderfully highlighted with a level of robust dramatic inflection, in addition to a few personal touches that highlight the emotional depth of the work. Throughout the entire performance, we hear Petri’s bold emphases tempered by fluid legato phrasing, refined nuancing (what a wonderful pianissimo), and attentive voicing (notice the balance of his chords).

If Petri wasn’t always at his peak in the studio, it does not mean that his studio performances are not worth hearing. This 1956 account of Beethoven’s titanic Hammerklavier Sonata Op.106 for Westminster (for which label he produced several LPs) is a grand and noble reading, capturing with great fidelity the pianist’s gorgeous tonal palette (including a massive bass sonority), transparent voicing, and refined nuancing.

One of the greatest recordings we have of Petri is one that could very well have disappeared into thin air: a 1950s practice session of Alkan’s treacherous Symphony for Solo Piano Op.39 that was captured on tape in a Mills College practice room by his pupil Daniell Revenaugh, who told me about the experience when I met him about a decade ago. Revenaugh had to pull the microphone away from the piano partway through the first movement because the levels were peaking due to Petri’s volcanic playing.

This is indeed some utterly stupendous pianism here, the kind that gives us a much better idea of Petri’s true capabilities. The playing throughout features soaring phrasing, grandly shaped lines, clearly balanced voicing, wonderfully weighted chords, and rhythmic dynamism. The dramatic content and progression of the first movement is absolutely mesmerizing, and I’ve often listened over and over to that single section of the work in absolute awe. And this was simply a practice session – and at a time when Alkan’s music was not being widely played at all (this is before Raymond Lewenthal helped revive interest in the composer’s works). Stunning pianism by a grand master!

To close, Petri playing two of his own Bach transcriptions in a 1958 recording that showcases his beautiful full-bodied tone, fluid phrasing, and transparent voicing – a master musician at work, one whom we are fortunate to be able to appreciate in so many hours of superb recordings.

Stannard shared that “as a teacher, she was more a doer than a sayer. That is, her demonstrations were inspiring and thought-provoking, while her technical observations were more along the lines of “get after that.” She was a musician’s musician and everyone loved her. One of the first impressions I have of her was her standing on the landing of the grand staircase in Clark House cradling a large kettle and waving a ladle in the air. ‘Who wants some soup?'”

Sadly, Kerr died suddenly as the result of an asthma attack, at the tragically young age of 52. Stannard was the first pupil to find out: he had arrived early to the fall semester registration to be sure that he could sign up for lessons with Kerr, only to be told by a shaken administrator that she had died the night before.

Renowned pianist Kirill Gerstein became fascinated by the artist when he saw my Facebook posts and started doing his own online digging, in so doing coming across this 1953 WNYC interview with the pianist, in which she speaks about using music education to help disabled veterans – a wonderful testament to her dedication as a teacher:

There are many great pianists whose performing careers for a variety of reasons did not sustain the promise of their early years, and a good number of them became distinguished teachers whose influence on musical culture was still significant despite taking place behind closed doors. One such amazing pianist went from over 150 bookings a year in Europe before the war to an ever-dwindling number after having moved to Canada – in spite of rave reviews in major centres – yet her impact on the lives of countless students was profound. A distinguished and refined cultural icon, Lubka Kolessa taught generations of pianists who would go on to have notable careers in her adopted country and abroad.

Lubka Kolessa was born into a musical family on May 19, 1902 in Lviv, Ukraine. Her first piano lessons were with her grandmother, who had trained with Chopin’s pupil Karol Mikuli, and once the family moved to Vienna she would study with Liszt’s protege Emil von Sauer. She won the Bösendorfer Prize at age 13 and well after graduation with an already active concert schedule she continued training with another Liszt pupil, Eugen d’Albert.

‘A Wonder’

The conductors with whom she played in the 1920s and 30s reads like a Who’s Who of the legendary orchestral chiefs of the time: Furtwängler, Böhm, Keilberth, Strauss, Mengelberg, Walter, Wood, Weingartner, to name but a few. She apparently had to learn Liszt’s Second Concerto on 3 weeks’ notice when Furtwängler booked her when she was in her teens. She toured her native Ukraine in 1928 to great acclaim, and had several tours of North and South America that were equally successful (Rio de Janeiro’s A Noite stated that “the concerts of Lubka Kolessa were a great event in the world of art.”)

