Volume 25 Issue 9 - July / August 2020

Old Wine, New Bottles | Fine Old Recordings Re-Released
Ignaz Friedman Complete Recordings (1923-1941)
Ignaz Friedman
Danacord DACOCD861-864 (naxosdirect.com)
! Ignaz Friedman was born in Podgórze,
near Kraków in 1882. His prodigious abilities
were apparent and he studied with Hugo
Riemann in Leipzig. He entered the class of the
renowned pedagogue, Theodore Leschetizky
in Vienna. “Under Leschetizky he developed
a technique surpassing all others and in 1904
made his concert debut that became the stuff
of legends.” In 1914 he settled in Berlin where
there is a plaque in Pariser Strasse that commemorates his stay in the city.
He toured in Europe and America until 1914 when the outbreak of war
found him touring in Australia where he remained, enjoying a successful
career, there and in New Zealand, as a teacher and performer. He was
married to a Russian Countess, Manya Schidlowsky, a relative of Tolstoy.
Friedman was deservedly acknowledged by critics including Harold C.
Schonberg and colleagues, Sergei Rachmaninoff and others, as pianistamong-pianists.
He died on Australia Day, January 28, 1948. Friedman
was an editor and a composer with several of his compositions heard
here meticulously restored, as are all entries in the set Ignaz Friedman
Complete Recordings from the LP years, 1923-1941 (six cds for the price
of three).
When I was quite young, the usual, most-expressed evaluation of a
neighbours’ child playing our piano was he or she “has a nice touch.” Those
two words seemed to cover the situation quite nicely and pleased the proud
parent. Back to the present. In these recordings, in gentle passages, there is
often the illusion that Friedman is able play the notes without striking the
keys. Now, that is a “nice touch.” This is not to say that this quality is omnipresent
but it is there often enough across the 87 tracks on the six discs.
Included are works by Scarlatti, Mozart, Widor, Beethoven (Moonlight
Sonata) Schubert, and lots of Chopin (Mazurkas. Waltzes, Polonaises, etc.),
for which he was renowned. Also Mendelssohn (Songs without Words),
Gluck, Brahms, Hummel, Paganini, Liszt, Dvořák, Grieg, Rubinstein,
Moszkowski, Paderewski, Suk, Mittler, and, of course, Ignaz Friedman.
Bronislaw Huberman is heard in the Kreutzer Sonata.
I put disc one in the player with but a cursory look at the contents
and was so enamored that I soon had no inclination to do anything
else but sit back and enjoy disc two…
Bruce Surtees
Mozart – Serenade in B-Flat K361
Toronto Chamber Winds; Winston Webber
Crystal Records CD646 (crystalrecords.com)
! In his novel Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
depicted Wolfgang Mozart as a smiling
Buddha-like immortal. Peter Shaffer, in his
play Amadeus, depicts him as human, a
vulgar young goofball with uncanny abilities,
who had a sense of his music’s importance
beyond that assigned by his patrons.
In the play, upon hearing the slow movement
of the Serenade No.10 in B-flat Major
K361”Gran Partita,” the character Antonio Salieri describes with awe
the beautiful simplicity of its construction; he believes he is hearing
the voice of God. His disillusion with the human form supplying that
voice provides the drama for the entire play.
The theme of immortality rises before me as I listen to this release:
these are all voices from the past, a recording made in Massey Hall in
1982, featuring some of the finest Toronto wind players from the time.
Many of them were my heroes as I grew into the profession, and some
remain active today. It is also an artifact of the time when the elite
musical world was a men’s club.
The performance is very fine, and if it tends more toward a
representation of Hesse’s Mozart than Shaffer’s, it does so with
warmth and style, and with a commitment to proper performance
practice. This feature makes the CD well worth owning: the research
into proper articulation and ornamentation was carried out by Daniel
Leeson, one of the performers and a Mozart scholar. The results are
quite pleasant, and instructive as well. It’s good to hear the freedom
from the page that James Campbell’s ornaments demonstrate. The
virtuosic Finale: Rondo Allegro molto is packed with flurries of 16th
notes articulated at blinding speed.
Among the voices singing out from the recent past, I am most
affected by that of Harry Sargous, at one time the principal oboe of the
Toronto Symphony. If the account of the piece here has a flaw it would
be that it is careful, rather than joyous. Sargous, however, seems to call
out to his colleagues with his tone, and beseech them to revel in both
the sacred and profane aspects of the music of this immortal fool.
Max Christie
Sweet summer sounds
from ATMA Classique
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