Latest / The Piano Maven with Jed Distler / Few and Far Between - Six Under-recorded Pianists

Transcript

Few and Far Between - Six Under-recorded Pianists · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

• 0:09
  This is Jed Disler, and welcome to The Piano
• 0:13
  Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings.
• 0:17
  Paid subscribers get downloads at the start of
• 0:20
  each month, and you also get access to Zoom chats,
• 0:24
  and you'll have access to a new feature that
• 0:27
  will preview the content of upcoming episodes.
• 0:31
  There's a link to my Substack page in this episode's
• 0:35
  description where you can click on it and subscribe.
• 0:40
  please do consider a paid subscription and help
• 0:43
  keep us in operation and keep the Piano Maven
• 0:47
  going forever. I was talking recently with a
• 0:52
  fellow Piano Maven about pianists who had either
• 0:56
  major or highly visible careers yet. who left
• 1:01
  relatively few commercial recordings. And we
• 1:06
  were trying to come up with a list of these artists
• 1:10
  who I could talk about on an episode. Now...
• 1:13
  In the case of several pianists, their early
• 1:16
  deaths precluded leaving behind extensive discographies,
• 1:21
  of course. I'm thinking of Dino Lepati or William
• 1:25
  Capel or Dino Ciani, Richard Farrell. Those are
• 1:29
  just a handful of examples. But I've come up
• 1:33
  with a list of pianists whose visits to the recording
• 1:37
  studio were generally few and far between. Or,
• 1:42
  in one case, it was the one and only visit to
• 1:46
  a recording studio. And I'm not going to discuss
• 1:50
  these pianists in any particular order, but let's
• 1:53
  go through my list. Yara Burnett was a Brazilian
• 1:58
  pianist who lived from 1920 until 2002. She had
• 2:03
  a very busy international performing career,
• 2:06
  and she earned great critical acclaim for her
• 2:10
  performances. of a wide repertoire range. And
• 2:15
  she also was highly sought after as a teacher.
• 2:18
  but she only made one single solitary recording
• 2:21
  for a major label. And that was the cycle of
• 2:25
  Rachmaninoff's complete preludes for Deutsche
• 2:28
  Grammophon, released, I believe, in 1971 at first.
• 2:33
  It came out on a single LP, and the LP did not
• 2:37
  include all of the preludes for reasons of time.
• 2:41
  But eventually, Australian Eloquence reissued.
• 2:46
  this recording on CD and reinstated the previously
• 2:50
  unpublished missing preludes. So you do have
• 2:54
  all of the Rachmaninoff preludes here. This is
• 2:57
  a very special recording. Yara Burnett's technique
• 3:01
  is effortless, and her tone is full -bodied and
• 3:05
  full of color, and her long lines sing out with
• 3:09
  the utmost clarity and idiomatic flair. Why Deutsche
• 3:15
  Grammophon did not commit themselves to more
• 3:17
  releases with Yara Burnett is a total mystery,
• 3:21
  except for the fact that, or I don't know if
• 3:25
  it was a fact, perhaps this disc didn't sell
• 3:28
  and they figured, oh, well, let's not record
• 3:31
  Yara Burnett again. I mean, that's that label's
• 3:34
  loss. The next pianist on my list. is the German
• 3:39
  pianist Karl Friedberg, who lived from 1872 until
• 3:44
  1955. He studied with Clara Schumann, and he
• 3:49
  was a close associate of Brahms. For many years,
• 3:54
  he taught at the Juilliard School, and throughout
• 3:57
  his long career, he refused to make commercial
• 4:01
  studio recordings, because he was completely
• 4:04
  averse to the idea of having his interpretations
• 4:08
  in a fixed and unchanging format, such as a recording.
• 4:13
  And that's the nature of recordings, of course.
• 4:16
  However, in 1953, Carl Friedberg finally relented
• 4:22
  at the persuasion of some friends and students,
• 4:25
  and he made what proved to be his one and only
• 4:31
  commercial recording. It was an LP for the small
• 4:35
  Zodiac label. The album contained about 40 minutes
• 4:40
  of music. It contained Schumann's Kindersehnen,
• 4:44
  the Brahms Scherzo in E -flat minor op. 4, Schumann's
• 4:49
  Novelette in D major op. 21 no. 4, two intermezzos
• 4:55
  of Brahms, the one in E -flat, Op. 117 No. 1,
• 4:59
  and the B -flat intermezzo, Op. 76 No. 4. And
• 5:04
  on the label, it also says that he plays a short
• 5:08
  original composition, which I strongly suspect
• 5:12
  was an improvisation, because Carl Friedberg
• 5:15
  was quite a gifted improviser. So this came out
• 5:19
  on the Zodiac label, and it was only in print
• 5:22
  for about three years, and it became a highly
• 5:25
  desirable collector's item. In the mid -1980s,
• 5:30
  the International Piano Archives at Maryland...
