Monthly Archives: April 2019

The YouTube link at the bottom of this page presents a remarkably clear transfer from a British pressing of a Columbia 78rpm disc featuring Dinu Lipatti’s legendary April 17, 1948 recording of Ravel’s Alborada del Gracioso. This is the only Ravel work and sole contemporary composition he recorded commercially for EMI during his few years under contract with them and has long been hailed as one of the greatest piano recordings ever made.

A myth circulated after Lipatti’s death – perpetuated, oddly enough, by his widow – that the pianist had spontaneously sat down to play the work without having touched it for 6 months and the engineer happened to turn on the machine to start recording him. Here is a recording of an interview in which Madeleine Lipatti recounts this tale in colourful detail:

Three facts supported by printed documents, however, disprove the rather colourful story:

1) Lipatti had played the work at his Wigmore Hall recital two weeks earlier, on April 4, 1948

2) Alborada had been listed on an Instructions for Recording sheet dated April 15, 1948 (reproduced here), two days before the session, meaning that Lipatti had been prepared to record it

3) the recording sheet from the April 17 session indicates that the pianist made two takes of each side of the record, which in 78rpm-disc times means that he did not play through the work uninterrupted

Tantalizingly, Lipatti had also been scheduled to record Debussy’s La soirée dans Grenade and Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance, but there is no evidence to indicate that he did. That said, the chronological recording log at EMI archives that detail exactly what transpired in each session is missing for a 6-month period in 1948, including the date of this session, so we cannot be certain that no attempts at these titles were made.

This disc of Alborada – perhaps the only recording with which Lipatti was ever fully satisfied – at once puts to bed the myth that he was a weak and conventional pianist: it is filled with staggering virtuosity, from the rapid-fire repeated notes through those unbelievable graduated glissandi, and is played with tremendous power and bravura, with remarkable rhythmic bite, towering fortissimos, and glistening tone.

It is of course most regrettable that Lipatti did not record the other works scheduled for the same sessions, as they would have surely – like this disc – given us a very different perspective of his pianism and musicality. Walter Legge wrote that in Lipatti’s Wigmore Hall performance of Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance two weeks before this recording was made, “the crescendo he made in the opening bars rose to such a fortissimo (but still without hitting through the tone) that I expected the Steinway to part in the middle and let him through like the Red Sea at Moses’ behest.” However, we are certainly fortunate that this Ravel performance was recorded, as it gives us a glimpse into a different aspect of Lipatti’s artistry, one that reveals his tremendous power and brilliant musical mind.

Many thanks to collector Tom Jardine for sharing his exceptionally well accomplished transfer of this magnificent performance!

The distinguished Canadian pianist Robert Silverman and I share a deep admiration for the British pianist Solomon. Over the course of our regular mealtime meetings in Vancouver, we spend hours discussing a wide array of musical topics and pianists (great and otherwise); recently when Solomon came up, Maestro Silverman told me he had many years ago produced a documentary for the CBC in tribute to the artist. The five episodes included interviews with many who knew Solomon, but for reasons that are clarified in his notes below, the project’s scope was limited by the pianist’s wife. My eyes lit up when he said that he not only had these programmes on cassette but had had them digitized. I thought that something of this nature should be available for lovers of the great pianists of the past and offered to upload them if he agreed – and fortunately he did.

Below are the five one-hour episodes that feature some biographical information by Silverman, and interview snippets with musicians and friends of the artist. And of course there are many representative recordings by the great pianist.

Here are some introductory notes giving important background information to the series by Robert Silverman himself:

In the golden years of the CBC, before men in suits replaced creative music programming with packaged short selections for daytime listeners, producer George Laverock and I came up with an idea of a five-programme series devoted to the artistry of the British pianist Solomon. Then in his mid-seventies, Maestro Cutner (his actual surname) had been pianistically silent for about two decades, due to a debilitating stroke he’d suffered at the height of his powers.

The project was approved, and even expanded upon to the point where George and I were to travel to London to interview distinguished musicians such as Clifford Curzon and Gerald Moore, important BBC and HMV producers, and others who had worked in various capacities with Solomon. Those interviews were to be interspersed with some of his greatest recordings. Naturally, I also wrote the artist asking whether he and his wife Gwendolyn would agree to add a few words.