Kolessa made a British television appearance (wearing a traditional Ukrainian dress) on May 21, 1937 and that year played over 175 concerts, reviews brimming over with superlatives: “An artistic event of the first rank? No, more than that – a wonder!” That same year she would move to the UK as circumstances deteriorated on the continent. In Prague on March 13, 1939 – the eve of the occupation – she married James Edward Tracy Philipps, a British diplomat whom she had met on the Orient Express in 1936. Their son was born later in 1939, and with war having broken out in Europe, Philipps was assigned to Canada, the family arriving in Montreal in June 1940 (Philipps expressed strong displeasure at the Thomas Cook agency for having given them a second-class cabin).

Within the year Kolessa was booked to play with the Toronto Symphony, with the Globe and Mail review entitled “Kolessa’s Triumph” reporting that “No pianist of recent years roused more sincere and fervent expression of admiration,” adding that her performance “was a rendering that stirred every musical fibre in those who heard it.” She would teach at the Toronto Conservatory for 7 years starting in 1942, the beginning of a long teaching career in her adopted country (she appears to have parted ways with her husband by this time in what is said to have been a rancorous separation). In New York, she gave a Town Hall recital in April 1943, and in the following years she made a few appearances in which she shared the program (a 1944 appearance at the Ukrainian National Association Golden Jubilee Concert and two pops concerts in following years), but it was her January 27, 1948 recital at Carnegie Hall that generated particular attention. She played a massive program with a creative flow, Bach’s Toccata, Adagio and Fugue followed by Debussy’s Toccata, which led into Schumann’s Toccata and two works by Mozart; after intermission, a set of pieces by contemporary composer Arnold Walter was then followed by a group of Chopin Mazurkas that were bookended by the Fantasy and Andante Spianato and Polonaise. New York Times critic Harold Taubman was very impressed, calling her “a pianist of uncommon personality and charm…an artist with a heart and mind of her own,” and another headline read “Carnegie, where Kolessa belongs.” Thirteen months later she appeared with the New York Philharmonic to play Chopin’s E Minor Concerto and her recital the following year (April 3, 1950) was another massive programme: Schumann’s Etudes symphoniques, Mozart’s C Major Sonata, Liszt’s Funerailles, Paganini Etude No.4, and Hungarian Rhapsody No.12, two Scarlatti Sonatas, and Chopin’s B Minor Sonata.

Despite rave reviews, Kolessa’s career never reached the level it had in Europe and after a return visit to play and broadcast there in 1954, she withdrew from public performance to focus on teaching. She had by this point moved to Montreal (though she would also live in Toronto), where for the next two decades she taught at the Conservatoire de Musique du Québec, the École Vincent d’Indy, and at McGill University in Montreal. Among her pupils were the distinguished conductor and pianist Mario Bernardi (a mainstay on Canadian radio and concert platforms for decades), prize-winning pianist and teacher Louis-Philippe Pelletier, and renowned pianist-teachers Luba Zuk and Ireneus Zuk.

A supportive teacher

Kolessa appears to have been revered by her students, by whom she was referred to as ‘Madame Kolessa’ or ‘Madame K’. The esteemed Pelletier began studying with her when he was 15 and recalls that he was “very impressed, to say the least, by her personality, a mélange of calm authority and kindness. She accepted me in her class at The Montreal Conservatory and I gradually assimilated the basics of her wonderful technical approach. She was fluent in many languages (German, French, Italian, Spanish, Ukrainian) and very well-read. When I worked on the Dante Sonata, she urged me to go through the Divine Comédie, for instance. From time to time, at the end of a long day of teaching, she would invite me to play with her at one piano four-hands or two pianos the Mozart sonatas. She taught me the accentuation, articulation of phrases etc. This was for me a precious and unforgettable experience.” Pelletier adds that her repertoire covered a vast range: the complete Well-Tempered Clavier, all the Beethoven Sonatas (except for 106), the complete Mozart and Beethoven Concerti, and lots of Chopin, Brahms, Liszt, and Scarlatti.

