Posts Categorized: The Piano Files

March 19 is the anniversary of Dinu Lipatti’s birth – though as was recently discovered, Romania was using a different calendar at the time, so that date today would in fact be April 1st. Nevertheless, as this day is still the pianist’s official birthday, I thought this might be a good time to create a single page with some updates about Lipatti happenings, including links to some new online media.

A few weeks ago, I uploaded the three solo works that Lipatti had played at his February 7, 1950 Zurich concert that featured the Chopin First Concerto. While it has been popularly (and quite logically) believed that these were encores, quite against convention these three Chopin solos were programmed in the concert and played after intermission. This exemplary transfer from the challenging source material is features these performances complete and in the best possible sound with the available tapes and discs:

Lipatti’s playing had gone through some transformation in the three years since his first Columbia recordings, with more expansive phrasing and a deeper emotional expressiveness. On March 1 and 4, 1947 the pianist would make his only large-scale solo recording at Abbey Road Studios in London, the Chopin B Minor Sonata. The performance was a huge hit, winning the Grand Prix du Disque and being universally acclaimed by critics and amateurs alike. However, most LP transfers of the beautifully recorded 78s have muffled Lipatti’s thoroughly grand playing, restricting his tonal colours and dynamic range. The best issued transfer is still Bryan Crimp’s magnificent work from his APR label 1999 CD featuring the pianist’s complete 1947 Abbey Road recordings: Crimp was able to produce vinyl pressings from the original metal masters, resulting in clean surfaces and full-bodied sound greater than any other transfer thus far released.

The most famous event in Lipatti’s life was his last recital, a September 16, 1950 performance in Besancon that was recorded and broadcast on French radio and eventually released in 1957. Both the event and the recording have become the stuff of legend, the incredible performance being hailed as a classic of the gramophone. While the recording has been regularly reissued, all subsequent releases have been based on the first transfer issued by EMI in 1957. Solstice Records in France has finally gone back to the master broadcast tape to produce what is the best sounding and first complete release of the broadcast, including all spoken announcements, audience noise, and warmup arpeggios played by the pianist (for some reason, EMI released only 2 sets of arpeggios out of the 4). Included in the production is a massive 50-page booklet for which I produced a 3600-word text; additional text and documentation is provided by French radio archivists, and there are many unpublished photos, including some taken during the recital itself. You can order the CD directly from Solstice in France at this link.

A taste of the beautiful warmups before the Schubert, with the rest of the performance taken from the EMI CD – the new Solstice one sounds vastly superior than this:

Amazingly, despite so many years having passed since his death, new Lipatti recordings are being found, with five short works having been released on the Marston Records label’s Volume 1 of Landmarks of Recorded Pianism. Last year in New York, I was in Jed Distler’s studio to record a few episodes of his radio program Between The Keys, and our first episode tells the full story of the discovery of these incredibly precious recordings and provides the only online opportunity to hear a couple of them (two works by Brahms):

Today the next episode will be aired, which will feature some Lipatti performances as well as playing by two other pianists close to my heart, Marcelle Meyer and Jorge Bolet. Check my Hearthis page for an upload that will take place after the broadcast (this posting will later be edited to include the link here).

Two years ago on March 19, for the 100th anniversary of the pianist’s birth, I was a guest on Gary Lemco’s radio program The Music Treasury out of Stanford, California. I uploaded the broadcast to YouTube with relevant photographs and documents to give the tribute a more visual dimension:

Almost 70 years after his death, Dinu Lipatti is still an inspiration to musicians and piano fans, and more is in the works to make his artistry more widely known and available. Stay tuned for more details!

The great Polish pianist Ignaz Friedman was born on this day in 1882. The highly individual interpreter was largely ignored by recording companies after his death in 1948: Columbia never issued a single LP (or CD) containing any of several hours’ worth of 78rpm discs he produced for the label. I first read about the artist in Harold C Schonberg’s classic tome The Great Pianists in the mid-1980s, when I first got into historical recordings, and dreamed of finding the Nocturne in E-Flat Op.55 No.2 that he wrote so poetically about; I would have to wait until Schonberg himself gave a lecture in my home town of Montreal in 1988 and played the performance… and naturally, nothing was the same thereafter. I soon after finally found a second-hand LP produced by Allan Evans containing some of the pianist’s legendary Chopin recordings… and eventually his discography would be issued with Evans’ diligence, on LP with Danacord and on CD with Pearl, with subsequent issues by a variety of companies, including Evans’ own Arbiter label.

