Posts Categorized: The Piano Files

His Master’s Voice

Recording technology has had a profound impact on the musical world. Before we could preserve sound documents, music needed to be played and heard (ie, experienced) ‘live’, whether in the home, a salon, or a hall. The earliest recording devices were financially out of reach for most consumers and of such poor quality that they could hardly be considered a replacement for a concert experience. Things began to change as the technology improved: as music lovers could hear longer works such as sonatas, concertos, and symphonies on gramophone records and on the radio, the need to go hear great works in concert began to diminish. The setting in which music was heard was no longer necessarily where the music-making took place, the audience member no longer needing to be in the presence of the performer. One could listen in the comfort of one’s home without even seeing another person – including the musician.

In the medium’s first several decades, no editing was possible: what you heard was exactly what the artist had played. Both early cylinders and flat disc recordings were produced by a needle carving the groove that the playback needle would traverse to reproduce the performance. Commercial discs were pressed from a metal stamper that replicated the engraved ‘master’ disc and so there was no way to correct a wrong note or other inaccuracy. Each disc in the days of 78rpm records was essentially a ‘live performance’ (once that speed became the standard, each 12-inch side held 4 to 5 minutes of music), so artists would make multiple takes to produce the best one to be released (sometimes it required a dozen or so takes – sometimes just one). Audiences at the time were accustomed to the occasional wrong note, as might also be heard in a concert performance, though of course artists aimed both in the studio as well as on stage to give as accurate a reading as possible. However, at the time there was no expectation – initially at least – that pristine precision was a key component of what would be considered a worthy performance, either in concert or on record.

Increasing Permanence

Tape technology changed all of that. The methodology was initially developed in the 1930s – there are some early German tape recordings of classical musicians in concert dating back to 1937 and many more from during the war (including a 1944 stereo tape performance of Walter Gieseking playing Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto) – but the process was only more widely adopted in 1948 when Columbia produced the first LP (long-playing) records which used tape to record the initial performances; EMI began using this process more widely in 1950, having experimented with tape recording in 1949. Once this more flexible material was used and the recording session didn’t require the cutting of a master disc, there was the potential to ‘erase’ incorrect notes by splicing the tape of one take of an artist’s performance with that of another before pressing the final record. When done well, the editing process could create a seamless performance that was note-perfect; whether the resulting pastiche was musically consistent was another matter, as was whether it accurately represented a musician’s true capabilities. New York Times music critic Harold C Schonberg recounted the tale of a young pianist who in the early days of the LP was recording the Chopin Concertos but couldn’t play the entire thing without any fumbles. He was reassured that the engineers would be able to combine different attempts of the passages together and that he need not worry. When listening to the playback, the pianist turned to the conductor and said, “It’s pretty good, isn’t it?” The conductor replied, “It’s very good, my boy. Don’t you wish you could play like that?” [While this is how the story was reported by Schonberg, the work in question was actually the Franck Symphonic Variations – the pianist was Paul Badura-Skoda and the conductor was Artur Rodzinski; these artists also recorded the Chopin Concertos together.]

With this technology allowing for artists to record precise readings of large-scale works that could be listened to uninterrupted in high-fidelity sound, the recorded performance began to be seen as more of a permanent artistic statement as opposed to a kind of provisional account. Of course, there were those who were very aware that their discs might be a kind of testament to their artistry to be left for the posterity, it can be postulated that not all artists considered their discs to be as enduring as they now are and probably did not expect that they would be listened to a century or so later. Alfred Cortot set down his first account of Chopin’s Preludes in 1926, but then began to record the cycle again in 1927 (he finished this newer account in 1928 but the set was never issued). Cortot would record the works again in 1933, 1942, and 1957, most likely not expecting that earlier versions would still be sought after and listened to – certainly not almost a century later.

Sanitized Performances

I believe that the fact that Cortot began to record them again one year after his 1926 account was released suggests that perhaps he did not see his records at the time as ‘everlasting’ – which could also explain why he released records with more wrong notes than did most of his contemporaries. (It is worth noting that several great pianists have stated that Cortot’s wrong notes were better played than many pianists’ correct ones.) Today, an artist would not consider allowing a recording to be issued with even a single wrong note. Indeed, even concert recordings that are commercially released are often ‘patched up’ with takes from a follow-up session: this was the case with Horowitz’s 1965 Carnegie Hall recital (he made a fumble in the opening moments of the first work on the programme) and the practice has continued. So are you really hearing a live performance when you hear a CD of a concert performance? Not always.

Glenn Gould famously retired from the concert stage to focus on recording, with a very conscious intent to create an ‘ideal’ interpretation on records that would represent his vision of a given work. Part of his process involved using the technology to adjust levels and balances to be more to his liking than what he was producing himself. This was a sign of the artist taking the wheel of that ‘don’t you wish you could play like that’ sentiment by being part of the creative process in the studio.

The extent to which the recording process could be used to create something different than would be heard in concert was clear to me when I had the opportunity to attend a recording session of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra around 1989. I was sitting in the recording booth and while the orchestra played works by Debussy, the producer followed the score calling out the instruments that were about to enter, in response to which an engineer boosted the microphone levels for those instrument groups. I was stunned: what happened to the conductor’s role in creating a cohesive balance amongst the musicians? Furthermore, the fact that multiple sections were separately mic’ed from others meant that one would hear an overlay of these groupings rather than the blend of instruments one would hear in concert – which is how the composer had intended the music to be heard. In other words, what listeners would hear at home would in no way resemble what would be heard in the hall. Modern recordings, in their quest for a ‘clean’ and ‘perfect’ reading, were creating something completely different than what a pair of human ears would pick up in a live performance.

Where To Listen?

If recordings could be so clean as to be note-perfect and sonically beyond reproach – both to a degree that one would likely not experience in a live performance – does it not follow that the concert hall might seem less attractive to some music lovers? What with having to dress for the occasion, get to the hall and deal with parking, tolerate people who might cough or unwrap candies during performances, with only top-tier tickets providing a decent view of the performer(s) … doesn’t listening in the comfort of one’s own home seems much more inviting? Particularly as technology improved and one could hear with a level of precision far beyond what could be heard in the hall, the home listening experience became very appealing. But it also created in listeners an unrealistic expectation of what a musical performance truly is.

There is something far more problematic with how recordings impacted the live music experience: the audience-performer relationship is out of the equation when hearing a recording, the emphasis being on listening to a performance but not being part of an experience that is shared in time and space with both the musician(s) and others in the audience. At home, you listen in a space different from that where the musician gave their performance, as well as at a different time. While I am of course, given my interest in historical recordings, delighted that we can listen to musicians of the past who we could not have heard in the concert hall because of our disparate timelines, there is no doubt that the habit of listening at home can create a different perception of the musical performance experience, separate from a particular set and setting. Additionally, a level of anonymity became part of the dynamic of listening to great music: listeners did not see a musician in front of them and in fact need not even know what they looked like. Listening to music at home, one could do what one wanted while the commodity of music was presented in the background, as opposed to being front-and-centre in your experience.

It is apparently for this reason that Rachmaninoff refused to allow his live concerts to be broadcast. Stating that the radio “makes listening to music too comfortable,” Rachmaninoff believed that “to appreciate good music, one must be mentally alert and emotionally receptive. You can’t be that when you are sitting at home with your feet on a chair.” He added another factor which is particularly important and frequently overlooked: “An artist’s performance depends so much on his audience that I cannot imagine even playing without one.” Despite the massive fees he was offered – and he made a fortune as a soloist already – Rachmaninoff refused to appear on the radio, refusing to play New York Philharmonic concerts on Sundays, the day they were broadcast. His contracts stated that if on any occasion a concert would be broadcast, the radio stations were to air his 1929 commercial recording of his 2nd Concerto during his performance. (One concert in which he played that was actually broadcast was the Sir Henry Wood 50th Anniversary of the Proms concert in 1938: however, they arranged the programme such that the concert opened with Rachmaninoff playing his C Minor Concerto so that the broadcast could begin after his live performance. He had refused the offer of an enormous sum for his performance to be transmitted over the airwaves.)

 

In The Moment

That Rachmaninoff should feel so strongly about not playing live while others listened ‘comfortably’ raises the question of how he reconciled this position with his extensive catalogue of commercial recordings. This has been the subject of discussion for decades and is well beyond the scope of this article. Perhaps he viewed the mechanical reproduction of a performance differently because he was not playing at the time that the audience was listening; yet he was also making recordings without an audience despite his having said that he couldn’t imagine playing without one, so one wonders how he was able to do so and whether he considered these discs any differently – and if these performances were at the same standard as those that he played ‘live.’ Many who heard him in concert said that his playing was in fact noticeably different in live performance than on disc, and we now have a glimpse of how different it might have been.

The recent discovery and release of Rachmaninoff’s read-through of his own Symphonic Dances at the piano in Eugene Ormandy’s living room finds him playing with much more spontaneity, dramatically forged phrasing, and marvellous lingering over phrases than we hear in his studio discs (which are still superb). The playing in this fly-on-the-wall recording is utterly mesmerizing and an absolute revelation, with a degree of inspired music-making and a level of intimacy in how the music is communicated that is simply staggering. As great as Rachmaninoff’s studio discs are, they pale in comparison to what we can hear in this precious document, an off-the-cuff moment that might have simply disappeared into thin air had it not been surreptitiously recorded. And yet this reading was not meant to be heard by others and isn’t an actual concert performance, though it gives great insight into his playing. As astonishing and perhaps even more so are a few precious minutes of a Brahms Ballade and Liszt Ballade from an actual 1931 concert performance captured by Bell Laboratories engineers (available in the same set as the Symphonic Dances) – while the sound is very poor, the power and intensity of Rachmaninoff’s playing is simply beyond belief and must be heard to be believed.

The Perils of the Studio

It should be evident that the mindset of performers playing in the moment is understandably very different than those who know they are creating something that will be heard over and over again. Something that will be heard repeatedly will be subjected to a different degree of scrutiny, and knowing this, the performer will be unlikely to play with the same level of abandon that they might in an inspired concert performance. I first heard this expressed at the MSO recording session I attended when after listening to one take in the booth, Dutoit said, “That was good for a live performance but not good enough for a recording,” and back in front of the orchestra he went to conduct another take.