An American pupil who in the 1970s traveled from New York to Toronto every two weeks to take lessons at Kolessa’s beautiful home in the affluent neighbourhood of Rosedale spoke glowingly about her encouraging approach to teaching and holistic music-making.  Whereas other teachers tended to emphasize technique before focusing on tonal quality, with Kolessa it was the reverse: first came the focus on the sound so that the physiological actions would adapt in order to produce the desired sonority. Her linguistic aptitude supported her approach to music and she taught that understanding a composer’s language could help one understand the inflection and other details of their musical idiom: Kolessa stressed that precise notation for composers was not easy and that if you knew the language you would know how what to emphasize, how to breathe, how to phrase. To this end, she would speak in Hungarian to demonstrate an idiomatic approach to Bartok, German for Brahms, and so on.

Kolessa taught well into her old age and died in 1997 at 95. A scholarship in her name was created by some former students at McGill and it was only in the last decade or so that a collection of her recordings was made available on the DoReMi label out of Toronto. While some of the transfers were lacking in the full-bodied sonority that grace some of the master discs, this was an important revival of this great artist to the catalogue, bringing the name of a once idolized artist back to the awareness of collectors and piano fans.

Kolessa On Record

Kolessa made only a handful of studio recordings, all before 1950: a series of Ultraphone discs between 1928 and 1936 (some of them unreleased); a few more for Electrola, the German branch of HMV, mostly short solos and a single piano concerto; and two LPs for the Concert Hall Society in 1949. All of these have been issued on a 3-disc set on the Doremi label, together with a 1936 German broadcast of Mozart’s D Minor Concerto, making up her complete issued recorded legacy, though more broadcasts from her 1954 tour to Germany are known to exist. Regrettably the filtering on some of the older recordings leads a lot to be desired, but the playing is truly astounding, as the fresher transfers of some of these performances below demonstrate.

Kolessa’s sole studio concerto recording – her account of Beethoven’s Third Concerto with Karl Böhm conducting the Sächsische Staatskapelle – may be her only 78rpm-era recording to have been issued on LP. That June 1, 1939 Electrola reading – presented here from an excellent transfer for which I did the side-joins myself – captures her vivacious spirit and refined pianism with great fidelity. The playing is very much like Kolessa herself: refined, distinguished, but with impressive strength and backbone. There is always a full-bodied quality to her sonority regardless of dynamic level, and her nuancing and phrasing are elegant and poetic without the slightest hint of sentimentality or showmanship.

Kolessa’s recording of the Hummel Rondo in E-Flat seems to have been made in 1939 (details are not 100%) and was the ‘filler’ side for the 78rpm set (the Beethoven Concerto took 9 record sides, so the fifth disc had space for another piece). This terrifically clear transfer captures the sparkle, rhythmic vitality, deft articulation, and transparency of Kolessa’s playing with tremendous clarity.

Chopin figured prominently in Kolessa’s recitals, and her 1939 Electrola recording of the composer’s first Waltz in this excellent transfer captures the full-bodied sonority and elegant refinement of the Ukrainian pianist to perfection. Her timing is direct and simple yet elegant (particularly noteworthy are transitions), and her deft articulation is never at the expense of tonal beauty. Lines are elegantly crafted and there is a wonderful interplay between primary and secondary voices.

Kolessa also regularly featured Scarlatti Sonatas in her programmes, with this Sonata in B-Flat Major L.396 appearing to have been a particular favourite. Once again, we hear crisp articulation, gorgeous tone, and transparent textures, her sense of rhythm remarkably steady without ever being rigid.

As stated above, Kolessa made only two LP recordings prior to her 1954 retirement, one of Brahms and another of Schumann, for the Concert Hall Society label in 1949. The Schumann disc featured a glowing traversal of the Schumann Etudes symphoniques Opp.13 and posth and the Toccata Op.7. The Toccata had been featured in her 1948 Carnegie Hall recital while the larger opus was one of the key works in her 1950 recital. A digital LP transfer of the Schumann is currently being remastered and will be shared at a later date – in the meantime, here is the released transfer of Kolessa’s performance of the Etudes symphoniques, in which she incorporates the posthumous variations alongside the Op.13. Here too Kolessa demonstrates her fusion of refined elegance with strength and intelligence: textures are transparent, tone is beautiful at all dynamic levels, timing is natural, architecture and character wonderfully clarified.