One particularly remarkable Friedman memory is when I first visited Bryan Crimp, founder of the APR label, in May 1990. We went into his studio, which had massive speakers, and one of the discs we listened to was a transfer he had made of Friedman’s glorious reading of Chopin’s Impromptu No.2. I’ll never forget the experience of my body being awash in the waves of sound featuring that glorious tone, soaring phrasing, and magical pedal effects – truly an incredible experience.

Friedman’s playing is not for the faint of heart, particularly as the conception of Romanticism these days is much more sanitized than things actually were during that era and those that immediately followed it. The Polish pianist’s pianism is bold and impetuous, quixotic and evocative, individual in a way that can be startling to some listeners today… but truly today’s pianists are by and large individual in a much more self-centred way than was Friedman, despite the stated intention of respecting the score. When Friedman stretches a phrase, he is not just adjusting the timing but also the dynamic shading, tonal colour, and auric quality (via the pedal and touch), as well as its relationship with harmonic and other melodic elements – but modern ears tend to hear things along a single plane and not this multi-dimensional shift.

Particularly remarkable are Friedman’s legendary traversal of Chopin Mazurkas, which feature a rhythmic pulse and accenting that are completely different from the norm. Yet Friedman actually danced this folk song as a child in his native country, and Chopin was known to have insisted on particular accenting in mazurkas: Schonberg writes of an incident when Meyerbeer visited Chopin and the two ended up in a disagreement of the rhythmic element of his mazurkas, Meyerbeer saying he was playing it 2/4 and Chopin insisting it was 3/4. To those who find Friedman’s readings unsettling, it is worth considering: is there any guarantee that if by some miracle a recording of Chopin was found we would like it? And if not, what does that suggest about our tastes and preferences, when musicians and music lovers today speak so strongly about the need to respect the composer’s wishes and the score?

Here is an hour and twenty minutes of Friedman playing Chopin, including that amazing Impromptu and Nocturne, and those hair-raising (and eyebrow-raising) Mazurkas. I’m not saying everyone needs to love or even like these recordings – but it is worth listening multiple times, recognizing whatever inclination you might have towards a certain style (and *why)… and listening again with fresher ears. There is magic to be found here, and questions to sit with, even if there is no real answer.

Since my introduction to historical recordings in the mid-1980s, Edwin Fischer has been one of my favourite musicians. The Swiss pianist had famously made the first complete recording of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier in the 1930s and was known for his interpretations of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms.

Early in my research into the art and recordings of Dinu Lipatti (who had coached briefly with Fischer when the young Romanian arrived in Switzerland in 1943), I was introduced by another researcher (via correspondence) to London-based Roger Smithson, who was researching Fischer recordings. This was back in the day when one wrote actual letters overseas – there was no internet – and we had a very engaging correspondence, with Roger being a great help in introducing me to people and places I might contact in my attempt to locate unpublished Lipatti recordings. We would meet each time I visited London in the early 90s while on Lipatti research visits, and we maintained contact over the years.

Roger has continually been updating his discography of Fischer and recently offered to share his findings publicly. We met again in London in September 2018, along with Fischer’s pupil Gerald Kingsley, who has provided terrific insight to help with Roger’s research, and we discussed having the finished document detailing all of Fischer’s uploaded online – and it is now housed in this post (the link is at the bottom of the page).

Although Fischer made his debut during World War I, his first recording session was as late as May 1928 – when the pianist was 41 – at the Electrola studios in Berlin. However, this session yielded no published discs: that would have to wait until October 1931, a full three years later, at which he recorded this Händel Chaconne in G Major HWV 435. It was the first work put on disc at both of these sessions, and the issued 1931 recording has not been regularly rereleased. Here is, in a magnificent transfer directly from an original Victor pressing (effected by and kindly provided by Tom Jardine), Edwin Fischer’s first commercial recording:

 

 

Another wonderful and rarely released Händel recording is the Suite No.3 in D Minor, which captures Fischer’s vitality and robust pianism to perfection:

 

 

Fischer is particularly famous for having made the first complete account on records of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (read here for more about the first aborted attempt with other pianists). Artur Schnabel was recording the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas funded by subscriptions to The Beethoven Society (records were produced once sufficient funds for each forthcoming volume had been collected), and a similar process was undertaken for Fischer’s traversal of the WTC. Fischer recorded the cycle at 17 sessions at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios (in addition to one session in Berlin that yielded no usable discs) between 1933 and 1936. The final result was five volumes of records:

Vol. 1 (7 records) Book 1: Preludes and Fugues Nos. 1 to 12
Vol. 2 (7 records) Book 1: Preludes and Fugues Nos.13 to 24
Vol. 3 (7 records) Book 2: Preludes and Fugues Nos. 1 to 10
Vol. 4 (7 records) Book 2: Preludes and Fugues Nos. 11 to 19
Vol. 5 (6 records) Book 2: Preludes and Fugues Nos. 20 to 24
(the final set includes the English Suite No.2 in A Minor played by Wanda Landowska on the harpsichord)

Here is the first of that massive undertaking of ‘The 48’ – although Fischer recorded this first Prelude & Fugue on April 25, 1933 when he began the cycle, all takes of the work made on that day were rejected in favour of this later attempt on September 12, 1933 (again, our thanks to Tom Jardine for his transfer):

 

 

While Fischer famously recorded three Bach Concerti from the keyboard in the 1930s (and, as the discography reveals, others that were not released), and his Mozart Concerto recordings are justly celebrated, his 1942 reading of the Haydn Concerto in D Major has received much less airplay: it was only issued twice (never with the parent record company) on LP and has had scant distribution on CD. This magnificent performance finds Fischer playing with great aplomb and vitality:

 

 

Roger Smithson’s discography covers not only studio recordings, both released and unreleased (there are some details about unissued studio recordings that are tantalizing indeed), but also all known surviving broadcast recordings. We are fortunate that Fischer lived into the tape era of the 1950s, which led to the existence of concert recordings captured in fine sound. Despite Fischer being of a more advanced age at this time, we can hear him in wonderful form in repertoire he did not otherwise commit to disc. One such glorious performance is his August 9, 1952 Salzburg broadcast of Beethoven’s ‘Archduke’ Trio Op.97, featuring marvellous collaborative playing amongst the three stellar musicians – Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Enrico Mainardi, and Edwin Fischer – making this a worthy contender for a reference recording of the work:

 

 

Another fine later performance of a work not in his commercial discography took place a month later: Fischer’s September 23, 1952 Munich account of Beethoven’s Fantasia Op.77, which reveals in wonderful sound his glowing sonority, fluid phrasing, and attentive voicing:

 

 

I hope that the availability of Fischer’s discography will invite piano fans to investigate more of this great pianist’s artistry through the many hours of recordings that he left us. Many thanks to Roger Smithson for making his work available to us!

Click the bold text to download a PDF file of the Edwin Fischer Discography by Roger Smithson

We are truly living in the most amazing time to be enjoying historical piano recordings: the offerings that are now available were an absolute dream even just a decade or two ago, let alone in the LP era or before. I recall how remarkable it was when CDs were first sold in the 1980s that historical recordings began to be released at an unparalleled rate, and fortunately this trend has continued. And the discoveries that have been made in recent years have been remarkable too. So here, in no particular order, are the mostly ‘historical’ piano recordings made available in 2018 that most struck me.

 

One of the most incredible releases of the year – and in fact of all time – is Marston’s incredible set devoted to the private recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff playing through his Symphonic Dances at the piano in Eugene Ormandy’s living room in late 1940, a few weeks before the orchestral work’s premiere. I knew that a Rachmaninoff discovery had been made though I was told that I would need to wait for the details, and when Marston approached me to ask if I would produce the promotional video for the set, I was thrilled to learn what had been found – and of course once I heard the playing, I couldn’t have been more amazed. I literally lost sleep for the first two nights that I had the recordings, waking up in the middle of the night to listen again to the stunning playing, unlike anything else we have of the great Rachmaninoff. It has been reported that many who heard him in concert stated that his playing in commercial recordings was different than what they had heard, and this discovery reveals what they are pointing to: soaring phrasing, dynamic and tonal shadings of remarkable refinement, and rhythmic tautness are simply some of the amazing qualities on display… and hearing the composer sing along while he plays is incredibly insightful as well.

Also included in the set is another recording very close to my heart: Benno Moiseiwitsch’s 1946 BBC broadcast of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. I had first obtained this on cassette in the late 1980s and shared it enthusiastically with my contacts, including Gregor Benko and Bryan Crimp; the latter then sent it to Moiseiwitsch’s daughter, who had never heard it before and said she thought it was her father’s greatest reading of the work, while Benko stated that it could be his favourite recording of anyone playing anything. A few years ago, the performance was released on the Testament label and it turns out that the source for that was a copy of a cassette that could be traced back to me! – but at long last the source material was located, and the performance now sounds as good as one could hope for… and the playing goes well beyond that.