• 5:34
  brought out a double LP set containing other
• 5:38
  material recorded during these Zodiac sessions.
• 5:42
  And eventually, Ward Marston, on his label, brought
• 5:46
  out a double CD set containing all of the surviving
• 5:51
  Zodiac session material, plus some live performances
• 5:55
  from Juilliard concerts taken from broadcasts.
• 5:59
  The original Zodiac LP, the 40 -minute program,
• 6:03
  is quite a treasure, and it vividly captures
• 6:06
  Carl Friedberg's colorful and gorgeously modulated
• 6:11
  sonority, not to mention the seasoned authority
• 6:14
  of his music making. Nor did Friedberg's star
• 6:19
  pupil, Malcolm Frager, leave behind. as extensive
• 6:25
  a discography as one might have expected for
• 6:28
  such a highly acclaimed and busy internationally
• 6:32
  touring pianist of his reputation. Malcolm Frager
• 6:37
  was born in 1935 and he died in 1991. His commercial
• 6:43
  recording career basically moved in fits and
• 6:47
  starts, and not very prolifically. I don't have
• 6:51
  a Malcolm Frager discography right in front of
• 6:55
  me, but he did make at least one disc for RCA
• 6:59
  Victor. It contained the Prokofiev Second Concerto.
• 7:03
  with Rene Leibowitz conducting, and it was filled
• 7:07
  out by a Haydn sonata. He recorded the Strauss
• 7:10
  Burlesque with Rudolf Kempe for EMI. He recorded
• 7:15
  the two Carl Maria von Weber concertos for RCA
• 7:19
  Victor with Marek Janowski conducting. And there
• 7:24
  were various period instrument discs that he
• 7:27
  did. There was a famous collaboration on Decca
• 7:30
  with his friend Vladimir Ashkenazi, and they
• 7:33
  were playing the Mozart two -piano sonata and
• 7:36
  the Schumann on Dante with variations for two
• 7:40
  pianos. I have in my collection an LP on the
• 7:44
  BASF label containing the Brahms Sonata No. 1
• 7:49
  and the Brahms Handel Variations. There also
• 7:52
  was a Chopin recital for a tell arc that was
• 7:56
  okay. It was not all that exciting, to be honest.
• 8:00
  And there are scattered chamber music collaborations
• 8:03
  that he recorded. One of them I have in my collection
• 8:07
  that contains Beethoven's Spring and Kreutzer
• 8:11
  sonatas with violinist Thomas Zettmeier. It was
• 8:15
  done for Teldeck or Telefunken. Of course, it's
• 8:19
  now controlled by Warner. But what I'm saying
• 8:22
  is that given Malcolm Frager's reputation, it's
• 8:25
  rather surprising that he did not record more
• 8:28
  often. Now, there are a lot of live broadcast
• 8:32
  performances that survive with Malcolm Frager,
• 8:35
  and they've been floating around online, and
• 8:38
  they're passed around in various collector news
• 8:41
  groups. I have a wonderful 1972 broadcast that
• 8:47
  I think... also is televised, I'm not sure. It's
• 8:51
  of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2, and it's
• 8:54
  with Malcolm Frager and the Boston Symphony,
• 8:57
  with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting, and it's
• 9:00
  really fantastic. Both Carl Friedberg and Malcolm
• 9:06
  Frager were friendly with Myra Hess, and She's
• 9:11
  a pianist that, for all her great fame and international
• 9:15
  acclaim and reputation, she also broached studio
• 9:21
  recording with great reluctance. Now, she did
• 9:24
  make a decent number of studio recordings, but
• 9:27
  nowhere near as many as her equally famous contemporaries
• 9:32
  like Arthur Rubinstein, Walter Gieseking, Wilhelm
• 9:36
  Kemp for Beno Moiseyevich. Another pianist who
• 9:41
  recorded very little is Edward Steuermann. And
• 9:47
  in the later part of his career, he primarily
• 9:50
  focused his activities in the area of teaching
• 9:53
  at the Philadelphia Conservatory and then at
• 9:57
  Juilliard. He lived from 1892 until 1964. His
• 10:03
  first major association was with Ferruccio Busoni,
• 10:08
  with whom he studied. And then, of course, he
• 10:10
  was very closely associated with Arnold Schoenberg.