The process of recording that I witnessed at the MSO recording was very different than what artists went through in the days of direct-to-disc recordings. The further back one goes into recording history, the more challenging the process was, and the stresses that the system required in order to produce a record was one that hardly inspired the artist’s unbridled create expression. Ferruccio Busoni articulated in a letter to his wife the challenges he went through in his first recording session in 1919:

“My suffering over the toil of making gramophone records came to an end yesterday, after playing for 3 hours! I feel rather battered to-day, but it is over. Since the first day, I have been as depressed as if I were expecting to have an operation. To do it is stupid and a strain. Here is an example of what happens. They wanted the Faust waltz (which lasts a good ten minutes) but it was only to take four minutes! That meant quickly cutting, patching and improvising, so that there should still be some sense left in it; watching the pedal (because it sounds bad); thinking of certain notes which had to be stronger or weaker in order to please this devilish machine: not letting oneself go for fear of inaccuracies and being conscious the whole time that every note was going to be there for eternity; how can there be any question of inspiration, freedom, swing, or poetry? Enough that yesterday for 9 pieces of 4 minutes each (half an hour in all) I worked for three and a half hours! Two of these pieces I played four or five times. Having to think so quickly at the same time was a severe effort. In the end, I felt the effects in my arms; after that, I had to sit for a photograph, and sign the discs. – At last it was finished!”

It should be evident that with the Herculean pianist having had to go through this process, we would scarcely hear something representative of what he was capable of in concert. Additionally, he had recorded during the acoustical recording era, before the invention of the microphone: this system was in use prior to 1925 and required the instrument to be amplified through the use of cone-shaped horns (as illustrated in the image on the right), which drastically reduced the scope and fidelity of his sonority – and as Busoni articulated in his letter, he already needed to compensate for the inferior piano. While there is some magic that can be gleaned from his 26-minute discography from three years later (no discs were issued from the session detailed above), it is clear that great artist in such circumstances could not play with the same level of presence and command as they could in concert. Cramped, hot quarters of studios – with no audience – were hardly an environment conducive to artistic expression.

‘A Torture Chamber’

Busoni is not the only one who had such difficulties in the studio. Artur Schnabel went through a terrible ordeal a decade or so later when he began his now legendary cycle of Beethoven Sonatas – the first on record – at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios. Despite the fact that the microphone could now capture a more realistic sonority than was possible in Busoni’s time, not only was the recording process still challenging because works needed to still be split into 4-to-5-minute segments, but it seems that management still had very little idea of the stress of the process on a musician concerned about communicating their artistry:

This week was an ordeal, a torture chamber. “What does not kill me makes me stronger,” says Nietzsche. Hopefully (probably) this is true. I had no idea of how outrageous a process the recording on discs could be. Like slave drivers they burdened me with six hours of recording on a daily basis. I had to play pieces that were not included in the contract, but I had no time to prepare them. They thought I was always able to play all the Beethoven sonatas and concertos at the drop of a hat. Instead of refusing to do anything that was not prearranged, I let them, as usual, cajole me into doing it…. The act of violence against humans is mainly caused by the imperfection of the machine, which he has created. For example: one can only play for four minutes. In these four minutes sometimes 2000 or more keys are hit. If two of them are unsatisfactory you have to repeat all of the 2000. In the repeat the first faulty notes are corrected but two others are not satisfactory, so you must play all 2000 once again. You do it ten times, always with a sword of Damocles over your head. Finally you give up and 20 bad notes are left in it. I am physically and mentally too weak for this process and was close to a breakdown. I began to cry when I was alone in the street. Never before had I felt deeper loneliness. My conscience tortured me. Succumbing to evil, the betrayal of life, the marriage by death. It is perfect nonsense, totally unnatural. Depravity….  

It is stunning to consider that Schnabel’s pianism is largely remembered for these recordings made in circumstances so poor that he was crying in the street after the sessions! I’m certain that those who have criticized his errors and rhythmic challenges in some of these performances have had no idea of the conditions he had to endure in committing these works to disc (and likewise, many who have praised them likely didn’t know either). That any magic could get through is indeed remarkable, but we might also wonder how beautifully he must have played play in a setting more conducive to inspired music-making.

The same applies to Alfred Cortot, who over the course of the five days from July 4 to 8, 1933 recorded Chopin’s 24 Preludes, 4 Ballades, 12 Etudes Op.10, 2nd and 3rd Sonatas, 4 Impromptus, 6th Polonaise, Fantaisie, Barcarolle, and Tarantelle. It is remarkable that he was able to produce such sumptuous accounts with such a gruelling schedule. It’s little wonder that there were some dropped notes, given that precision editing was not possible and he had that much music to get through in so little time, and yet there is exquisite beauty and inspiration in his playing. How to fathom, as with Schnabel, how he might have played in concert when he was at his prime.

The Dreaded Red Light

As technology improved and recording became easier, artists did not necessarily feel comfortable in front of the microphone, as the pressures to produce a polished performance that would stand up to repeated listening were the same, still running counter to the spontaneous in-the-moment experience of a live musical performance. Dame Myra Hess stated, ‘When I listen to my recordings, I feel I am going to my own funeral,’ and described how she too despised seeing that red light go on indicating that she was being recorded. Under duress she admitted that perhaps her recording of Beethoven’s Op.109 was perhaps rather OK – it is beyond sublime by most people’s standards, so one truly wonders what she would have considered to be an ideal performance. Her concert recordings are indeed on another plane, though her studio recordings are – despite her displeasure – of the highest artistic level by any era’s standards. Another British pianist, Solomon, said the same thing about the process: while he appreciated the benefits of records and broadcasting, he nevertheless said, “I don’t like being dictated to by lights, and told at this moment to be silent and ready to play, and when I’ve finished my performance feel that I don’t cough or something until the red light has gone off. It’s a very impersonal thing.”

International Piano Archives founding president Gregor Benko was in the studio when Rudolf Serkin was recording Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. The pianist gave a run-through that Benko said was the most volcanic, spacious, mind-blowing performance he had heard (and he’d heard many) … and then when the red light went on, out from the pianist’s fingers came a completely different kind of performance, one that bore no resemblance to what he had played moments before. Benko was dismayed at the thought that no one would be able to hear what he had heard, that the record would be not even a pale shadow of what had come before. Indeed, early unofficial concert recordings of Serkin reveal that he was indeed be a very different pianist than the one represented on disc. I’ve found many of his studio recordings to have a nervous, somewhat unsettled quality, but the unbridled expansiveness of some concert performances – such as the one below – is of a completely different nature than his more known performances:

Varying Performances

It is important to remember that musicians do not always play the same way – not just from concert to concert, but also as they and their artistry naturally evolve over time. I’ll never forget how a few seconds of a single recording completely shattered a perception that I had held about Jorge Bolet based on the later recordings I’d heard and also what others had said about him. At the time that I went to the aforementioned Montreal Symphony Orchestra recording sessions, I had been given the choice to attend either the orchestra’s Debussy recordings or some concerto recordings with Bolet. My friend in the orchestra who was arranging for me to attend suggested the Debussy session because he and many of his colleagues found Bolet’s playing to be slow and lacking fire; as I was not familiar with Bolet’s artistry (such as his staggering 1974 Carnegie Hall recital) and history (like the fact that he had played for Hofmann and heard Rachmaninoff in rehearsal and concert), I accepted his suggestion and therefore missed an opportunity to meet Bolet – one of my great life regrets. Years later, I was visiting Gregor Benko when Bolet’s name came up and the opinion that I’d had of him based on what I’d heard. He popped a cassette into a desktop tape recorder and out came the most expansive, volcanic, sky-opening playing of the Chopin-Godowsky Etude No.1 – in a style completely at odds with all of the Bolet recordings I had heard! The performance (still unissued) was made a year prior to the one below, but this traversal is very similar in temperament:

But what did those familiar with Bolet’s Decca recordings hear? Not the same kind of playing at all:

Intimate Music-Making

The Decca account is beautifully polished and elegant, but is completely lacking the vitality and bravura of the live performance. Sadly, Bolet is far more remembered for later recordings much like this one, not at all representative of him at the height of his powers. Several of his students have told me that he was at his best not only in his earlier years but in more intimate settings, such as after a lesson or a master class: he would often sit with one or many students to chat and play for an extended period of time, playing spontaneously and giving marvellous readings that went above and beyond what audiences heard. (The Chopin-Godowsky Op.10 No.1 that Benko had played me came from one such post-masterclass session at Curtis Institute, a 3-hour gathering that was captured on tape that has never been made publicly available.) Unfortunately, the recordings of Bolet that have circulated most have been the roughly 30 CDs he produced for Decca, when he was past his prime and less engaged in the studio and the recording process.

Bolet was not the only one played differently in more personal settings: the legendary Leopold Godowsky apparently shone in the salon more than he ever did in concert and certainly more than on disc. Abram Chasins recounted the experience of hearing Godowsky play at his home, and upon leaving his teacher – the great Josef Hofmann – said, “Never forget what you heard tonight; never lose the memory of that sound. There is nothing like it in the world. It is tragic that the world has never heard Popsy as only he can play.” And so with recording technology as well as concert performances, we are only exposed to a single snapshot of a performer – one that does not necessarily reveal their true abilities. Everyone can have an off-night yet based on a single concert we can crystallize our thoughts about an artist into a strictly-held impression – and the same certainly applies to recordings. Imagine how awful it would feel for you if someone’s impression of you was based on a single social interaction when you were not at your best (alas, this is in fact how it is for many of us) – how limiting, how inaccurate, how unfair. Unfortunately, it is human nature to define and harden our perceptions into held opinions based on our limited experience – but this is not always accurate. And this makes the job of the artist all the more challenging.