Here is that promotional video that I produced for the set:

 

Another Marston release included some private recordings that were also somewhat ‘Top Secret’ for quite a while, something I was involved with for a decade leading up to their eventual release: the first of the new iteration of Landmarks of Recorded Pianism included unofficial recordings made by Dinu Lipatti in repertoire he didn’t otherwise record. In 2008 I first learned of a collector in Brooklyn who had these Lipatti discs but we were unable to actually obtain the records until he died a few years later,  and unfortunately most of them were unplayable by that time. But what playing the ones we salvaged reveal! As in the Rachmaninoff release, we hear another side of Lipatti’s playing, much bolder and more impetuous than his more reserved and ‘careful’ studio accounts for the British Columbia label. I tell the tale of these discs in this interview with Jed Distler (starting just around the 29-minute mark), and the two Brahms performances that are released can be heard in the program too:

Here is the promotional video I produced for the set, which includes photographs of the discs that show the unfortunate damage they had suffered:

It is not just the Lipatti on this set that makes it worthwhile: one of the other incredible recordings that I find thoroughly remarkable is a performance by one Josef Labor of part of a Beethoven Sonata movement. Labor was born a mere 15 years after Beethoven died, and the blind pianist-composer (who taught Schoenberg and Mahler’s wife Alma) plays in a style that is truly a throwback to another era of pianism and music-making, very different to our current sensibilities but absolutely spellbinding if we truly wish to consider ‘authenticity’ to a composer’s intentions. When playing this to a group of students who were taken aback by the rubato and dislocation of hands, I asked if there was any guarantee that we would like a recording of Beethoven playing should one be found – and if not, if we somehow think that ‘our way’ is better… what does that mean to the art of interpretation? A must-hear set for lovers of fine piano playing!

 

Marston ends the year with a 7-disc set devoted to the playing of Sidney Foster, a remarkable pianist and teacher whose playing is vividly remembered by those lucky enough to have heard him. Unfortunately he recorded very little and many of his faculty recitals were marred by poor microphone placement or other sonic interference. His pupil Alberto Reyes, a longtime subscriber to and supporter of The Piano Files, has written and spoken eloquently about his great mentor, and played a significant role in this release in addition to writing the marvellous notes accompanying the CDs here, which feature some stupendous playing by the great pianist. You can listen to Reyes and Jed Distler in conversation with some Foster recordings here:

This glorious concert performance of Chopin’s Fourth Ballade, while not note-perfect, is musically and pianistically of stupendous musicality and insight. Sublime pianism and music-making!

 

I have been involved with the release of Jascha Spivakovsky recordings on the Pristine Classical label (writing the release notes and brainstorming compilation sequencing) and 2018 saw the release of three more CDs in the series. All of these are to my ears extraordinary, so it is hard for me to choose a single one of these releases as being ‘better’ than the other. One reading that does stand out is the Italian Concerto by Bach in Volume 6 of the Bach To Bloch series demonstrates a capacity to terrace lines and present cohesiveness of structure in a manner remarkably similar to that of Dinu Lipatti – and be sure to check out the embedded player in the link to Volume 6 to hear the first movement of a stupendous performance of Schumann’s Piano Sonata No.3.

 

The APR label has long played an important in releasing historical piano recordings and this year saw a stellar set of issues, from the virtually forgotten Walter Rehberg to overlooked early recordings by the never-forgotten Wilhelm Backhaus. Rehberg is a pianist I only came across via YouTube while operating my Facebook page and it’s incredible that a three-disc set of this artist should now be available – I don’t know that a single LP devoted to his artistry was ever produced. This 1937 recording of Liszt’s Les jeux d’eaux a la Villa d’Este gives an example of the superb musicianship to be heard in this pianist’s readings:

 

The Russian-born pianist Mark Hambourg recorded a great deal but has not been well represented on LP, and although some CDs of his playing have been produced, they have covered a mere fraction of what he recorded. APR’s two-disc set devoted to Encores and Rarities recorded between 1910 and 1935 features a wide range of repertoire. While some of the playing will be more spontaneous and devil-may-care than modern ears are used to, there is equally astoundingly beautiful and subtle pianism that can leave the listener quite breathless at the sumptuous playing:

 

Wilhelm Backhaus had a career that covered six decades with the gramophone, from acoustic discs in 1908 to his final live concert in 1969, but many of the German pianist’s earlier performances have been bypassed in favour of later ones, though more ardent pianophiles are aware that it is was he who recorded the first complete account of Chopin Etudes in 1928 (one that was unfortunately almost impossible to find in the LP era). That cycle is presented together with other recordings made between 1925 and 1937 of a wide range of repertoire in APR’s must-have two-disc release that shows the pianist’s true versatility: one fine example is this fiery traversal of Moszkowski’s Caprice Espagnol Op.37, the kind of showpiece that would not be associated with the pianist in the final decades of his career.

 

Another pianist whose recordings have languished is the Italian pupil of Busoni, Carlo Zecchi, who would later turn to conducting. The pianist’s early recordings feature some truly devil-may-care readings that have long been cherished by collectors in their previous rare LP or CD incarnations. APR’s set includes all of these amazing performances, including a superb Bach Brandenburg Concerto No.5 and some of the most dazzling Liszt you could ever hope to hear (the video below comes from an earlier remastering of the Paganini-Liszt Etude No.4).

 

A wonderful end-of-year release from Rhine Classics includes two fantastic sets devoted to the Italian pianist Pietro Scarpini. A wonderful pianist not well represented on records, Scarpini was an elusive figure who played with marvellous tonal colours and disarming directness. One six-disc set focuses on works by Busoni and Liszt (including a stupendous Busoni Piano Concerto in glorious sound) while another two-disc set features his Mozart: glowing, sumptuous, forthright playing of two piano concertos and some solo works (the clip below is from an unofficial source with sound that is inferior to the new release):

 

One release hot off the presses distinguishes itself as the only video in this selection of the year: a filmed concert performance of Beethoven’s sublime Piano Concerto No.4 in G Major by Australian pianist Bruce Hungerford. This is the only known film footage of Hungerford in performance and when the master pianist’s devoted disciple Donald Isler learned of its existence via the Facebook clip shared by Meloclassic below, he negotiated the release of the entire concert on his own label KASP Records. Hungerford’s playing is indeed stupendous and in enjoying the performance I realized that I had only ever heard the artist in solo repertoire. An important addition to the pianist’s discography (as are the live recitals released on the same label) and of great interest to piano fans. This excerpt of the cadenza and end of the first movement is a fine example of the playing on this wonderful DVD:

 

I went through most of the year without having realized that Decca had put on CD the complete Debussy recordings of Dutch pianist-composer Hans Henkemans, whose playing I first encountered in the last decade while scouring YouTube pages searching for clips to share on my Facebook page.(Unfortunately, I also missed the fact that Decca have put out Alicia de Larroccha’s complete recordings for that label – I’ll have to report on those later but I’m sure they’re superb.) Henkemans was tasked with recording the first complete cycle of Debussy piano music for the newly founded Philips label in Holland when the label was founded in 1951, and while some of these performances made it to CD, this is the first time that the complete set is available, and there is indeed some stellar playing here. While there are a few readings that I found less convincing (L’Isle joyeuse, for example), there is a lot to love: the pianist’s luscious tone, with beautifully defined articulation fused with wonderful pedalling, help the relatively forgotten musician forge some fascinating interpretations, and the overall recorded sound is stupendous – well beyond what one might expect from the time.

 

Another Debussy performer who made it to CD in 2018 (which was the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death) is Marius-François Gaillard, who is heard in Arbiter’s fascinating compilation Debussy’s Traces alongside other neglected pianists (and the composer himself in his only disc recordings, accompanying soprano Mary Garden). Gaillard’s earthy but evocative readings make him a fascinating addition to the pantheon of Debussy interpreters. There is more than one way to play great music and it is fascinating to hear those who were contemporaries of the composer play in a style different to that which has come to be the norm.

 

While this is not a comprehensive listing of all of the ‘top’ releases of the year, these are among those that I have found very satisfying and which I hope will bring you great pleasure as well.

 

I’m looking forward to what 2019 will bring… and I can tell you that Lipatti lovers will soon be thrilled by a new presentation of a familiar recording whose release was delayed until early this year. Stay tuned – and happy listening!