Kolessa played several large-scale works in her recitals, and the Brahms Handel Variations Op.24 that she put on disc is one that she had played at least as early as 1921 as per the concert programme reproduced here. As always, Kolessa plays with a combination of strength and elegance, with gorgeous tone, her mindful use of articulation shaping phrases and clarifying the diverse moods of each variation. Chords are impeccably voiced, dynamic levels skillfully layered, lines beautifully burnished, with some very interesting highlighting of left-hand voices often overlooked. A towering performance of this most challenging masterpiece that never never becomes overly weighty or a showpiece for the technical demands of the work.

To close this tribute to this remarkable artist, the Brahms Intermezzo in C-Sharp Minor Op.117 No.3, played with just the right degree of mournfulness and at a spacious tempo in the outer sections without the textures becoming dense or phrasing losing shape, as often happens in contemporary readings of Brahms (the contrast with her briskly-paced middle section is quite remarkable). With beautifully burnished tone, masterfully forged lines, and impeccable timing – most notable at transitions, so often overlooked! – Kolessa reveals depth and emotion with elegance and intelligence, reflecting her true fullness of character and her noble career.

Sincerest thanks to The Brazilian Piano Institute, Rémy Louis, and Michael W for the wonderful concert programmes reproduced in this feature; to Louis-Philippe Pelletier and an anonymous (at her request) pupil of Kolessa for their precious testimonials about this great artist; and to Charles Timbrell and Jean-Pascal Hamelin for their introductions to Kolessa’s pupils. 

I regularly state that we are living in the best time for the availability of historical recordings (I’ve actually been saying this since the 1990s), and 2020 was no exception. With the vast majority of concerts being cancelled, at-home listening and streaming was even more engaged in and despite the terrible challenges facing businesses and the arts, we saw some of our favourite labels release truly stupendous recordings, some previously available and others not.

Here is an overview of some releases that I found particularly impressive in the last year – with the caveat that this is not an exhaustive list by any stretch, simply those that I had the opportunity to hear, which made an impression, and which I believe might be of interest to listeners who subscribe to my page. If you are interested in ordering them (and I encourage you to support as much as possible the companies that are making these recordings available by doing so), the bold text in each paragraph contains a link that will open up a new page featuring the release at an online retailer.

Dinu Lipatti – 70 Years Later

I’ll start off with some publications that are especially meaningful for me because of my longtime involvement with Dinu Lipatti’s legacy – particularly important in 2020 as it was the 70th anniversary of the pianist’s premature death. To begin, APR’s release of Dinu Lipatti’s 1947-48 Columbia recordings, along with his test recordings with cellist Antonio Janigro. I had written the notes for APR’s first issue of the 1947 Abbey Road recordings back in 1999 – a commission which afforded me the opportunity to write my extensive 1999 article about Lipatti in International Piano Quarterly magazine that synthesized many of my findings about the pianist. I proposed this updated set to APR’s current owner Mike Spring (its founder Bryan Crimp produced the earlier set and it was thanks to him that I was able to get into EMI’s archives in 1991) when we last met in London in September 2018 and I am beyond thrilled to see this project completed.

Bryan’s transfers of the 1947 recordings were a revelation back in 1999 and they sound even better today. One of the most important elements is this 1947 account of a Chopin Waltz rarely available in long-playing formats because of Lipatti’s 1950 recording of the complete cycle – but this performance indicates how differently he played when in vibrant health and at EMI’s superb studio:

I had first heard about the Lipatti-Janigro recordings in my first correspondence with EMI in 1989 and it took me 20 years to get the complete existing set from a pupil of the cellists – including the only known recording of Lipatti playing Beethoven. This is the first CD publication of these unissued discs and they are a revelation.

I wrote the booklet notes for this set – some 3500 words or so – which covers a lot of ground about Lipatti’s recording career, including some important socioeconomic factors that had at least as much impact on the volume of Lipatti’s recordings as his illness. I include an excerpt of the notes at this page on my website, as well as the remarkable Beethoven recording, which I share here as well:

Another Lipatti release I was involved with is the culmination of decades of work, and not a recording but a printed publication: a four-section book of images produced by Romanian Cultural Institute entitled ‘Dinu Lipatti – The Musician in Pictures’. I contributed the final of the four chapters, focusing on Lipatti’s recording career and the posthumous hunt for lost recordings. The other chapters by Monica Isacescu, Stefan Costache, and Orlando Murrin all contain many photographs rarely or never seen before, which helps us truly view Lipatti in a different light. It was a delight to be able to work on this project – and once my copies arrived, a thrill to see that some of my words describing Lipatti’s playing were used on the back of the book!