One pianist who recorded extensively but whose many records still do not reveal the scope of his playing is Michael Ponti: his Vox recordings circulated widely but unfortunately do not capture the vastness of his technical and musical gifts. It is only very recently that I came to understand the extent to which these studio accounts have done him a disservice – based on these recordings one might think he was a rather ordinary pianist, but nothing could be further from the truth. This concert recording of the Verdi-Liszt Rigoletto Paraphrase is an example of the stunning pianism of which he was capable in concert:

Even pianists whose recordings are amazing and critically acclaimed might not be well represented by them. One such artist is Dinu Lipatti, whose handful of lauded studio recordings fascinated me when I first encountered them. It was his sole recording of Ravel – a truly mindblowing reading of Alborada del Gracioso – that made me realize that he was a very different artist than the tales of his illness would have us believe. If only we had more recordings of him like that one, I thought – and so began my hunt 30 years ago for more unofficial recordings of the pianist. The latest cache of records obtained and released in the last decade that truly reveals that Lipatti’s official discography does not show the full scope of his playing. The handful of discs appear to be home recordings (the piano is a bit out of tune), and the abandon and vitality in these performances are in stark contrast to the highly-controlled nature of Lipatti’s studio output, with bold accents, dramatic climaxes, and emphatic gestures:

Lipatti’s most famous recordings come from the last year of his life; while his energy was bolstered by cortisone treatment for the Hodgkins Disease that had weakened him, he recorded his ‘less timing programme,’ works which did not require much exertion. He also knew that he was recording his final testament, and while the readings are very refined and musical, his playing also more guarded than that of even a few years earlier when he first began making discs for Columbia. The recently-obtained unofficial recordings were made when Lipatti was in better health and also in circumstances where he was likely less attached to the outcome: these discs appear to have been made for his own use and perhaps to share with a few friends (the numbers on the label indicate that copies were made). So as great as Lipatti’s playing is in his celebrated recordings, it may well be that how he played when in better health and when feeling more at ease was even more remarkable than how he has been perceived for decades.

Shifting Perspectives

There is another important factor as yet undiscussed and worthy of more detailed exploration in a later posting: the impact of recordings on artists’ perception of their own playing. Prior to this technology’s existence, they could only hear their playing from their own vantage point while playing their instrument and therefore subjectively and in the moment. Once musicians could hear their own playing as another listener might, able to experience details of their own performances that they might not otherwise, their perspectives surely changed. More than one famous musician has expressed surprise over how their own performances sounded (there are amusing anecdotes of famous musicians not recognizing their own recordings on the radio). Have we all not been astonished (and perhaps horrified) when hearing a recording of our voice? “Do I really sound like that?” we have all surely asked – and the same goes for musicians. How might hearing their own playing on records impacted artists’ perceptions of their own playing? Might they have thought that what they played sounded different than they had anticipated? And is it possible that hearing themselves play led to more self-consciousness not just in the studio but also in general, as their perceptions changed from that of subjective performer to objective listener?

It must be said that it is not a given that some of these changes might not have been supportive: performers can hear details that might be overlooked and strive to improve both musically and technically, whether it’s the balance, timing, or another technical element of execution. I know one first-rate pianist who records every concert in order to check on certain details and improve anything that was not as well accomplished as hoped in subsequent performances. (Tantalizingly, Dinu Lipatti hoped to record himself practicing back in 1948, writing to Paul Sacher to ask if he had a tape recorder for that purpose, which he unfortunately did not.)

Moving Forward

The ideas, thoughts, and questions presented here are beyond the scope of a website article but worthy of consideration, even if there are no easy answers – and as I’ve stated before, sometimes there are no answers but it is important to sit with questions to see what comes from them. And so, where does all of the above leave us? Perhaps with an opportunity to revisit how we relate to the act of listening to music. What if we were not so quick to judge an artist on the basis of one recording or a single concert performance? What if we let go of our need for note-perfect readings and tuned in instead to the wider landscape of what the musician is creating? What if we listened at home with the attention and dedication that would be expected of us in concert – and what if we also went to concerts more regularly in order to have that in-the-moment shared experience?  While some glorious recorded performances do indeed exist and can bring us pleasure time and time again, it is the quality of the music-making that is key to its deeper enjoyment as opposed to a focus on perfection that provides us with an embalmed performance rather than an alive experience.

While there is something about perfection that is appealing, it is also wonderful to grow an appreciation for what is espoused in the ancient Chinese philosophical text, the Tao te Ching: True perfection seems imperfect. There may be what appears to be imperfections in concert settings, with noise, less-present sound, and perhaps an error made in the moment – but there is also the capacity to experience the chemistry of the moment, an alchemical act of creativity in the moment that will never be exactly repeated. The notes are but black-and-white notations on a flat page, but the music they comprise is a colourful, multidimensional tapestry that is brought to life in the moment as it is experienced by both the performers and listeners. The setting and quality of attention with which this happens has a tremendous impact on how life is breathed into the score. If music lovers wish to keep the art of classical music alive, it is important that we not be passive in our appreciation but rather be active music lovers and appreciators. Even when a concert or performance does not live up to our expectations, we might be able to find something to appreciate. Artur Schnabel was once asked by a colleague why he was clapping after a poor performance they had just heard: “I’m applauding Beethoven,” he replied. Long may we continue to appreciate and applaud the masterpieces of the past and those who continue to bring them to us.

 

 

It is a sad reality that a great many supremely gifted musicians did not have careers that their talent might have warranted, with some of these great musicians having had to face some tremendous adversity. One such artist was Marian Filar, a wonderful Polish pianist who endured the horrors World War 2, not only surviving years in concentration camps but going on to play internationally to great acclaim, including at Carnegie Hall and under leading conductors. This great musician’s career unfortunately did not develop as one might have hoped and today he is less remembered due to his having made but a handful of commercial recordings. As the testimonials of great musicians and recorded performances included in this posting will demonstrate, he was indeed an artist of outstanding capabilities – and his life story too reveals that he was a remarkable human being.

Marian Filar was born in Warsaw on December 17, 1917. His was a musical family and he showed his aptitude at a young age, sneaking into his sister Helen’s piano lessons at the age of four. “I fell in love with the piano instantly. It made the most glorious sound in the world, the most magnificent I had ever heard. I was hooked. From then on I was married to the piano.” When it was discovered that the young boy had perfect pitch, his parents were convinced that he should be professionally trained but they started him on the violin like his two brothers (his two sisters played piano), which led to such tantrums that they acquiesced and arranged for him to study the instrument he loved. At age six, he gave his first performance at the conservatory – because he didn’t know it was rare to do so, he wasn’t nervous (“You don’t learn to get nervous until you’re older”). He had some early lessons with the legendary Aleksander Michałowski and Chopin Competition founder Jerry Zurawlew.

Aged 12, he played the Mozart D Minor Concerto in an audition for the Warsaw Philharmonic which so impressed the conductor that he was immediately booked to play the work in concert. The great German pianist Alfred Hoehn attended one of the young boy’s performances and entered discussions with the family about training him; however, because of ‘the Hitlerites’ in Germany, he suggested that Filar study at the local conservatory until the situation there settled down (Hoehn seemed to think it would blow over in a few months) and that he would stop by to check on the boy whenever he visited Warsaw. Thus the young Pole started training with the esteemed Professor Zbigniew Drzewiecki, who seems to have been as famous for his yelling in lessons as he was for his playing and teaching. While the first summer with him was challenging, Filar soon came to appreciate his teacher and the connection was beyond cordial: Drzewiecki would later be of vital support during the horrors of the war, managing to get some precious items smuggled to Filar while he was imprisoned in a concentration camp.

Young Marian was involved in more than just musical training, being physically active and playful like his peers while also deeply immersed in the musical culture. He attended concerts by Hofmann (“we all fell out of our chairs”), Gieseking, Backhaus, Hoehn, Landowska, and many others, in addition to symphonic concerts. As he continued his studies, he was told that the rise of anti-Semitism would limit his possibilities in Poland and that he should go abroad, but his parents couldn’t afford it at the time. He had been rather sheltered from these issues, though he started observing incidents – including with government officials dealing with his father – and his mother sent one of her oldest sons to Palestine in 1935 in case the family would later need to leave.

Filar’s autobiography From Buchenwald to Carnegie Hall is remarkable for the first-hand detail given about the musician’s experiences during the War – indeed, the American Library Association magazine Booklist wrote that “among the many astonishing accounts of Holocaust survival, this is one of the most remarkable” and I cannot recommend reading the book yourself to get all the details, as his incredible story is told with such directness and clarity. The young man’s ingenuity, fierce intelligence, and compassionate nature would be channeled from music-making into helping his friends, family, and compatriots to survive. He tells stories of local bombings, of the creation of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, of witnessing – while hiding behind a wall in the conservatory – Russians registering locals to be sent to Siberia. His strength of character and astuteness were evident in how he handled some very difficult situations, among them Russian soldiers attempting to claim property and take advantage of women. Once the Germans began narrowing in on citizens, he cleverly arranged for trash to be piled up near the entrances of their homes to make the area looked more derelict so they would be less likely to be searched.

With a combination of resourcefulness, daring, and good luck, Filar escaped many close calls: he made a gutsy escape while being marched to be taken away and several times saying just the right thing to the wrong person to get out of some very sticky situations. But eventually he was loaded into a train and shipped to the camps. Even here, his observation skills served him well: seeing how crowded the cars would be, he went straight to the window as soon as he entered the carriage so he would have air during the arduous journey (his instincts were right: several people perished en route due to not being able to breathe properly). Inside the camps, malnutrition and heavy work led to more close calls but he soon figured out how the black market worked inside the camps and found ways to get extra food from local workers so he could regain his strength. There were multiple times when he could have been shot on the spot but luck was truly on his side. His mindset and determination were clear:

“As much as they beat and humiliated us, I knew they could not take away my talent, my gifts, my knowledge, my love of music what I am. To them I was only a number, a slave. They know nothing about me, which was just as well. Even without a piano I always had music in my heart, which is why I never thought of suicide, no matter how bad things got. Plus, I wouldn’t have wanted to give those SS bastards the satisfaction of thinking they had triumphed over me.”

After two years spent in seven camps, Filar was liberated, but his parents and sister Helen had all been killed by the end of the war. Soon after gaining his freedom, he and his brother went to Prague, where the city was being accommodating to refugees. Filar was thrilled to see a poster announcing a concert, and upon hearing that the conductor was the son of violinist Jan Kubelik, he went to the rehearsal and afterwards introduced himself to Rafael Kubelik. He was invited to play for him at his home a few days later, at which time Filar played the Chopin E Minor Concerto all the way through – from memory and without having had access to a piano for five years (except a brief session a few weeks earlier). The conductor was not only impressed but expressed true concern for the pianist’s well-being, making a phone call on the spot that enabled him to have an unlimited stay at a hotel in the city.