Responses came quickly. To say we were excited is to state the obvious.  Not only did Sir Gerald Moore immediately agree enthusiastically, but he sent directions about how to find his home in his out-of-the way village. However, I also received a note from Gwen, asking that we not bother his friends; they had contributed to a BBC documentary to celebrate Solomon’s 70th birthday, and there was no need to impose further upon them. But she would be happy to receive me at their home.  I responded that I would be delighted to meet her, and that she needn’t worry about any imposition on their friends: judging from the responses we’d received, they were extremely enthusiastic about talking about Solomon. In addition, the focus of the programmes was to be on his artistry, not his biography.  (In other words, we weren’t coming there to snoop around for gossip.)

George went to London a couple of days before I did in order to prepare for the interviews and set up recording sessions with the guests. Upon my arrival, George informed me that to a person, all the artist’s close friends had cancelled their interviews.  No Curzon, no Moore, who wrote an apology saying that he’d truly wanted to do the interview, but that he simply could not go against Solomon’s wishes.

George was insistent that we carry on with the project. He arranged alternate interviews with other musicians, such as Denis Matthews, with connections to Solomon. Also, the BBC made available to us their 70th birthday documentary from 1972, so I ended up recording several questions that fit the answers that the BBC interviewees had provided for that occasion so that we could incorporate them into our tribute.

As for the meeting at their home on Blenheim Road in St. John’s Wood (the address and telephone number were in the phone book), not only was Gwendolyn Solomon, as she called herself, present, but so was Solomon.  I had not expected this, and the entire afternoon remains much of a haze, so excited was I at finally meeting the person who has come closest to serving as my artistic deity.  He would not discuss his artistry — he seldom did, even when healthy — and when Gwen started to complain about how unfair life seemed to be, he shushed her.

Afterwards, I understood why she had tried to hinder our project. In the earlier BBC interview she had revealed somewhat more than she’d intended about her personal bitterness over the stroke. Furthermore, both of them did not want it known that the stroke’s effects were more serious than anyone had let on at the time.  He had serious speech difficulties, and what he did say mostly made perfect sense, but not always.  However, I can attest that he did know how to make a great gin and tonic.

Here, courtesy of Maestro Silverman, to whom our greatest thanks, are the five parts of the 1976 CBC documentary he so lovingly produced.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

 

After a friend’s piano recital last year, a post-concert conversation amongst a few attendees took a fascinating turn. A teacher mentioned hearing students state a preference for interpretations that are ‘clean.’  We got into an amazing discussion of various things that both students and scholars tend to overlook, such as portamenti in string playing, rubato, and the shaping of phrasing. Some of what is found in early recordings can sound unusual to present-day listeners, yet it is remarkable to me how many trained musicologists, professors, and performers consider such means of expression ‘dated’ – a truly comical choice of words when speaking of music which, having been written a hundred or more years ago, is by definition dated. We discussed the challenge of bringing music to life without injecting something into it but rather by drawing something out of it, not blindly copying what was done in the past but being informed of what was the norm and what options are available today.

I recounted how when I presented historical recordings at the local university, some students balked at Rachmaninoff’s use of rubato when playing a Chopin Nocturne, despite his having been born in the century in which the music he was playing had been composed. It fascinated me that the students’ response indicated a subconscious belief that their perspectives on what rubato was appropriate was more ‘correct’ than that of a legendary pianist from the 19th century – why else would the students find the playing this old record ‘strange’ if they did not hold the belief that their way was the ‘right’ way? It was all the more fascinating when considering that these were students who loved and played Rachmaninoff’s own music – and yet they had reservations when the beloved composer-pianist’s playing differed from their own vision.

I am not saying we should imitate what was done in earlier eras, but should we not at least know what musicians of the past really did by listening as opposed to simply reading descriptions? I recall that the students’ objections came to a very sudden end when I asked, ‘And what if we found a recording by Chopin and you didn’t like the way he played? What would the implications be?’ Their jaws dropped and I could see their minds instantly open as they realized that their stated goal of doing justice to ‘the composer’s intent’ was at odds with their attitude towards playing that varied from their expectations, which were themselves formed by what is the norm in our era. They were far more receptive and engaged to what they heard in subsequent recordings.