I had never heard the name of Evlyn Howard-Jones until I stumbled across some YouTube uploads of a few Bach Preludes and Fugues that were played with extraordinary beauty. It turns out that this British pianist recorded eight of these works in what was ostensibly to be the first recording of the complete Well-Tempered Clavier, shared by several pianists: the Columbia label had recorded Harriet Cohen playing the first nine Preludes and Fugues on October 11-12, 1928, and then Howard-Jones recorded the next eight on October 8, 1929 and February 19, 1930. It is believed that Harold Samuel was intended to record the remainder of Book 1, but the project folded when HMV merged with Columbia.

These performances have to my knowledge received no LP transfer and it was only a single Biddulph CD released in 1995 (LHW 023, long out of print) in transfers by David Lennick that featured both Cohen’s and Howard-Jones’ landmark recordings. Previous uploads have only included Preludes and Fugues 10 through 16 as the online source for No.17 had some technical glitches, but I fortunately located a copy of the full set and am therefore making Howard-Jones’ complete contribution to the project available in a single upload.

It’s most unfortunate that Evlyn Howard-Jones is so forgotten and that his recordings are so hard to come by, as the playing on these discs is absolutely magnificent: a beautifully polished sonority, wonderful use of the pedal to add tonal colour without loss of clarity, transparent voicing, fluid phrasing, and refined dynamic shadings.

Howard-Jones recorded the Delius Five Pieces that were dedicated to him, as well as a number of other works by various composers. Here is a recording of him in Three Preludes by Delius:

All of the recordings by this neglected pianist should be made available for collectors – he was truly an extraordinary artist! He was a popular teacher as well as conductor, highly praised by students and colleagues alike, yet today he is so obscure that locating a single photograph was surprisingly difficult. Let us hope that this fine musician will once again be known to lovers of great piano playing!

The issue of status in the classical music world is no different than in many artistic realms. Many of the top names are truly great artists, while others are not – and there are many greats who never make a big name for themselves, or who do for a while but then disappear from public view. One of the areas of focus in my work with historical piano recordings has been finding recordings by pianists who were exceptional musicians and performers but who didn’t have a career that their talent and musicianship warranted, careers that other less skilled performers might have enjoyed.

One such musician who I only came across in 2017 was close friends with and greatly admired by two of the pianists I’d first come to love when I began my exploration of old recordings. Horowitz and Rachmaninoff both adored this artist and considered her not just a close friend but a phenomenal musician. It was in fact Horowitz who in 2017 somehow brought her name back to a wider public, when all of a sudden one day on YouTube a performance appeared of Horowitz playing a movement from Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos with one ‘unknown’ Gitta Gradova. Piano fans went completely wild over this private recording (made in Gradova’s home on January 6, 1950) of a work that Horowitz didn’t record commercially – there are additionally no two-piano recordings in his discography in addition to this recent discovery, hence its tremendous interest to pianophiles.

Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos, 3rd mvt. with Vladimir Horowitz and Gitta Gradova

The playing on the part of both pianists is absolutely wonderful – and of course the question everyone was asking (other than ‘are there any more recordings of them?’) was ‘Who was Gitta Gradova?’ I did some quick searching online and found that her son Thomas Cottle, a psychologist and author, had penned a book about his mother and uploaded some details about her on the internet. I immediately ordered the book and had an engaging email exchange with Cottle, who was grateful to hear that this recording had generated such interest and that his mother was being appreciated by specialists in the field.

Gradova was, despite her Russian-sounding name, born and trained in the US. She was born Gertrude Weinstock in Chicago to Russian immigrants (she was their only American-born child). Her musical talent was discovered early and she trained with Esther Harris Dua in Chicago until at the age of 13, when she was sent to study with (and live with!) none other than Sergei Prokofiev.

Her home was a hub for the musical elite visiting Chicago: Rachmaninoff, Horowitz, Toscanini, Levant, Milstein, Kogan, Heifetz, Marian Anderson …. all dined and socialized there, visiting both during her relatively short career as well as after her name had faded from the public. Some of the time Paul Robeson spent hiding from the authorities was in Gradova’s house (it seems that it was her son’s telling his schoolmates that the famed singer was at their home that led him to then hide elsewhere). But Gradova was not just socially well connected with the top musicians of her time – she was also widely praised by top-tier musicians for her astounding pianism.