Filar and Kubelik would perform Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F Minor together six years later in Chicago and they remained lifelong friends. While a recording of that Chicago performance has not been found, this 1971 Munich broadcast with both musicians playing the same work is a wonderful testament to their close musical and personal relationship.

After a return to Lodz to track down a brother believed to have died in Siberia but who somehow survived, Filar visited Kraków for a tearful reunion with his beloved teacher Professor Drzewiecki. Two months after his liberation, Filar played Chopin’s E Minor Concerto in Lodz to great acclaim. The former rector of the Conservatory where he had trained came to see him after the concert, reiterating his suggestion from years earlier: to leave Poland to establish himself as a world-class pianist. Filar and his brothers’ bags were already packed for departure to Berlin the next day, and from there they went to Frankfurt, where Filar hoped to find Alfred Hoehn; alas, he was informed that the pianist had died not long before.

Filar had doubts about whether to continue in music or to pursue his interest in the field of medicine, and he thought that he needed to have his playing assessed by a great musician to inform his decision. A colleague who knew Walter Gieseking gave him a letter of introduction and despite his trepidation, Filar showed up unannounced on the pianist’s doorstep at 24 Wilhelminenstrasse in Wiesbaden. The German pianist was not immediately welcoming, stating that he had stacks of letters from pianists hoping to have an audience with him, to which Filar innocently replied, “But have you answered all of those letters?” Although Gieseking smiled at this answer, he continued to admonish the young Pole for not writing first and refused to hear him, but seeing the tears in Filar’s eyes, he relented and asked him to play for him. After some Bach and Mozart, Gieseking asked for Chopin, “since you’re Polish.” After Filar finished Chopin’s G Minor Ballade, Gieseking hugged him and said, “You want to give up the piano? You must be crazy. You are already a concert pianist. Would you like to study with me? Do you think I can teach you something?” Filar was beyond delighted and when he brought up how to pay him, Gieseking replied, “You’ve already paid enough. Come every Thursday at 10:30…. Just ring the bell and come in.”

Thus began a five-year apprenticeship and a congenial relationship of great mutual admiration. Filar states in his book that recordings do little to reveal the wonder of Gieseking’s incredible singing sonority, adding “I learned my singing tone from Mr. Gieseking. I didn’t have it before. How could I have had it? I had never heard anything like it!” The great German master held his student in the highest esteem too, praising his Chopin to the skies, telling his wife “Filar studies with me and he plays the Barcarolle better than I do” (Gieseking’s wife listened to Filar play it for her and she agreed). At a recital for the American Red Cross in Frankfurt, Gieseking pointed Filar out to the audience and begged him to play Chopin’s A-Flat Ballade then and there, but the mortified young pianist was too shy to do so. Gieseking wrote several letters of introduction for Filar and had him engaged to play in Lisbon for the centenary of Chopin’s death: “They asked me if I knew somebody who played Chopin well. Since Arthur Rubinstein can’t be everywhere at once, you’re going!” He was thereafter booked for other such engagements, including playing on the centenary date of Chopin’s death with Abendroth in Berlin.

After his mentorship with Gieseking, Filar moved to America, arriving in New York on March 3, 1950 on the American military ship General Greeley. He took English lessons and attended concerts, meeting a former classmate at a Carnegie Hall concert a month after his arrival, who then introduced him to some important people. The husband of a former classmate was responsible for setting up the summer schedule in Chautauqua and he was so impressed by what he heard at a dinner gathering that he crossed out the name of the one artist whose contract had not yet been signed so that Filar could take her place. He also auditioned for Ormandy, who was a bit brusque but later wrote to engage the pianist in Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy – the pianist didn’t know the work and considered not accepting, but gave in at the insistence of his friends. He considered the applause after the first performance to be tepid but Ormandy assured him that this was indeed a rapturous reception. The response was so ecstatic at his January 1, 1952 Carnegie Hall performance with Ormandy of Chopin’s F Minor Concerto that the pianist was aware he had been well received.

Despite great acclaim for his performances and some high-profile bookings, Filar was unable to secure management in the US. While some joked that he didn’t need any because of his success with bookings on his own – which required no need to pay out commissions – he hoped to have representation, but it appears that the all-powerful Sol Hurok put a stop to that. On their first meeting in Paris, Hurok had accused Filar of studying with a Nazi, which led the young Pole to defend Gieseking by pointing out that he played music of Jewish composers and had a Jewish manager, in addition to their own close relationship – as well as the fact that he had been cleared by US Army Intelligence. While his audition went well enough that Hurok expressed some interest in him, Filar did not like the impressario’s haughty attitude. Once he moved to New York, no other manager would touch him as Hurok had him blacklisted. When Arthur Rubinstein introduced Filar to Hurok in his own dressing room after a recital, the manager made a sour face and walked out.

Filar would continue to play internationally and in the US, where he became a citizen, but his energy would be primarily focused on teaching. He began teaching at Settlement Music School (which was linked to Curtis), heading their piano department from 1953 to 1966, before becoming full professor at Temple University’s College of Music from 1973 to 1989. His many students continue to refer to him with the utmost adulation, his presence in their lives having had a most profound impact. Beth Levin, Charles Birnbaum, and Lambert Orkis have all spoken and written about their great mentor with reverence, both about him personally and professionally. Levin states that as a child, she “didn’t realize the great drama that was going in front of my eyes with Mr. Filar- coming to Philadelphia, teaching night and day, trying to play more,” while Birnbaum referred to Filar as “one of those unknown gems, as far as the U.S. was concerned. What should have been an absolutely amazing concert career stalled in the U.S.”

Filar threw himself into his teaching, and Levin states that he was involved in their education in very personal, almost parental way: he would show up before their recitals to help them warm up and he would call them afterwards with bits of advice (on one call, he told Levin’s mother “She must get her hair out of her face!”). While he could be ruthlessly direct in his observations as a teacher, it always came from a place of caring and he always aimed to emphasize the positive, Orkis recalling one of his own performances when Filar was more enthusiastic and supportive than he was, how warm he was in his encouragement.

Despite his lack of management, Filar still played internationally albeit not with a full concert schedule. This 1976 recital in Brazil – never before released – shows that his pianistic and interpretative powers remained undiminished.

After his retirement from Temple in 1988, Filar continued as Professor Emeritus at the Boyer School of Music and Dance and even returned to Poland in 1992. While he stayed relatively active, over time his health waned and sadly he developed Alzheimer’s: Levin and her teacher shared a birthday, and she knew things were in decline the year that he had forgotten that fact in their annual birthday phone call. He spent his last years living under the care of his dedicated pupil Charles Birnbaum until he passed away on July 10, 2012 at the age of 94.

Because Filar did not leave behind a substantial recorded output, he is less remembered than many of his contemporaries. He made radio broadcasts in post-War Germany, as did many artists of the day, and some of these have finally been released by the great label Meloclassic (click here).  As far as official commercial recordings go, he appears to have made only two LPs in 1951 for the small Colosseum label, which was run by a former colleague from Poland who was also living in the US. While the discs received very positive reviews, the small label had limited distribution and once the discs were out of print there was no real means for them to be reissued. The playing is very fine indeed, with Filar’s beautiful singing tone wonderfully captured in his readings of six Chopin Nocturnes, with the ringing singing sonority that he perfected with Gieseking not long before these performances were set down:

Filar’s Colosseum recording of Chopin’s B Minor Sonata features his tremendous capacity to play with both strength and sensitivity, with a strong rhythmic pulse that is never aggressive despite its remarkable momentum.

While it is Chopin for which Filar is predominantly known – Levin states that she believes that it is his love for this composer that allowed him to survive – his Colosseum LP recording also featured works by Szymanowski: very fine accounts of the Four Preludes Op.1 and Etude in B-Flat Minor Op.4 No.3 that reveal his beauty of tone, clarity of texture, and lyrical phrasing.

Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.1 in E Minor was a mainstay of the pianist’s repertoire: Filar played it at key points in his career and as an audition piece for several major figures throughout his life. This October 15, 1953 concert performance accompanied by Erik Tuxen and the Danish Radio Orchestra captures the pianist’s playing at its poetic and energetic peak, with a wonderful blend of vitality and poetry, his rhythmic impulse and stunning technique serving the lyricism of the work with sumptuous phrasing, refined nuancing, and natural but emotive timing.

As much as Filar is associated with Chopin, his repertoire was vaster: there are live recordings of him playing concertos by Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky, as well as the superb Beethoven Piano Concerto No.3 in C Minor presented below. His playing here too features his sumptuous singing sound, masterful use of the pedal, and rhythmic vitality.

Finally, here is an opportunity to hear the great artist in spoken word (though you can hear him speak in the Brazil recital posted above): the link below will take you to three interviews with Filar about his experiences in the war, much of which is explored in his book. As captivating as his book is (and again, I cannot recommend it highly enough), the oral history below is fascinating as one can hear directly from Filar himself the extraordinary experiences he went through. The interface is a little counter-intuitive: once you have heard part 1, click on the icon in the top right of the player window to open up the option to hear parts 2 and 3. The link is here: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn508654

Filar’s life was certainly remarkable –  definitely worthy of a movie on the same lines of The Pianist – as is his pianism, and he lives on in the memories of those who knew and studied with him and now through the circulation of his too-few recordings. Orkis reflects that “to know that he escaped the horrors of the war and eventually played with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Carnegie Hall gives me the daily hope that whatever obstacle I may face, the possibility of better circumstances is always plausible – indeed, his example as a being seems to have opened up the world of what is possible to his students and listeners.” As the artist himself stated, “My life was not ended by the Nazis, although they took much of it away by murdering most of my family. My life went on. I was and am a musician, a teacher, a performer and a concert artist who has had a long international career. And that life, too, is part of my story.”

His is indeed a story worth remembering – as is his supreme artistry.

 

My deepest gratitude to Beth Levin, Lambert Orkis, and Charles Birnbaum for sharing memories and photographs of their great mentor, with a special thanks to Mr. Birnbaum for having provided the recorded performances presented here, many of them now publicly available for the first time.

It is a sad reality that a great many supremely gifted musicians did not have careers that their talent might have warranted, with some of these great musicians having had to face some tremendous adversity. One such artist was Marian Filar, a wonderful Polish pianist who endured the horrors World War 2, not only surviving years in concentration camps but going on to play internationally to great acclaim, including at Carnegie Hall and under leading conductors. This great musician’s career unfortunately did not develop as one might have hoped and today he is less remembered due to his having made but a handful of commercial recordings. As the testimonials of great musicians and recorded performances included in this posting will demonstrate, he was indeed an artist of outstanding capabilities – and his life story too reveals that he was a remarkable human being.