One of the most important recordings to have come to light and been released (very recently) is a fascinating one appropriate to this discussion. It may be the rarest piano recording ever and I think it is one of the most remarkable: a disc recorded ca. 1921 of the forgotten composer-pianist Josef Labor playing part of a Beethoven Sonata. Labor was born in 1842, a mere 15 years after Beethoven died, and was a celebrated pianist, organist, composer, and teacher. His more famous pupils include Arnold Schönberg, Alma Mahler, and Paul Wittgenstein, and he was a close friend of Brahms, Richard Strauss, and King Georg V of Hannover. He was also blind since childhood due to smallpox. While he was revered in his time, he has largely been forgotten by musical history … as was the fact that in the early 1920s, close to age 80, this man raised in Viennese culture not far removed from Beethoven’s time made two records on the obscure Union label of Austria. Gregor Benko of the International Piano Archives had never heard of Labor until the sole known copy of one of the discs found its way to him a few years ago; he tells the tale of its discovery, along with an assessment of its importance, on the Marston Records website page for the compilation on which it was released.

In Labor’s playing, we hear the fascinating use of timing, accents, and dynamic shifts to bring more dimension to this slow movement of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 7 in D Major Op. 10 No. 3. (Because only one of the two records Labor made has been found, the opening of the movement is missing.) This performance has been met by more academic-minded listeners with less enthusiasm – and that is certainly their right – and I am not suggesting that we emulate this kind of playing. However, listening – and more than once – is essential: when listening for the first time, our reaction to what is different from the norm and our preferences can prevent us from neutrally and accurately hearing and assessing what is happening, so our biases can limit the full apprehension of what is actually taking place. The more one listens, the more one hears. I recently played this recording for a Japanese violinist and his eyes widened as he said, ‘He’s revealing his soul and the soul of the music.’ This is indeed playing that needs to be heard more than once – and, keep in mind the question: if a recording were found of Beethoven playing, is there any guarantee that you would like it? And if not, what would that mean when it comes to your preferences and the role of the performer?

How incredible that in 2019, we can hear pianism preserved nearly 100 years ago of a man who was born almost 180 years ago. The playing is not just radically different in style from what we hear today but in intent. It is important to remember that there was a time when music was inextricably linked to live performance: because recording technology did not exist, if people wanted to hear music, they played it at home or went to a concert… they did not listen to music ‘in the background’ – it was a conscious, lived experience. The listening to and playing of the music were part of the same event, and the performer was expected to bring the work to life in an individual way. The notes and markings were a guide, but the music needed the interpreter to interpret it. Several kinds of inflections and means of expression were not marked in the score because such ‘touches’ were the norm at the time. Composers also did not need to dictate (or micro-manage) every nuance, nor would they have thought this worthwhile, as doing so would go against the nature of music and performance as they knew it.

Another Beethoven performance that some university students attending my presentations had initially found ‘extreme’ was this glorious 1936 broadcast of Josef Hofmann playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (available here): they couldn’t imagine playing Beethoven with such rubato. But when one listens to rubato separate from tonal colours, dynamics, the balance with other voices, and musical structure, of course it can sound extreme – people tend to listen to one plane of expression alone as opposed to the multi-dimensional fabric of which the tempo is but one thread. But when adjusting timing simultaneously with dynamics, colour, and texture, it is not a one-plane shift in musical expression but a multifaceted one.

Hofmann’s individual music-making is absolutely fascinating, harkening back to an age when performers who were both skilled and informed not only expressed their individual perspectives but were expected to. We don’t go to the theatre to hear the words of a script dictated, and it isn’t the blueprint alone that makes a house a home but how it is brought to life by the individual expression of those inhabiting it. Just as earlier styles of fashion and design can seem archaic in the present day, what is done today will one day be subjected to similar derision (although one need certainly not wait to disagree with contemporary norms). Whether one likes Hofmann and other performers of his generation or not, attempting to play music from previous centuries without hearing actual recordings by the greatest artists of the past borders on negligence.