Plans are underway to make the book available for order overseas – I will update this page when it is available for order.

A CD that went under the radar as 2020 came to a close is another Lipatti project for which I made a contribution: the Solstice label’s release of Lipatti’s final concert with orchestra, together with an unpublished audio interview with the pianist. I had done the booklet text and provided a good deal of feedback for the label’s stupendous issue of Lipatti’s last recital a few years ago (a must-buy for anyone who loves Lipatti) and I was happy to finally have the ideal opportunity to get this unpublished interview released – plans to issue it on archiphon in 2000 were scuttled when Tahra released the other two existing Lipatti interviews along with excerpts of this one (the complete interview did not exist in Swiss radio archives but we had a copy).

As always, Solstice did a brilliant job with both audio and presentation, reproducing my English translation of the French interview in a booklet that includes a terrific text by Alain Lompech. The disc features an unusual pairing: the US premiere concerto appearance of another Lefébure and Cortot pupil, Samson Francois. These two very different pianists who trained with the same teachers at the same time, both on the same disc, does indeed make for fascinating listening – highly recommended.

Closing a chapter

Pristine Classical continued its series of releases devoted to Jascha Spivakovsky, the Russian-born pianist who had a tremendous career but who issued no commercial recordings prior to his death in 1970. The ‘Bach to Bloch’ series begun in 2015 by Pristine together with Jascha’s son and grandson wrapped up in 2020 with the final disc in the series, the one on which the ‘Bach to Bloch’ was based: concert performances of Bach’s D Minor Concerto (in Busoni’s transcription) and Bloch’s Concerto Symphonique, a work the pianist prepared with the help of the composer. I became so enamoured with this pianist’s playing upon hearing the first release that I was quickly put in contact with the family, whom I visited in 2016, and commissioned to write the notes for each publication. I love each release and seeing the series draw to a close was both rewarding and disappointing; I can only hope that more recordings of the pianist will be found and issued (there are some duo recordings with his more famous brother, violinist Tossy Spivakovsky, that are under consideration).

Exceptional Eloquence

Another project that I was involved with which thrilled me came from the Eloquence label – by far the best of the big-label producers of historic reissues, with fantastic selections, marvellous remasterings, and informative booklets with superb presentation. (This recorded interview with Eloquence head honcho Cyrus Meher-Homji is well worth hearing.) I was commissioned to write the notes for a reissue of Jan Smeterlin’s glorious 1954 account of Chopin’s Nocturnes, together with a BBC broadcast and unpublished test record. Smeterlin’s playing is exquisite and the entire set is to me a revelation; researching and writing about this artist and his pianism was a true joy and unfortunately his relative obscurity and lack of showmanship might lead to his continuing to be overlooked – I do hope readers of this page will explore this remarkable 2-disc set. You can read my notes and explore the recordings at this post that I made on my website.

The same series of two-disc sets also featured by two other pianists I adore, Agnelle Bundervoët and Albert Ferber. Bundervoët is a somewhat fabled pianist who produced only one LP on Ducretet-Thomson and 3 French Decca discs before retiring from regular performance due to rheumatoid arthritis. Original pressings of these scarce discs fetch massive sums at auctions and while in recent years some broadcast recordings have been issued, her studio recordings were never officially remastered and issued (Sakuraphon did fine vinyl transfers a few years ago). Eloquence did an incredible job of reviving the master tapes and presenting them with a marvellous text written by my dear friend and colleague Frederic Gaussin, who was Bundervoët’s last pupil. An exceptional release.

Albert Ferber made some superb recordings, very few of which have been reissued (his complete Debussy cycle on a budget EMI box is a must) and the Decca recordings issued in this new set were completely new to me. While Ferber occasionally lacks that nth degree of bite in some of these performances, the craftsmanship is always on display and there is much to appreciate in his playing.

Two big box sets produced by the label last year are also exceptional: Ruth Slenczynska’s Complete American Decca Recordings and Andor Foldes’s Complete Deutsche Grammophon Recordings. Both are wonderfully remastered (some of the Foldes source material was more problematic), presented with original LP artwork sleeves, and with stunning booklets eloquently written by Stephen Siek. Both sets feature masterful playing by these artists and will be highly prized by fans of great piano playing.