Marian Filar was born in Warsaw on December 17, 1917. His was a musical family and he showed his aptitude at a young age, sneaking into his sister Helen’s piano lessons at the age of four. “I fell in love with the piano instantly. It made the most glorious sound in the world, the most magnificent I had ever heard. I was hooked. From then on I was married to the piano.” When it was discovered that the young boy had perfect pitch, his parents were convinced that he should be professionally trained but they started him on the violin like his two brothers (his two sisters played piano), which led to such tantrums that they acquiesced and arranged for him to study the instrument he loved. At age six, he gave his first performance at the conservatory – because he didn’t know it was rare to do so, he wasn’t nervous (“You don’t learn to get nervous until you’re older”). He had some early lessons with the legendary Aleksander Michałowski and Chopin Competition founder Jerry Zurawlew.

Aged 12, he played the Mozart D Minor Concerto in an audition for the Warsaw Philharmonic which so impressed the conductor that he was immediately booked to play the work in concert. The great German pianist Alfred Hoehn attended one of the young boy’s performances and entered discussions with the family about training him; however, because of ‘the Hitlerites’ in Germany, he suggested that Filar study at the local conservatory until the situation there settled down (Hoehn seemed to think it would blow over in a few months) and that he would stop by to check on the boy whenever he visited Warsaw. Thus the young Pole started training with the esteemed Professor Zbigniew Drzewiecki, who seems to have been as famous for his yelling in lessons as he was for his playing and teaching. While the first summer with him was challenging, Filar soon came to appreciate his teacher and the connection was beyond cordial: Drzewiecki would later be of vital support during the horrors of the war, managing to get some precious items smuggled to Filar while he was imprisoned in a concentration camp.

Young Marian was involved in more than just musical training, being physically active and playful like his peers while also deeply immersed in the musical culture. He attended concerts by Hofmann (“we all fell out of our chairs”), Gieseking, Backhaus, Hoehn, Landowska, and many others, in addition to symphonic concerts. As he continued his studies, he was told that the rise of anti-Semitism would limit his possibilities in Poland and that he should go abroad, but his parents couldn’t afford it at the time. He had been rather sheltered from these issues, though he started observing incidents – including with government officials dealing with his father – and his mother sent one of her oldest sons to Palestine in 1935 in case the family would later need to leave.

Filar’s autobiography From Buchenwald to Carnegie Hall is remarkable for the first-hand detail given about the musician’s experiences during the War – indeed, the American Library Association magazine Booklist wrote that “among the many astonishing accounts of Holocaust survival, this is one of the most remarkable” and I cannot recommend reading the book yourself to get all the details, as his incredible story is told with such directness and clarity. The young man’s ingenuity, fierce intelligence, and compassionate nature would be channeled from music-making into helping his friends, family, and compatriots to survive. He tells stories of local bombings, of the creation of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, of witnessing – while hiding behind a wall in the conservatory – Russians registering locals to be sent to Siberia. His strength of character and astuteness were evident in how he handled some very difficult situations, among them Russian soldiers attempting to claim property and take advantage of women. Once the Germans began narrowing in on citizens, he cleverly arranged for trash to be piled up near the entrances of their homes to make the area looked more derelict so they would be less likely to be searched.

With a combination of resourcefulness, daring, and good luck, Filar escaped many close calls: he made a gutsy escape while being marched to be taken away and several times saying just the right thing to the wrong person to get out of some very sticky situations. But eventually he was loaded into a train and shipped to the camps. Even here, his observation skills served him well: seeing how crowded the cars would be, he went straight to the window as soon as he entered the carriage so he would have air during the arduous journey (his instincts were right: several people perished en route due to not being able to breathe properly). Inside the camps, malnutrition and heavy work led to more close calls but he soon figured out how the black market worked inside the camps and found ways to get extra food from local workers so he could regain his strength. There were multiple times when he could have been shot on the spot but luck was truly on his side. His mindset and determination were clear:

“As much as they beat and humiliated us, I knew they could not take away my talent, my gifts, my knowledge, my love of music what I am. To them I was only a number, a slave. They know nothing about me, which was just as well. Even without a piano I always had music in my heart, which is why I never thought of suicide, no matter how bad things got. Plus, I wouldn’t have wanted to give those SS bastards the satisfaction of thinking they had triumphed over me.”

After two years spent in seven camps, Filar was liberated, but his parents and sister Helen had all been killed by the end of the war. Soon after gaining his freedom, he and his brother went to Prague, where the city was being accommodating to refugees. Filar was thrilled to see a poster announcing a concert, and upon hearing that the conductor was the son of violinist Jan Kubelik, he went to the rehearsal and afterwards introduced himself to Rafael Kubelik. He was invited to play for him at his home a few days later, at which time Filar played the Chopin E Minor Concerto all the way through – from memory and without having had access to a piano for five years (except a brief session a few weeks earlier). The conductor was not only impressed but expressed true concern for the pianist’s well-being, making a phone call on the spot that enabled him to have an unlimited stay at a hotel in the city.

Filar and Kubelik would perform Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F Minor together six years later in Chicago and they remained lifelong friends. While a recording of that Chicago performance has not been found, this 1971 Munich broadcast with both musicians playing the same work is a wonderful testament to their close musical and personal relationship.

After a return to Lodz to track down a brother believed to have died in Siberia but who somehow survived, Filar visited Kraków for a tearful reunion with his beloved teacher Professor Drzewiecki. Two months after his liberation, Filar played Chopin’s E Minor Concerto in Lodz to great acclaim. The former rector of the Conservatory where he had trained came to see him after the concert, reiterating his suggestion from years earlier: to leave Poland to establish himself as a world-class pianist. Filar and his brothers’ bags were already packed for departure to Berlin the next day, and from there they went to Frankfurt, where Filar hoped to find Alfred Hoehn; alas, he was informed that the pianist had died not long before.

Filar had doubts about whether to continue in music or to pursue his interest in the field of medicine, and he thought that he needed to have his playing assessed by a great musician to inform his decision. A colleague who knew Walter Gieseking gave him a letter of introduction and despite his trepidation, Filar showed up unannounced on the pianist’s doorstep at 24 Wilhelminenstrasse in Wiesbaden. The German pianist was not immediately welcoming, stating that he had stacks of letters from pianists hoping to have an audience with him, to which Filar innocently replied, “But have you answered all of those letters?” Although Gieseking smiled at this answer, he continued to admonish the young Pole for not writing first and refused to hear him, but seeing the tears in Filar’s eyes, he relented and asked him to play for him. After some Bach and Mozart, Gieseking asked for Chopin, “since you’re Polish.” After Filar finished Chopin’s G Minor Ballade, Gieseking hugged him and said, “You want to give up the piano? You must be crazy. You are already a concert pianist. Would you like to study with me? Do you think I can teach you something?” Filar was beyond delighted and when he brought up how to pay him, Gieseking replied, “You’ve already paid enough. Come every Thursday at 10:30…. Just ring the bell and come in.”

Thus began a five-year apprenticeship and a congenial relationship of great mutual admiration. Filar states in his book that recordings do little to reveal the wonder of Gieseking’s incredible singing sonority, adding “I learned my singing tone from Mr. Gieseking. I didn’t have it before. How could I have had it? I had never heard anything like it!” The great German master held his student in the highest esteem too, praising his Chopin to the skies, telling his wife “Filar studies with me and he plays the Barcarolle better than I do” (Gieseking’s wife listened to Filar play it for her and she agreed). At a recital for the American Red Cross in Frankfurt, Gieseking pointed Filar out to the audience and begged him to play Chopin’s A-Flat Ballade then and there, but the mortified young pianist was too shy to do so. Gieseking wrote several letters of introduction for Filar and had him engaged to play in Lisbon for the centenary of Chopin’s death: “They asked me if I knew somebody who played Chopin well. Since Arthur Rubinstein can’t be everywhere at once, you’re going!” He was thereafter booked for other such engagements, including playing on the centenary date of Chopin’s death with Abendroth in Berlin.

After his mentorship with Gieseking, Filar moved to America, arriving in New York on March 3, 1950 on the American military ship General Greeley. He took English lessons and attended concerts, meeting a former classmate at a Carnegie Hall concert a month after his arrival, who then introduced him to some important people. The husband of a former classmate was responsible for setting up the summer schedule in Chautauqua and he was so impressed by what he heard at a dinner gathering that he crossed out the name of the one artist whose contract had not yet been signed so that Filar could take her place. He also auditioned for Ormandy, who was a bit brusque but later wrote to engage the pianist in Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy – the pianist didn’t know the work and considered not accepting, but gave in at the insistence of his friends. He considered the applause after the first performance to be tepid but Ormandy assured him that this was indeed a rapturous reception. The response was so ecstatic at his January 1, 1952 Carnegie Hall performance with Ormandy of Chopin’s F Minor Concerto that the pianist was aware he had been well received.

Despite great acclaim for his performances and some high-profile bookings, Filar was unable to secure management in the US. While some joked that he didn’t need any because of his success with bookings on his own – which required no need to pay out commissions – he hoped to have representation, but it appears that the all-powerful Sol Hurok put a stop to that. On their first meeting in Paris, Hurok had accused Filar of studying with a Nazi, which led the young Pole to defend Gieseking by pointing out that he played music of Jewish composers and had a Jewish manager, in addition to their own close relationship – as well as the fact that he had been cleared by US Army Intelligence. While his audition went well enough that Hurok expressed some interest in him, Filar did not like the impressario’s haughty attitude. Once he moved to New York, no other manager would touch him as Hurok had him blacklisted. When Arthur Rubinstein introduced Filar to Hurok in his own dressing room after a recital, the manager made a sour face and walked out.