It was the fact that Rachmaninoff recorded his own music that woke me up to the existence and importance of historical recordings some 30+ years ago (read more here) but this doesn’t mean that a composer’s way is the only way – or that composers even had only one approach that they never deviated from. However, the existence of recordings which preserve ‘fixed’ interpretations has bred into our culture and mindset the belief that there is one unwavering way to play a piece of music and that any artist should have such a fixed perspective, which would make each concert but a photocopy of each other performance they give. But great performers and composers such as Rachmaninoff were not so rigid in their own readings, even if there was a general conception that they had of a work.

Rachmaninoff made his recordings in the era of 78rpm discs, which did not allow for precision editing (every 4-to-5-minute segment was recorded ‘as is’), so multiple versions were made of each ‘side’ so that the best of each could be chosen for the commercial release; concertos usually consisted of four or five two-sided records (for Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2, for example, it was five discs comprising ten ‘takes’). It seems that starting in the 1940s, RCA had been repressing some earlier recordings from their catalogue using existing alternate takes instead of those approved by the artists, apparently doing so to avoid overusing the ‘master’ metal stamper.

In the case of Rachmaninoff’s 1929 traversal of his own Piano Concerto No.2, it became apparent in the 1980s that all republications of the recording, from the 1940s right through the LP era, had used alternate takes for 9 out of the 10 sides – amazingly not only the initial 1950s LP transfers on RCA but also their 1973 centenary The Complete Rachmaninoff collection! Incredibly, the first long-playing release of the approved takes was RCA’s 1987 CD release! The upshot of this is that there are essentially two different performances of Rachmaninoff playing this work – and, naturally, not every nuance is exactly the same. So even in the case of a composer’s performance, not every reading was the same.

Here is Rachmaninoff’s ‘alternate’ reading:

There is at least one musicologist who thought that Rachmaninoff’s recordings should be disregarded because he deviated from the score… the score that he himself wrote. Let that sink in a little bit and consider the insanity and repercussions of that perspective … especially when one ponders the reasons a composer might choose to do things differently. Some insight in this regard comes from a pianist who strongly believed that the score was not sacrosanct: Jorge Bolet. The Cuban-born pianist was present for the rehearsals prior to Rachmaninoff’s first performance of his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and he saw the composer realize in the course of playing with orchestra for the first time that certain things did not sound the way he had imagined. Rachmaninoff made revisions on the spot, but those changes were not incorporated into printed editions of the score because it had already been published. Therefore, the score as printed does not accurately convey the composer’s true wishes and those who follow it are actually not doing what the composer wanted – how’s that for irony? ‘So much for Urtexts,’ stated Bolet when recounting this tale and showing his own annotated score to his pupil Ira Levin.

The great pianist elaborated on the role of the performer in realizing a composer’s intentions in this brilliant interview (starting 2 minutes in this clip, after a fine performance of a Chopin-Godowsky Etude):

Bolet advised being faithful to the music more than to the score, a position shared by the legendary pianist Dinu Lipatti. Held up as a pianist who respected the score – and he did – Lipatti is often considered a proponent of more ‘objective’ playing, but he was not averse to making changes to the text. However, he did so in the same vein as Bolet, referring to the UrSpirit as being more important than the Urtext. This might seem to be at odds with the writing that follows, which was part of a draft for a master class on interpretation that Lipatti was to give together with Nadia Boulanger in the Spring of 1951 (alas, he died a few months earlier), but in fact it is not. His writing here reveals some fascinating concepts, though not the whole picture of his perspectives:

It is unjustly believed that the music from one era or another must preserve the imprint, the characteristics, and even the vices prevalent at the time this music was created. In thinking this way we have a peaceful conscience and find ourselves incapable of any dangerous misrepresentation. And to reach this objective, for all the effort, for all the research done in the dust of the past, for all the useless scrupulousness towards the ‘sole object of our attention,’ we will always end up drowning it in an abundance of prejudices and false facts. For, let us never forget, true and great music transcends its time and, even more, never corresponded to the framework, forms, and rules in place at the time of its creation: Bach in his work for organ calls for the electric organ and its unlimited means, Mozart asks for the pianoforte and distances himself decisively from the harpsichord, Beethoven demands our modern piano, which Chopin – having it – first gives its colours, while Debussy goes further in presenting through his Preludes glimpses of Martenot’s Wave. Therefore, wanting to restore to music its historical framework is like dressing an adult in an adolescent’s clothes. This might have a certain charm in the context of a historical reconstruction, yet is of no interest to those other than lovers of dead leaves or the collectors of old pipes.