Slenczynska has a unique pedigree, having had lessons with Hofmann, Rachmaninoff, Cortot, Schnabel, and Petri. The child prodigy abandoned concert career in her teens after enduring unspeakable stress at the hands of her cruel father, but resumed performance in the 1950s after her first marriage ended in divorce. The 10 LPs she produced for American Decca sound better than ever in this glorious remasterings, the refinement of her nuancing and robustness of her sonority being far more appreciable than in any online uploads. This phenomenal Rachmaninoff Prelude performance is but a taste of what can be heard in this terrific set:

Andor Foldes is a pianist I came to appreciate when I was commissioned to write the notes for an Eloquence release of his Mozart Concerto recordings a few years ago. I just adore his philosophies and playing, which you can read about and hear at this link on my website. This new box set is very welcome indeed, with some fabulous performances of a massive range of repertoire. As a pianist who worked with Bartok and Kodaly, Foldes brings some important insights to his playing of their works (he witnessed Bartok suggesting that a student play ‘a little less Bartokish’ – in other words, without banging), and his readings of all composers’ works are founded on intelligence and elegance. I am preparing a longer feature about him on my website, with recollections of a Hungarian colleague of mine in Japan who studied with him for years (one amazing insight: Foldes suggested nuancing by adjusting tonal colour more than timing).

Smaller labels

The APR label continues to produce exceptional compilations of great artists in discographically important releases that are essential in the collections of historical recording fans. In addition to the exceptional Lipatti release, APR produced three other superb sets of great importance last year: Wihelm Backhaus’s 1940s studio recordings, Aline van Barentzen’s earliest recordings, and Magda Tagliaferro’s complete 78-rpm solo and concerto recordings. In all three cases not every recording could be claimed to be these artists’ best efforts on disc – I have a particular fondness for Backhaus’s 1920s and 30s recordings (expertly issued by APR in recent years) and Barentzen’s early LPs – but these sets are of tremendous interest and historical value, as much for the recordings as the insightful documentation in the booklets.

How fascinating to learn, for example, that Barentzen was booked for the world premiere recording of Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain a matter of days before the 1928 sessions because Ricardo Viñes fell ill and unable to fulfill his commitment to record the piece (a great shame, it must be admitted). Barentzen learned the work in 3 days – and what a performance it is!

With Tagliaferro, there is always elegance, personality, and refinement, and there are many gems in this set, among them her recording of the obscure Reynaldo Hahn Piano Concerto (dedicated to her) with the composer conducting, played with inimitable wit and charm:

Backhaus was a different pianist after the war and would leave HMV for Decca, details of which are recounted in the booklet in a text by APR’s now-retired founder Bryan Crimp. But there is still very fine playing on this set, particularly a wartime Mozart Coronation Concerto which features the pianist’s own cadenzas.

2020 saw another set of superb releases by the marvellous collectors’ specialist label Meloclassic, with 9 piano issues and other sets featuring fine violinists and other musicians. Each issue features either well-known artists in rare performances (and/or repertoire) or artists who have been overlooked by posterity. Each of the new sets last year feature inspiring performances by legends such as John Ogden (a jawdropping Hammerklavier and complete Chopin Op.25!), Wilhelm Kempff, Andor Foldes, and Monique Haas (in chamber music – a delight!) as well as less-appreciated artists such as Poldi Mildner (truly top-tier), Hans Richter-Haaser, and Madeleine de Valmalete. A 2-disc set of Soviet pianists included two new to me, Nina Yemelyanova and  Tatyana Goldfarb – both fabulous – alongside better known Tatyana Nikolaeva and Lev Oborin. This was my first time to hear Yara Bernette – a 100th anniversary celebratory release – and the Stefan Askenase set was another welcome addition. Collectors know to pay attention when Meloclassic issues their productions and this latest batch is a treasure trove indeed.

Rhine Classics delivers two more releases in their Fiorentino and Scarpini series, one new set of each artist. After 2019’s jaw-dropping complete Rachmaninoff solo music by Fiorentino, 2020 saw a 9-CD set of the Italian pianist in recital in the US in the last three years of his life (1996-98). All master tapes were provided by Ernst Lumpe, the German collector who brought Fiorentino back to the concert stage and the studio (Lumpe introduced me to his playing when I first visited him in 1990). The sound is superb, as is the playing throughout – always insightful, moving, individual yet idiomatic. There is one recital at which he experienced some memory lapses, but even there his playing was mesmerizing, and each disc features some of the most sublime pianism you could hope to hear – every note, phrase, piece is beautifully played.