Filar would continue to play internationally and in the US, where he became a citizen, but his energy would be primarily focused on teaching. He began teaching at Settlement Music School (which was linked to Curtis), heading their piano department from 1953 to 1966, before becoming full professor at Temple University’s College of Music from 1973 to 1989. His many students continue to refer to him with the utmost adulation, his presence in their lives having had a most profound impact. Beth Levin, Charles Birnbaum, and Lambert Orkis have all spoken and written about their great mentor with reverence, both about him personally and professionally. Levin states that as a child, she “didn’t realize the great drama that was going in front of my eyes with Mr. Filar- coming to Philadelphia, teaching night and day, trying to play more,” while Birnbaum referred to Filar as “one of those unknown gems, as far as the U.S. was concerned. What should have been an absolutely amazing concert career stalled in the U.S.”

Filar threw himself into his teaching, and Levin states that he was involved in their education in very personal, almost parental way: he would show up before their recitals to help them warm up and he would call them afterwards with bits of advice (on one call, he told Levin’s mother “She must get her hair out of her face!”). While he could be ruthlessly direct in his observations as a teacher, it always came from a place of caring and he always aimed to emphasize the positive, Orkis recalling one of his own performances when Filar was more enthusiastic and supportive than he was, how warm he was in his encouragement.

Despite his lack of management, Filar still played internationally albeit not with a full concert schedule. This 1976 recital in Brazil – never before released – shows that his pianistic and interpretative powers remained undiminished.

After his retirement from Temple in 1988, Filar continued as Professor Emeritus at the Boyer School of Music and Dance and even returned to Poland in 1992. While he stayed relatively active, over time his health waned and sadly he developed Alzheimer’s: Levin and her teacher shared a birthday, and she knew things were in decline the year that he had forgotten that fact in their annual birthday phone call. He spent his last years living under the care of his dedicated pupil Charles Birnbaum until he passed away on July 10, 2012 at the age of 94.

Because Filar did not leave behind a substantial recorded output, he is less remembered than many of his contemporaries. He made radio broadcasts in post-War Germany, as did many artists of the day, and some of these have finally been released by the great label Meloclassic (click here).  As far as official commercial recordings go, he appears to have made only two LPs in 1951 for the small Colosseum label, which was run by a former colleague from Poland who was also living in the US. While the discs received very positive reviews, the small label had limited distribution and once the discs were out of print there was no real means for them to be reissued. The playing is very fine indeed, with Filar’s beautiful singing tone wonderfully captured in his readings of six Chopin Nocturnes, with the ringing singing sonority that he perfected with Gieseking not long before these performances were set down:

Filar’s Colosseum recording of Chopin’s B Minor Sonata features his tremendous capacity to play with both strength and sensitivity, with a strong rhythmic pulse that is never aggressive despite its remarkable momentum.

While it is Chopin for which Filar is predominantly known – Levin states that she believes that it is his love for this composer that allowed him to survive – his Colosseum LP recording also featured works by Szymanowski: very fine accounts of the Four Preludes Op.1 and Etude in B-Flat Minor Op.4 No.3 that reveal his beauty of tone, clarity of texture, and lyrical phrasing.

Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.1 in E Minor was a mainstay of the pianist’s repertoire: Filar played it at key points in his career and as an audition piece for several major figures throughout his life. This October 15, 1953 concert performance accompanied by Erik Tuxen and the Danish Radio Orchestra captures the pianist’s playing at its poetic and energetic peak, with a wonderful blend of vitality and poetry, his rhythmic impulse and stunning technique serving the lyricism of the work with sumptuous phrasing, refined nuancing, and natural but emotive timing.

As much as Filar is associated with Chopin, his repertoire was vaster: there are live recordings of him playing concertos by Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky, as well as the superb Beethoven Piano Concerto No.3 in C Minor presented below. His playing here too features his sumptuous singing sound, masterful use of the pedal, and rhythmic vitality.

Finally, here is an opportunity to hear the great artist in spoken word (though you can hear him speak in the Brazil recital posted above): the link below will take you to three interviews with Filar about his experiences in the war, much of which is explored in his book. As captivating as his book is (and again, I cannot recommend it highly enough), the oral history below is fascinating as one can hear directly from Filar himself the extraordinary experiences he went through. The interface is a little counter-intuitive: once you have heard part 1, click on the icon in the top right of the player window to open up the option to hear parts 2 and 3. The link is here: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn508654

Filar’s life was certainly remarkable –  definitely worthy of a movie on the same lines of The Pianist – as is his pianism, and he lives on in the memories of those who knew and studied with him and now through the circulation of his too-few recordings. Orkis reflects that “to know that he escaped the horrors of the war and eventually played with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Carnegie Hall gives me the daily hope that whatever obstacle I may face, the possibility of better circumstances is always plausible – indeed, his example as a being seems to have opened up the world of what is possible to his students and listeners.” As the artist himself stated, “My life was not ended by the Nazis, although they took much of it away by murdering most of my family. My life went on. I was and am a musician, a teacher, a performer and a concert artist who has had a long international career. And that life, too, is part of my story.”

His is indeed a story worth remembering – as is his supreme artistry.

 

My deepest gratitude to Beth Levin, Lambert Orkis, and Charles Birnbaum for sharing memories and photographs of their great mentor, with a special thanks to Mr. Birnbaum for having provided the recorded performances presented here, many of them now publicly available for the first time.

Our appreciation of pianists of the past is based primarily on their recordings. How amazing that in this age of digital technology we can listen to the actual playing of pianists born and trained in the nineteenth century— including pupils of Liszt and pianists who studied with Chopin’s students— hearing with our own ears pianism from an era that produced timeless musical masterpieces. While the names of some legendary artists who did not make recordings are still remembered beyond their lifetimes, many who had great careers are forgotten because there are no recordings, biographies, or published testimonials for later generations to reference.

One fascinating case is that of Jascha Spivakovsky, a Russian-born pianist trained in the nineteenth-century Romantic tradition. Despite having a glorious international career spanning six decades, he never issued a solo commercial record before his death in 1970. In 2015, piano connoisseurs were intrigued when recordings made in Spivakovsky’s home were released for the first time, revealing mesmerizing playing: a magnificent singing sonority, exquisitely shaped phrasing, and probing interpretations, with an approach that paradoxically fused nineteenth-century Romantic freedom with the post-War ideal of fidelity to the score. Who was this pianist, and how could a talent of this magnitude have been forgotten?

‘A rare, oustanding talent’

It is a tremendous blessing that recording technology has allowed the playing of great musicians of the past to be preserved for future generations. In some cases, we are able to hear performances that came perilously close to disappearing into thin air and which now form the foundation of a musician’s current reputation. One such case is the remarkable Chilean pianist Rosita Renard, whose only Carnegie Hall recital – in 1949 – is justly considered legendary and is a milestone of recorded pianism.

Rosa Amelia Renard Artigas was born in Santiago, Chile on February 8, 1894. Her abilities made themselves known at a young age and she made her debut with the Chilean Symphony Orchestra playing the Grieg Concerto when she was 14. The government would provide a scholarship the following year for Renard to study at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, where in 1910 she would enter the master class of Martin Krause. The Liszt pupil famously taught Edwin Fischer (who was both her classmate and friend) as well as Renard’s more famous younger compatriot Claudio Arrau (it is apparently Renard who walked the young boy – nine years her junior – to his audition in 1912). After four years of training, Krause stated about Renard that ‘there is no doubt she will conquer the world as an artist,’ noting that ‘her spiritual interpretation, her sound, can only be compared with the great maestro Emil von Sauer.’

Returning to her native land at the beginning of WW1, Renard was offered an opportunity to teach in Rochester, NY but on arrival found that she had been assigned only one student. Despite this bad luck, the pianist was treated generously by admirers who arranged several concerts on her behalf, bringing her what she considered to be an outrageous sum of money – over five hundred dollars – and more flowers than she knew what to do with (she took them to Our Lady’s Shrine in a cathedral as an offering). Critics were bowled over by an all-Liszt recital at Aeolian Hall – the 22-year-old’s second at the venue – comparing her to Teresa Carreño, the ‘greatest woman pianist.’ Max Smith in the New York American wrote:

‘A more amazing, a more thrilling exhibition of bravura power than Rosita Renard gave in Aeolian Hall at her second recital, the musical public of this city has not witnessed in many a year. Indeed, since the days when Teresa Carreño first took the world by storm, no woman has disclosed such prodigious virtuosity, as the dark-haired girl of twenty-two developed yesterday afternoon in a programme devoted entirely to the transcendentally difficult works of Franz Liszt.’

With such accolades, Renard was signed to a two-year contract by Charles Ellis, who also managed Paderewski, Rachmaninoff, and Kreisler. She played in more than 40 cities in the US and her 1920 performance of the Brahms D Minor Concerto with the New York Philharmonic was praised to the skies. However, the following year Renard returned to Germany, but the musical climate had changed and she was unable to develop the same level of popularity: critics were unreceptive if not downright hostile to her, and after a few years she returned to the United States. However, she made less of an impression this time, despite playing concerts with the legendary soprano Geraldine Farrar and together with her own sister Blanca, who taught in Alabama. She played again at Aeolian Hall but did not attract the attention that had been lavished on her a decade earlier.

Before returning to her native country, Renard made a few recordings around 1928 – not quite as volcanic as what can be heard in her final recital, but nevertheless both bold and musical. This reading of Beethoven’s Sonata in G Major Op.31 No.1 showcases her marvellous tonal colours, deft articulation, rhythmic vitality, skillful melodic shaping, and a host of other pianistic marvels.

In Europe, she had apparently played the Schulz-Evler paraphrase of Strauss’s Blue Danube Waltz between scenes of Die Fledermaus at a New Year’s Eve party. Josef Lhévinne’s abridged disc is the most famous of the transcription, and Renard gives quite a different kind of performance, cutting the work in different areas than Lhévinne (she plays the extended introduction that is completely absent from his) and with an approach in general more fluid than her Russian colleague’s taut, bouncy reading – but of course still highly idiomatic.

Renard settled back in her native Chile in 1930, her profound modesty having led her to stop pursuing a career as a performer. Instead, she assisted reorganizing the Santiago Conservatory’s piano department while transforming a modest country home with a dirt floor into something more amenable – with mahogany furniture and elegant silver – and continuing to teach, having friends and students visit for musical gatherings on the weekend. Two more European tours were undermined by her self-effacement, until conductor Erich Kleiber in 1945 booked her for a Mozart concerto performance after her name had been proposed and he heard her play. Their rapport was such that they traveled throughout Latin America together, and Renard became known as a Mozart specialist, giving cycles in recital and orchestral appearances in Satiago, Montevideo, Lima, Buenos Aires, Bogota, and Havana (a critic in Argentina wrote that the ovation after her performance of Mozart’s C Major Concerto lasted for ten minutes).