These reflections came to me while recalling the astonishment that I caused some time ago when I played, at a prominent European music festival, Mozart’s D minor Concerto with the magnificent and stunning cadenza that Beethoven made for this work. True, we could sense that the same themes appear differently under Beethoven’s pen than under that of Mozart. But this is exactly wherein lies the appeal of this interesting confrontation between two such different personalities. I regret to say that other than a few enlightened spirits, nobody understood this marriage and everyone suspected that I had composed this vile and anachronistic cadenza!

How right Stravinsky is in affirming that ‘Music is the present’!

Music has to live under our fingers, under our eyes, in our hearts and in our brains with all that we, the living, can offer it.

Far be it for me to promote anarchy and disdain for the fundamental laws which guide, along general lines, the coordination of a valid and pertinent interpretation. But I find it a grave mistake to lose oneself in researching useless details regarding the way in which Mozart would have played a certain trill or grupetto. As for myself, the diverse markings provided by excellent yet incomplete treatises compel me to decisively take the path to simplification and synthesis while immutably preserving some four or five fundamental principles of which I think you are aware (or at least, I suppose you are), and for the rest I rely on intuition, that second but no-less-precious intelligence, and to in-depth penetration of the work, which, sooner or later, ends up confessing the secret of its soul.

Never approach a score with eyes of the dead or the past, for they may bring you nothing more in return than the image of Yorick’s skull. Alfredo Casella rightly said that we must not be satisfied with merely respecting masterpieces, but we must love them.

Lipatti was not saying that it is a waste of time to research how Mozart was played in his era: he states that is a ‘grave mistake to lose oneself in researching useless details.’  I would add that one should not lose oneself in useful details either, as details alone do not paint the full picture and ‘losing oneself’ would render any potentially useful details useless. Lipatti was certainly historically informed, yet he also played in a very present-time way – how else to explain his radically unconventional approach to Bach’s D Minor Concerto BWV 1052? He not only incorporates some of the variants that Busoni had penned for the work but uses dynamics and voicing in a fascinating way: pay particular attention to the magnificent decrescendo in the first movement (from 6:39 to 7:02), where he reveals the magic of Bach’s writing by highlighting the chromatic progressions while also reducing the volume in a way that seems absolutely logical.

There are those who believe that Bach should not be played with such dynamic variation because this was not possible on the harpsichord. However, several of Bach’s keyboard concertos were transcribed for violin and for oboe; the composer himself transcribed these compositions so they could be played not just on the harpsichord but also on instruments capable of adjusting dynamics and lyrical phrasing. That should make it obvious that he would be happy if his keyboard music were played on a keyboard capable of more lyrical and dynamic expression as well. It’s incredibly shortsighted and unimaginative to believe that this is not the case – and Bach himself was hardly shortsighted and unimaginative!

There is no one correct approach to the issue of how one should perform the music of the past. It was all once new and now it isn’t; indeed, the composers whose music we still play today likely had no idea that we would still be listening to and performing their music centuries later. So many factors have changed – not just the instruments but the size of the spaces in which the music is performed and heard, as well – and one cannot recreate the past, and nor should one want to. It is up to the performer to find their way and lead the listener home to the heart of the music. I am convinced, however, that composers would not want performance to simply reproduce the printed notes on the page but rather to bring the music to life. How best to do that is the art of interpretation … which is certainly more than just the skill of reproducing notes.

One thing is certain: we are fortunate that so many incredible historical recorded performances are now so readily available. Long may we listen, learn, and enjoy!