• 10:14
  And it was Edward Steuermann who premiered most
• 10:18
  of Schoenberg's works involving the piano, beginning
• 10:21
  with Piero Lunare. and he famously premiered
• 10:26
  Schoenberg's Piano Concerto in 1944 with Leopold
• 10:31
  Stokowski conducting the NBC Symphony, and that
• 10:34
  performance has been preserved and disseminated.
• 10:37
  But Steuermann had a wider reputation than you
• 10:41
  would think, and there are surviving concert
• 10:44
  recordings from him later in his career playing
• 10:46
  Beethoven and Chopin, and I'm aware of these
• 10:50
  recordings, but... I don't happen to have them
• 10:52
  in my collection. I would think that they are
• 10:54
  on YouTube, but I just haven't gotten around
• 10:57
  to hearing them yet. I certainly will. But what
• 11:02
  I'm saying is that Stoyermann made very few commercial
• 11:06
  recordings. The best known of them is the studio
• 11:11
  recording of Pierre Luner with Schoenberg himself
• 11:14
  conducting. And that was done for Columbia Records,
• 11:18
  I think, in 1940. He re -recorded Piero, by the
• 11:23
  way, on the MGM label with Arthur Winograd conducting.
• 11:27
  That recording is much, much more obscure. For
• 11:31
  the California Dial label, Edward Steuermann
• 11:35
  recorded the Schoenberg Fantasy, accompanying
• 11:39
  violinist Adolf Kodowski. And also on that disc,
• 11:43
  he played Schoenberg's solo piano pieces, Opus
• 11:47
  19 and 23. And then in 1957... Storm Unrecorded,
• 11:53
  Schoenberg's complete piano works with opus number.
• 11:56
  And this has been reissued in various download
• 11:59
  formats, but never officially from Sony Classical,
• 12:04
  coming from the master tapes, assuming that the
• 12:07
  master tapes still exist, or maybe they don't.
• 12:11
  And then Steuermann recorded an all -Bussoni
• 12:14
  disc for the West Coast Contemporary Label, which
• 12:18
  was a label primarily devoted to jazz, but they
• 12:21
  did make occasional forays into unusual 20th
• 12:26
  century repertoire. This Bussoni disc contains
• 12:29
  the elegies and two of the sonatinas. I don't
• 12:33
  really like this disc at all because the sound
• 12:36
  quality is dry and airless. And I think Stormont's
• 12:40
  playing is just dry as dust. And to be frank,
• 12:44
  not very interesting on this disc. I think he
• 12:47
  was really past his best. Now, one prominent
• 12:51
  Russian -American pianist from the 78 era who
• 12:55
  did make recordings. I think, made way too few
• 13:01
  recordings, given his stature. And I'm talking
• 13:04
  about Osip Gabrilovic, who lived from 1878 until
• 13:09
  1936. Basically, between 1924 and 1929, he made
• 13:16
  just a handful of 78s, largely of encore -type
• 13:21
  fare, and these include his famous and absolutely
• 13:26
  delightful recording of the Orenski waltz for
• 13:30
  two pianos with Harold Bauer on the second piano.
• 13:34
  And the only large -scale work he recorded was
• 13:39
  of the Schumann Piano Quintet, collaborating
• 13:42
  with the Flanzelai Quartet. And this is a wonderful,
• 13:45
  wonderful interpretation. They actually recorded
• 13:49
  it twice. There's an acoustic version that was
• 13:52
  abridged, and then the complete electrical recording.
• 13:56
  So that's that. That's six pianists off the top
• 14:01
  of my head who made far fewer studio recordings
• 14:05
  than they should have given their international
• 14:09
  reputations. I'm sure you can come up with many
• 14:12
  more names that would fit this list, and I welcome
• 14:15
  your suggestions. Now, at the opposite end of
• 14:19
  this topic, we have pianists who recorded way
• 14:24
  too much. And that would be a topic for this
• 14:27
  podcast, wouldn't it? I can think of at least
• 14:30
  three pianists right off the bat who I think...
• 14:34
  recorded too much, and at least one of these
• 14:36
  pianists admitted that he recorded too much.
• 14:40
  But that's a subject for another episode and
• 14:43
  another day. This is Jed Disler, and you've been
• 14:47
  listening to The Piano Maven, your friendly podcast
• 14:49
  guide to piano recordings. I look forward to
• 14:53
  being with you for our next episode. Until then,
• 14:57
  take good care of yourself.