Finally after 22 years she would return to New York to give her one and only Carnegie Hall recital, the one which has now secured her place in the pianistic pantheon. Her friend Bernardo Mendel played a key role in arranging the concert: he had founded theSociety of Friends of Music in Bogota in 1945 at the suggestion of Columbia Artists Management. He had heard her prior to that time in 1944, and upon meeting her a second time, he stated that he was now resourced to help arrange a concert for her at Carnegie Hall. As usual, the self-effacing Renard was doubtful of the degree of interest in her artistry: “You are going to lose your shirt because no one is going to come to my recital. Your family and some acquaintances would go, but nobody else,” she declared. However, Mendel would not relent and insisted that Renard prepare a programme and that they meet in New York in January 1949 to go over the final details of the concert. He himself went to New York and organized the recital with Columbia Artists Management, putting together a publicity campaign that included publishing a review of Renard’s success in Bogota in the January 15, 1949 issue of Musical America which stated that she would soon “debut” in New York (a somewhat exaggerated claim: this was her fourth recital in the city – in addition to her New York Philharmonic concerto – but it was her only Carnegie Hall recital). 

The critics were unanimous in their praise of the recital. Among them was a young critic by the name of Harold C Schonberg, who would become a leading writer on the topic of great pianists. He recalled later that he had attended and was

prepared to review a piano recital by a (to me) unknown Chilean artist named Rosita Renard. It was a fairly conventional programme that she had announced; and I while I was not prepared for the worst, I certainly did not expect anything out of the ordinary. It took the first five measures of the opening of the Bach B-Flat Partita to get the latter notion out of my head: this was piano playing of individuality, strength, and colour; perhaps not the ultimate technical word, perhaps a little too full of nervous tension, but altogether intriguing…Well, it was quite a recital, and Miss Renard received the acclaim due her.

His review at the time stated that “she likes to play fast, but this speed does not stem from a mere desire to display her large technique. It develops from a restlessness in the pianist’s mind. Her Mozart A Minor Sonata, with those fast tempi, was not orthodox; and yet, like everything else she played, it had logic and authority. Miss Renard carries the stamp of a ‘big’ pianist…”

Mendel had the recital recorded under the auspices of the Society of Friends of Music, an act that would have more important consequences for Renard’s legacy than he might have expected at the time. After the performance, Renard returned to Chile and began displaying symptoms that at first mystified doctors but which were found to be caused by a strain of sleeping sickness that was famously being treated by Albert Schweitzer in Africa. Renard herself was unable to be cured, and within a matter of months she was dead, her bright light extinguishing on May 24, 1949.

It is almost inconceivable to imagine that an artist could have faded so quickly from life when listening to the vivacious, impassioned playing from her recital a mere four months earlier. After her death, the records that had been made for Renard’s personal use were issued as a memorial volume in a two-LP set by the Society of Friends of Music. Schonberg wrote about the experience of finding the records in a New York shop, which he described as a ‘weird experience… the playback of a dead artist’s recital at which I was present; the sound of the audience, the coughs, the applause; the intrinsic merit of the piano playing.’

About a quarter of a century later, Gregor Benko would reissue the performance on a two-disc set on the Desmar label as an International Piano Archives release, and on CD on the VAI label in 1995 (the label that Benko and engineer Ward Marston released on before the latter founded his own label Marston Records). The recording has become one of the most beloved concert recordings of the last century amongst the cognoscenti of the piano world. The playing is indeed, as Schonberg remarked, full of ‘individuality, strength, and colour,’ so much so that it is almost startling to modern ears. The vitality of her rhythmic pulse, the soaring lines that put one in mind of Josef Hofmann, the volcanic exclamations that remind one of Horowitz at his most impetuous, all fused with incredible intelligence and refinement of nuance, point not only to a pianist of the most remarkable ability but also to an era in which pianism was highly individual and personal. It is almost inconceivable today that a pianist could phrase Bach’s First Partita so fluidly and romantically, play Mozart’s A Minor Sonata and D Major Rondo so briskly, be so bold and volcanic in Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses or Chopin Études. The playing is not for the faint of heart (I’ve said that a few times in my postings of Renard and other similar artists) and it can take a few listens – once one gets past the shock of the completely different brand of pianism that one is hearing – to fully appreciate the magic of how she is playing and the power of her musicality.

Give yourself the time to listen well to this recital – and ideally more than once – to hear a kind of music-making that has largely vanished from the concert stage of today. How fortunate we are that the miracle of recording technology makes it possible for us to hear playing that we might simply have read about: listening to Renard’s legendary Carnegie Hall recital, we can experience pianism that simply defies description. What an extraordinary treasure this is!

 

Many thanks to Jeff Proctor, grandson of Renard’s friend and agent Bernardo Mendel, for sharing some of the rare photographs and information included in this posting

It is a tremendous blessing that recording technology has allowed the playing of great musicians of the past to be preserved for future generations. In some cases, we are able to hear performances that came perilously close to disappearing into thin air and which now form the foundation of a musician’s current reputation. One such case is the remarkable Chilean pianist Rosita Renard, whose only Carnegie Hall recital – in 1949 – is justly considered legendary and is a milestone of recorded pianism.

Rosa Amelia Renard Artigas was born in Santiago, Chile on February 8, 1894. Her abilities made themselves known at a young age and she made her debut with the Chilean Symphony Orchestra playing the Grieg Concerto when she was 14. The government would provide a scholarship the following year for Renard to study at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, where in 1910 she would enter the master class of Martin Krause. The Liszt pupil famously taught Edwin Fischer (who was both her classmate and friend) as well as Renard’s more famous younger compatriot Claudio Arrau (it is apparently Renard who walked the young boy – nine years her junior – to his audition in 1912). After four years of training, Krause stated about Renard that ‘there is no doubt she will conquer the world as an artist,’ noting that ‘her spiritual interpretation, her sound, can only be compared with the great maestro Emil von Sauer.’

Returning to her native land at the beginning of WW1, Renard was offered an opportunity to teach in Rochester, NY but on arrival found that she had been assigned only one student. Despite this bad luck, the pianist was treated generously by admirers who arranged several concerts on her behalf, bringing her what she considered to be an outrageous sum of money – over five hundred dollars – and more flowers than she knew what to do with (she took them to Our Lady’s Shrine in a cathedral as an offering). Critics were bowled over by an all-Liszt recital at Aeolian Hall – the 22-year-old’s second at the venue – comparing her to Teresa Carreño, the ‘greatest woman pianist.’ Max Smith in the New York American wrote:

‘A more amazing, a more thrilling exhibition of bravura power than Rosita Renard gave in Aeolian Hall at her second recital, the musical public of this city has not witnessed in many a year. Indeed, since the days when Teresa Carreño first took the world by storm, no woman has disclosed such prodigious virtuosity, as the dark-haired girl of twenty-two developed yesterday afternoon in a programme devoted entirely to the transcendentally difficult works of Franz Liszt.’

With such accolades, Renard was signed to a two-year contract by Charles Ellis, who also managed Paderewski, Rachmaninoff, and Kreisler. She played in more than 40 cities in the US and her 1920 performance of the Brahms D Minor Concerto with the New York Philharmonic was praised to the skies. However, the following year Renard returned to Germany, but the musical climate had changed and she was unable to develop the same level of popularity: critics were unreceptive if not downright hostile to her, and after a few years she returned to the United States. However, she made less of an impression this time, despite playing concerts with the legendary soprano Geraldine Farrar and together with her own sister Blanca, who taught in Alabama. She played again at Aeolian Hall but did not attract the attention that had been lavished on her a decade earlier.

Before returning to her native country, Renard made a few recordings around 1928 – not quite as volcanic as what can be heard in her final recital, but nevertheless both bold and musical. This reading of Beethoven’s Sonata in G Major Op.31 No.1 showcases her marvellous tonal colours, deft articulation, rhythmic vitality, skillful melodic shaping, and a host of other pianistic marvels.

In Europe, she had apparently played the Schulz-Evler paraphrase of Strauss’s Blue Danube Waltz between scenes of Die Fledermaus at a New Year’s Eve party. Josef Lhévinne’s abridged disc is the most famous of the transcription, and Renard gives quite a different kind of performance, cutting the work in different areas than Lhévinne (she plays the extended introduction that is completely absent from his) and with an approach in general more fluid than her Russian colleague’s taut, bouncy reading – but of course still highly idiomatic.

Renard settled back in her native Chile in 1930, her profound modesty having led her to stop pursuing a career as a performer. Instead, she assisted reorganizing the Santiago Conservatory’s piano department while transforming a modest country home with a dirt floor into something more amenable – with mahogany furniture and elegant silver – and continuing to teach, having friends and students visit for musical gatherings on the weekend. Two more European tours were undermined by her self-effacement, until conductor Erich Kleiber in 1945 booked her for a Mozart concerto performance after her name had been proposed and he heard her play. Their rapport was such that they traveled throughout Latin America together, and Renard became known as a Mozart specialist, giving cycles in recital and orchestral appearances in Satiago, Montevideo, Lima, Buenos Aires, Bogota, and Havana (a critic in Argentina wrote that the ovation after her performance of Mozart’s C Major Concerto lasted for ten minutes).

Finally after 22 years she would return to New York to give her one and only Carnegie Hall recital, the one which has now secured her place in the pianistic pantheon. Her friend Bernardo Mendel played a key role in arranging the concert: he had founded theSociety of Friends of Music in Bogota in 1945 at the suggestion of Columbia Artists Management. He had heard her prior to that time in 1944, and upon meeting her a second time, he stated that he was now resourced to help arrange a concert for her at Carnegie Hall. As usual, the self-effacing Renard was doubtful of the degree of interest in her artistry: “You are going to lose your shirt because no one is going to come to my recital. Your family and some acquaintances would go, but nobody else,” she declared. However, Mendel would not relent and insisted that Renard prepare a programme and that they meet in New York in January 1949 to go over the final details of the concert. He himself went to New York and organized the recital with Columbia Artists Management, putting together a publicity campaign that included publishing a review of Renard’s success in Bogota in the January 15, 1949 issue of Musical America which stated that she would soon “debut” in New York (a somewhat exaggerated claim: this was her fourth recital in the city – in addition to her New York Philharmonic concerto – but it was her only Carnegie Hall recital). 