Pietro Scarpini is featured in a 5-CD set of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Die Kunst de Fuge, salvaged from tapes of both radio broadcasts and home sessions recorded for the pianist’s own documentation. The playing is less consistent than we hear in previous releases of Scarpini’s broadcast performances on this label (some ear- and eye-opening performances that I adore), and he can go from rather mundane phrasing to utterly sublime nuancing from one second to the next. He tends to eschew the pedal and employs some expansive ritardandi that are definitely arresting and insightful, and his overall approach reminds me of Alexander Borowsky’s account: earthy, almost rustic in its directness (he doesn’t emphasize burnished tonal colours), with a less-than-ideal instrument that almost sounds historical – a fascinating take that will be of particular interest to Scarpini fans and those exploring unconventional takes of these magnum opera.

Another smaller label, Sonetto Classics, released a fascinating two-disc set devoted to recordings of the enigmatic Hungarian pianist Ervin Nyiregyhazi. With a catalogue including living pianists Angelo Villani and Norma Fisher (all highly recommended releases) and an important previous release of Nyiregyhazi, this new set yet again features the idiosyncratic Hungarian pianist in rare performances in the best possible sound, soon after his ‘rediscovery’ and in his final recordings, 1973 and 1984 respectively. The playing is, as could be expected, not for the faint of heart, but it there is far less bombast than in some of his official studio efforts and the readings are both contemplative and insightful. The set contains two booklets, a well-documented text by Nyiregyhazi biographer Kevin Bazzana and a 20-page booklet of photographs of the pianist’s 1982 visit to Japan.

The Danacord label produced two sets that I consider essential listening: the conclusion of their series devoted to the great Danish pianist Victor Schiøler, who studied with both Schnabel and Friedman, and a teacher of Victor Borge. I am delighted to own all five sets they’ve produced – I’m a huge admirer of Schiøler – and each two-disc volume is superb, featuring nothing less than marvellous playing in each work. These latest sets – Volume 4 and Volume 5 – were issued in the first half of 2020 and include some concert performances alongside studio accounts, all in wonderful sound and featuring the pianist’s insightful playing. Who else could play a work as prone to exaggerated sentimentality and pomposity as Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-Sharp Minor with such elegance and musicality? A must!

Specialist label Marston Records put out two astounding piano releases this year that feature some amazing rarities, many of which have never been available before. The first is the highly-anticipated Volume 2 of their Landmarks of Recorded Pianism series. The set features studio and broadcast recordings by a host of legendary artists – Rosenthal, Grainger, Hambourg, Renard – as well as lesser known brilliant pianists like Reah Sadowsky and Etelka Freund. Among the most sky-opening performances in the set – some of the greatest playing of anything by anyone that I’ve heard – is a 1933 Tokyo radio broadcast of Ignaz Friedman which, despite the poor sound, reveals pianism even more expansive and powerful than his fabled commercial records. This video I prepared for Marston features some key excerpts from the set:

The year closed with a Marston set that includes all known existing recordings of the legendary Russian pianist Josef Lhevinne, including recordings that had never circulated amongst collectors. Considering he recorded nothing but short works – and barely an hour – hearing him in Tchaikovsky’s Concerto and a Brahms Quartet is a previously unimaginable pleasure! Below, my promo video for the set:

Amongst new recordings, there is one release by a pianist whom I know and admire greatly that is the highlight: Benjamin Grosvenor with his new disc of Chopin Concertos. This is not only one of the great modern accounts but could easily be counted among the greatest of all time, with exquisitely refined nuancing and beauty of tone in every measure. I am convinced that had Grosvenor put down his accounts in the 1930s, we would still be listening to them. Superb in every way.

As stated at the start of this feature, this is not an exhaustive list by any stretch – there are many recordings, both modern and historical, that I might have included had I heard them. With 2020 having been such a challenging year for the arts, it was fortunately still a banner year for recording releases, and I hope that artists and producers will be able to continue their work through 2021 and beyond. Our support is important, so please do purchase original sets when you can to support the labels in what was already a challenging economic climate for releasing recordings. Long may we have great music beautifully played to soothe our souls.