In December 1940 Gradova gave a sensational broadcast performance with the New York Philharmonic under John Barbirolli playing Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. It is worth noting that she had a very close relationship with Rachmaninoff: he admired her playing and visited her home in Chicago regularly, and Gradova visited him in Switzerland too – and it is interesting indeed that she spent the summer with him in 1935, when he was writing the Rhapsody, given that the only known surviving broadcast recording of Gradova is of this composition.

The December 8 concert – the third of three performances that week – was broadcast nationwide on the radio. Gradova’s son recounts that Horowitz telegrammed her two weeks in advance stating that he had arranged for her to use his own orchestral concert grand piano. Gradova stayed with Horowitz and his wife in their Manhattan apartment and Horowitz coached her. Prior to one of the performances on their ride to Carnegie Hall, according to Horowitz’s pupil Gary Graffman, Horowitz’s manner of encouraging her involved phrases like ‘under no circumstances can you stop, for stopping is provincial’ – causing undue stress both to Gradova and Horowitz himself. But one would never know it listening to her amazing playing in the surviving recording.

Regrettably, the extant transcription discs did not capture the entire reading: while there were often two recording devices that were ‘cutting’ the records of such broadcasts so that no music would be lost, that seems not to have been the case on this occasion, so there are several shorter sections of the work that are missing at times when the discs would have required changing. This is truly unfortunate as the playing is absolutely stupendous. From the very first notes, Gradova’s magnetic pianism is immediately apparent and indeed in the first variation she already approaches things very differently from any other reading I’ve heard: the notes making up the melody in the variation at 0:27 are often played very detached, but Gradova varies her accents and dynamics such that she creates a long line out of these separate notes, phrasing the melody rather than simply punctuating each note without a contextual relationship to the others.

Gitta Gradova plays Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini – December 1940 New York broadcast

Gradova retired from the concert platform the following season. It seems that her husband had pressured her to move on from ‘this career business.’. Some of her famous friends attempted to convince her to return to active musical life, among them Prokofiev, Rubinstein, Elman, and Heifetz – but to no avail.

She would, however, stay involved in musical circles behind the scenes, the elite continuing to visit her long after her retirement (it was on one such visit in 1950 that she and Horowitz recorded the Mozart Sonata movement above). The impact that her withdrawal from concert life had on her well-being and the family dynamic was unfortunate: she had a fiery relationship with her son, the two regularly ending up in explosive arguments and virulent insults. It was only after a significant period of time that she would admit that she had regretted retiring.

Gradova finally had plans to come out of retirement late in life, and at the age of 80 in 1984 she was booked to play Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto with James Levine conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra the following year. Tragically, she died three months prior to the concert.

Gradova never made a commercial recording and all that we have are the incomplete 1940 New York Philharmonic broadcast and a handful of private recordings, some of which are posted below. It is to be hoped that more performances of this great musician will be found and made available, as she truly was a remarkably communicative musician and brilliant musical mind. One wonders indeed how many other brilliant musicians who didn’t leave behind even a handful of private recordings might have not left a legacy in either the form of concert performance or recordings (some are featured in other articles on this website). While there is less of Gradova than we would hope, we can consider ourselves fortunate to have even this glimpse into her artistry.

In the readings below – on a sadly very out-of-tune piano and wavering sound on the source material (it sounds as though she is playing a honky-tonk piano in a Wild West saloon) – Gradova demonstrates tremendous fluency and facility, with precise fingerwork, seamless phrasing, and gorgeous tone appreciable despite the subpar piano and recorded sound. In the Mussorgsky Gopak we hear rhythmic vitality, centred tone, and tautly-voiced chords, while the Arensky Etude Op.36 No.13 is notable for its elegantly-shaped runs and a beautiful long melodic line in the left hand.

Moussorgsky ‘Gopak’ and Arensky Etude Op.36 No.13 

While I am not a fan of piano rolls (player pianos through which a perforated roll ‘cut’ by the performer reproduces – to some extent – their performance), this particular one is very well achieved, and after listening to the poor-quality sonic recording of the Arensky above, we can glean a little more in hearing this rendering:

The Chopin performances also demonstrate intelligent and supple shaping of melodic lines and a natural rubato that never compromises the rhythmic pulse.

Chopin Valse Op.64 No.2 and Mazurka Op.67 No.4

It is to be hoped that all existing performances of Gradova will be compiled, mastered, and made available for piano fans – she was clearly an astounding musician, one whose artistry could still have an impact on musicians today were her artistry more readily accessible. In the meantime, the recordings which we have are a fascinating insight into a sadly forgotten pianist and the realm of Romantic pianism.