The critics were unanimous in their praise of the recital. Among them was a young critic by the name of Harold C Schonberg, who would become a leading writer on the topic of great pianists. He recalled later that he had attended and was

prepared to review a piano recital by a (to me) unknown Chilean artist named Rosita Renard. It was a fairly conventional programme that she had announced; and I while I was not prepared for the worst, I certainly did not expect anything out of the ordinary. It took the first five measures of the opening of the Bach B-Flat Partita to get the latter notion out of my head: this was piano playing of individuality, strength, and colour; perhaps not the ultimate technical word, perhaps a little too full of nervous tension, but altogether intriguing…Well, it was quite a recital, and Miss Renard received the acclaim due her.

His review at the time stated that “she likes to play fast, but this speed does not stem from a mere desire to display her large technique. It develops from a restlessness in the pianist’s mind. Her Mozart A Minor Sonata, with those fast tempi, was not orthodox; and yet, like everything else she played, it had logic and authority. Miss Renard carries the stamp of a ‘big’ pianist…”

Mendel had the recital recorded under the auspices of the Society of Friends of Music, an act that would have more important consequences for Renard’s legacy than he might have expected at the time. After the performance, Renard returned to Chile and began displaying symptoms that at first mystified doctors but which were found to be caused by a strain of sleeping sickness that was famously being treated by Albert Schweitzer in Africa. Renard herself was unable to be cured, and within a matter of months she was dead, her bright light extinguishing on May 24, 1949.

It is almost inconceivable to imagine that an artist could have faded so quickly from life when listening to the vivacious, impassioned playing from her recital a mere four months earlier. After her death, the records that had been made for Renard’s personal use were issued as a memorial volume in a two-LP set by the Society of Friends of Music. Schonberg wrote about the experience of finding the records in a New York shop, which he described as a ‘weird experience… the playback of a dead artist’s recital at which I was present; the sound of the audience, the coughs, the applause; the intrinsic merit of the piano playing.’

About a quarter of a century later, Gregor Benko would reissue the performance on a two-disc set on the Desmar label as an International Piano Archives release, and on CD on the VAI label in 1995 (the label that Benko and engineer Ward Marston released on before the latter founded his own label Marston Records). The recording has become one of the most beloved concert recordings of the last century amongst the cognoscenti of the piano world. The playing is indeed, as Schonberg remarked, full of ‘individuality, strength, and colour,’ so much so that it is almost startling to modern ears. The vitality of her rhythmic pulse, the soaring lines that put one in mind of Josef Hofmann, the volcanic exclamations that remind one of Horowitz at his most impetuous, all fused with incredible intelligence and refinement of nuance, point not only to a pianist of the most remarkable ability but also to an era in which pianism was highly individual and personal. It is almost inconceivable today that a pianist could phrase Bach’s First Partita so fluidly and romantically, play Mozart’s A Minor Sonata and D Major Rondo so briskly, be so bold and volcanic in Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses or Chopin Études. The playing is not for the faint of heart (I’ve said that a few times in my postings of Renard and other similar artists) and it can take a few listens – once one gets past the shock of the completely different brand of pianism that one is hearing – to fully appreciate the magic of how she is playing and the power of her musicality.

Give yourself the time to listen well to this recital – and ideally more than once – to hear a kind of music-making that has largely vanished from the concert stage of today. How fortunate we are that the miracle of recording technology makes it possible for us to hear playing that we might simply have read about: listening to Renard’s legendary Carnegie Hall recital, we can experience pianism that simply defies description. What an extraordinary treasure this is!

 

Many thanks to Jeff Proctor, grandson of Renard’s friend and agent Bernardo Mendel, for sharing some of the rare photographs and information included in this posting

Anyone who explores historical recordings is interested in ‘what might have been’ – opportunities for recordings that never transpired, missed chances that were not realized. Fortunately in some cases, new technology and the hard work of dedicated fans can lead to revealing what might have been, even if at a different time – a return to the Golden Era but in the present.

One of the artists I have been most fascinated by for the last three decades is Marcelle Meyer, a remarkable French pianist who somehow recorded 17 CDs’ worth of material from the 1920s to the 1950s yet who was virtually unknown to even the most ardent pianophiles: it was I who introduced her playing to Harold C Schonberg 30 years ago – he had never heard of her. Everything that this incredible pianist recorded seems to have been absolutely impeccable: indeed, a pupil of Jorge Bolet told me he considers the ‘discovery’ of this artist (for those who never knew of her) to be one of the most significant he has ever encountered, as he stated rhetorically, ‘Is there anything she did that was less than perfect? I have yet to hear it.’

Indeed it’s a mystery how a pianist of such incredible talent, capability, and intelligence could have been forgotten – and one who was in the right place at the right time to work with among the most legendary composers of her time, among them Debussy, Satie, Ravel, Milhaud, Poulenc, and Stravinsky. One possibility is that she recorded primarily for the rather exclusive French label Les Discophiles Français, which had limited circulation outside of Europe; although some of these were published in the US on the Haydn Society label, these pressings were inferior and still escaped the notice of the likes of Harold C Schonberg. The beautiful French editions included gatefold two-disc sets with textured stitched covers, the recordings themselves engineered by the legendary engineer André Charlin. These albums continue be highly prized by collectors in shops and online auction sites for both their top-level production and the marvellous playing of this fabled pianist.

In the late 1950s, Les Discophiles Français unexpectedly went bankrupt. Meyer’s daughter Anne-Marie di Vieto told me, when I interviewed her for two articles that I wrote, how dejected her mother was that the label manager Henri Screpel simply disappeared without a trace when he had been a close family friend, frequently having dinners with them at their home. Meyer had two more records ‘in the can’ which would remain unreleased on vinyl: the complete Debussy Preludes and several other solo works by the composer. The two discs had even been issued catalogue numbers, their release announced in the French record magazine Disques, and while some Discophiles Français recordings of higher catalogue numbers did come out, Meyer’s did not. These records would be of particular interest because Meyer was coached by Debussy himself specifically on how to play his Preludes in the last year of his life: the composer had met Meyer at the premiere performance of Satie’s Parade and then worked with her until his death.

Test pressings of these unpublished records were found in the collection of Anne-Marie’s sister Marie Bertin in the ’80s and the Preludes were issued as a stand-alone bonus CD in EMI France’s Références series, a release that was not easily available (it was part of a buy-3-CDs-and-get-this-one-free campaign). The performances would later be included in EMI France’s series of Meyer recordings released in the ’90s, and then again in 2007 when Meyer’s complete studio recordings were released in a commemorative box by EMI France (now out of print).

The availability of Meyer’s discography on CD (and the proliferation of YouTube) has certainly spread worldwide awareness and appreciation of her astounding artistry (I’ve certainly not stopped writing and speaking about her for the last three decades, and I never will). That said, audiophiles will be aware that the sound on CDs is simply nowhere near as warm and rich as what can be heard on LPs – particularly when compared with well-mastered and -pressed editions; unfortunately, larger labels often choose to make the sound conform to the framework of a modern recording rather than reproduce the full frequencies of the original recording. This is one of the reasons why Meyer’s original discs continue to fetch top dollar at eBay and other auction sites and stores (I’ve seen sets regularly sell for a high three figures): not only are these limited edition records prized for their rarity, but both the physical presentation and the sound quality are exceptional… to say nothing of her superb performances.

The French Record Company has gone to a tremendous effort to manifest a remarkable vision: the first vinyl release of what should have been Meyer’s final two records for the label, the aforementioned Debussy Preludes as well as other solo works by the composer. To do so, they have reproduced exactly the original vinyl LPs of the Discophiles Français series: the font and embossed text, stitched gatefold jacket, and record labels are all identical to the original 1950s releases. And the sound quality is simply superb: the original tapes, provided by Warner Classics, were cut directly to vinyl using the highest grade of vintage analogue equipment (including vacuum tubes). The result is a degree of warmth and presence that is completely different from the experience of listening in any other format (I truly felt that the piano was in my living room), and the finished product is an absolute replica of how the original LPs would have looked and sounded had they been produced in the 1950s as intended (though the new ones likely sound even better, with quieter surfaces).

Naturally, with the vastly reduced market for vinyls today and this edition not being mass-produced – the covers were hand-stitched (see the details of that process here) – this is by its nature an exclusive production: with only 200 numbered copies available for sale, this limited edition authorized by the pianist’s daughter is for the connoisseur and collector, a Rolls Royce-style audiophile and collector’s item. The cost, while beyond the mainstream mass-produced vinyl being made by the big companies of today, is in fact on par with the current price of the original 1950s vinyl pressings – yet those are both older (and therefore not in new condition) and less rare (between 500 and 1000 were printed at the time). This release was specifically produced for Meyer fans that already invest in the original pressings of her records, as well as for audiophile specialists who want to hear her playing in the highest fidelity possible (indeed, I can think of no better way to honour such equipment, with playing of this standard and a production to match).

An example of the sound quality of this exceptional mastering (which sounds even richer on the actual records):

Vinyl releases are enjoying a revival – the major labels are producing limited run series of both new and old releases (I was surprised by how many I saw when I was in Tokyo last year). There is additionally a new market emerging for rereleases of LPs from the so-called Golden Era of vinyls (the 1950s) – another audiophile outfit, The Electric Recording Company, has produced limited runs of old 1950s LPs, many in lower numbers and at a higher cost than this one (and they’ve sold out, too). What makes The French Record Company‘s current set stand out is that it is not a reissue but a world premiere vinyl release of a 1950s recording. With the glorious playing of Meyer, the sublime music of Debussy, liner notes written by French musicologist Frederic Gaussin, and the exquisite craftsmanship of the 1950s originals reproduced exactly, the set is an example of French artistry at its best… an exemplification of l’Art Total.

It is 101 years since Debussy died, 61 years since Meyer died, and about 31 years since I first heard her playing and became enamoured with this peerless musician. Anything that celebrates her artistry at the exalted level that it warrants is cause for celebration. This production closes a circle left open by the dissolution of the label for whom she so arduously produced the bulk of her recorded output. However limited and exclusive this edition may be, may Meyer’s boundless talent and supreme music-making long be available for music lovers to appreciate.