Clara Haskil died on December 7, 1960 as a result of injuries sustained in a fall at Brussels train station. She was only 65 at the time. Haskil had languished in obscurity for most of her life, finally enjoying international recognition in the last decade of her life, before this premature and truly tragic end.

It is likely Haskil’s suffering from several health issues and other challenges that imbued her playing with a sense of pathos that made her readings of the works of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann especially poignant; in Mozart and Schumann she was truly masterful in balancing the contradictory states of childlike innocence and existential angst. That said, Haskil was a brilliant interpreter of a much broader spectrum of the musical literature than is indicated by her official discography, which stems largely from studio sessions with the Philips and Deutsche Grammophon labels in the last ten years of her life. While a number of concert recordings have been released and therefore expanded her repertoire of recorded works, there are less-known private and test recordings are less known that are equally revealing and valuable, offering glimmers of greater insight into this tremendous musician’s artistry.

Perhaps the earliest recording we have of the artist is this Columbia test recording ca.1926 of Liszt’s Gnomenreigen – of interest not only because of its capturing Haskil’s playing almost a decade before her first issued recording of 1934 but because she would later produce not a single recording of Liszt’s music. As can be heard here, her technique and musicality are put to perfect use in this virtuosic repertoire.

Although she made a few shorter recordings in the 1930s, it wasn’t until 1947 that she would make her first large-scale recording: an account of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4 in G Major, conducted by Carlo Zecchi, who was a magnificent pianist himself (he was a disciple of Busoni) before becoming a conductor. Haskil plays with supple phrasing, remarkably transparent voicing, and glistening singing tone – the second movement is particularly ravishing, her voicing of chords being breathtaking.

Around the same time as this recording, Haskil gave a fascinating broadcast performance on the BBC, with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting, of Émile-Robert Blanchet’s Konzertstück Op.14. Haskil plays with a beautifully polished sonority, impressive virtuosity, and evocative nuancing (what wonderful pedalling). A fascinating and little-known rarity – a gem in her already glorious discography.

One of Haskil’s rarer studio recordings is a glorious reading of the Brahms Piano Quintet Op.34 with the Winterthur Quartet (with Peter Rybar on violin) that was recorded around the late 1940s. Although she would record in a collaborative role with violinist Arthur Grumiaux, she did not record in larger ensembles except for this rarely-available performance (she also recorded no other Brahms in her studio sessions). The performance here features wonderful ensemble, beautiful voicing, rhythmic vitality, long lines, and that marvellous singing sound of Haskil’s (discernible through the clicks and pops of the LP transfer).

One of Haskil’s first LPs was a Westminster disc featuring 11 Scarlatti Sonatas, which is a marvellous example of her artistry, especially her noted capacity to play with astounding directness and clarity – the fluidity of her phrasing and beauty of her tone are beguiling. Anyone who thinks this music is ‘simple’ would do well to listen carefully to these performances and try to emulate a single phrase with such elegance, transparency, and refinement. The clip below features 5 of the 11 Sonatas on that rarely-reissued disc.

Haskil’s crystalline playing was ideal for so many composers’ works and it is a shame that we have only one recording of her in Mendelssohn, a 1936 account of the Pièce Caractéristique Op.7 No.4, played with wonderful rhythm, clarity of articulation, and marvellous pedalling.

Even the many recordings of recitals that Haskil gave in the 1950s that have circulated amongst collectors and been unofficially released are missing works by certain composers that she played, leading many to believe she never played them at all.  This private recording of Rachmaninoff’s Etude-Tableau in C Major Op.33 No.2 is truly unexpected, as there’s not a note of Haskil playing Russian repertoire in her studio or concert discography. Despite having been captured on an amateur device on a somewhat out-of-tune piano, this performance is a fascinating opportunity to hear the Romanian pianist in this repertoire – the only known example of her playing a work by the great Russian composer. What long soaring melodic lines, spacious timing, and rich textures we hear in this fascinating performance!

As mentioned in reference to the Brahms Quintet recording, Haskil made no official recordings of solo works by that composer, which makes this home recording of the Capriccio Op.76 No.5 (one of two Brahms works she recorded at the time) all the more intriguing. Her clarity of texture and emotive timing reveal the harmonic richness of the music without the weightiness that seems to have become the norm today (über-serious readings of his works are now virtually ubiquitous), and her wonderful shaping of lines and gorgeous tone are appreciable despite the less-than-ideal piano.