For the 15th anniversary of my Facebook page The Piano Files with Mark Ainley, I thought I would share some of what I’ve shared the last year.
As I’ve recounted on previous occasions, when I started the page, it was the early years of the social media platform and there was no sense that it would become the ubiquitous presence it now is, nor that my page would turn into as wide-reaching a hub for historical piano recording-related material.
I came up with the name The Piano Files several years earlier when I pitched a program with that name to the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), suggesting that a program devoted to the piano – the one instrument most people had childhood memories of – would have broad appeal. The response from a leading producer was that it was the best proposal he’d seen in many years but that the network was going through some changes and my historical angle might not work; as it turns out, the CBC soon went through a significant downturn in their programming. But – I kept the name – a play-on-words on ‘pianophiles’ – in mind and it was perfect for my Facebook page.
The Facebook page now has 17,000 subscribers, with 15,600 over at my YouTube channel, but unfortunately the algorithms pervasive in social media limits the reach of my posts to most. I have a paid subscription page on Patreon that enables subscribers to receive emails with each post, as well as previews of new uploads and other materials. Subscriptions have not yet reached a level that enables me to devote the time I would like to creating more substantial content (my annual earnings there barely cover a month’s living expenses); if donations increase sufficiently, I will certainly be able to produce more significant uploads, programs, and articles – and of course I’ll continue to do what I can as I can.
This past year saw me begin my regular column at International Piano magazine, which has been a delight to produce – here is a feature that links to the first article and features all the recordings mentioned.
To celebrate the 15th year of the Facebook page, here are 15 of my YouTube uploads from the last year – some of the most arresting and important uploads that I made since our last page anniversary.
Let’s start off with Dinu Lipatti, a pianist whom most are aware has been a major focus of my life for 35 years. Here is my upload of a recording that I discovered misfiled in an archive in 1990 and had published for the first time in 1995: a September 25, 1947 BBC broadcast of Lipatti playing Liszt’s La Leggierezza (minus the first two bars), which was captured off the air on a home disc cutter.
I give the full story in this feature on my website, but the short version: Lipatti had attempted to record this work in his first recording session for the Columbia sub-label of EMI in 1946, but the experimental material being used at the time warped in transit and the results of that session were unusable and destroyed. Although Lipatti later redid the other two works he’d set down in that first session – Chopin’s A-Flat Major Waltz Op.34 No.1 and Liszt’s Sonetto del Petrarca No.104 – he did not make any further attempts to record La Leggierezza. I found this broadcast at the National Sound Archive in London in May 1990, when I searched the manual card catalogue for works Lipatti had played – it was not cross-filed under Lipatti’s but was listed under Liszt. I was able to coordinate it’s release on the archiphon label with other unpublished recordings in 1995.
Despite the sub-optimal sound, this invaluable broadcast performance captures some marvellous playing by the fabled pianist, with Lipatti’s grasp of Liszt’s idiom highlighted through his crystalline fingerwork, creative use of nuance, and attentive voicing.
A very different kind of pianist was Etelka Freund, who came from a fascinating lineage – I explored more about her in this feature on my site about her incredible 1953 Brahms LP, some of which I’d uploaded a couple of years ago. This March 8, 1952 recording of Freund playing Mendelssohn’s Fantasie in F-Sharp Minor Op.28 is of particular interest given that her brother Robert, 20 years her senior, studied with Ignaz Moscheles, who had been a friend and teacher of the composer.
While there’s no guarantee she had obtained direct personal insight into the playing of this work, she was certainly steeped in the culture of the time in which it was produced and gives it a superb performance in her 72nd year. Among the many admirable qualities we hear in her playing are impeccably voiced chords, beautifully shaped phrasing, masterful pedalling, marvellously coordinated articulation, wonderful timing, rhythmic drive, and gorgeous singing tone – all with incredible passion. Absolutely superb pianism by a true master.
I was delighted to share video footage of an October 24, 1993 recital at Suntory Hall in Tokyo in which Dame Moura Lympany plays a selection of Rachmaninoff Preludes. While the initial video throughout has some distortion, the audio is somewhat clearer throughout much of the performance, although there is some background noise – nevertheless, the entire interview and performance are well worth investigating, as her spoken statements and her playing are both truly insightful, and her wonderful tone and phrasing are still appreciable.
Some time after I’d posted for Carl Friedberg’s 150th birth anniversary, I uploaded a recording from WNYC Radio that is said to date from the late 1930s of the Brahms Piano Quintet in F Minor Op.34 that is attributed to pianist Carl Friedberg with the Perolé Quartet. The Perolé Quartet consisted of Joseph Coleman, Max Hollander (father of pianist Lorin), Lillian Fuchs (sister of violinist Joseph), and Ernst Silberstein.
Because there is no spoken radio announcement on the only existing copy of this broadcast, there has been no way to fully confirm the identity of the artists: the source is an open reel tape containing a dub from the original acetates which offers no further information, and it has not been possible to find more details about the broadcast. So while there is nothing that actually causes doubt that this recording features Friedberg with the Perolé Quartet, there has simply been no means to confirm that this is the case.
As a result, although this recording was published in the IPAM (International Piano Archives at Maryland) 2-LP set The Art of Carl Friedberg, it was not included in Ward Marston’s later 2-CD set devoted to the artist. The performance certainly is a marvellous one, the pianism very consistent with what we hear in Friedberg’s other live and studio recordings.
With sumptuous tonal colours, remarkable voicing, and marvellous rhythm and timing, the pianist and his colleagues play with wonderful cohesiveness in a truly superb reading of this masterpiece.
I decided to upload the sole 78rpm disc recorded by Polish pianist Mieczysław Munz (1900-1976) in a transfer was provided by Tom Godell (to whom all thanks): a 1928 Homochord disc (also released on Decca) featuring his readings of the Scriabin Etude in C-Sharp Minor Op.2 No.1 and Ravel’s Piece en forme de Habanera.
Munz was a superb pianist who trained with Busoni but his performing career was cut short by hand problems around 1941. He would teach in New York for 35 more years, until his death in 1976, with pupils including Emanuel Ax, Ann Schein, Felicja Blumenthal, and Sara Davis Buechner, the latter who first introduced me to his playing. He was revered as a teacher, with Ax stating, “For me, simply no other teacher was necessary.” It is astonishing that this 78 is Munz’s only commercial recording given that he lived until 1976. Fortunately there are two broadcast recordings of him with orchestra – including what may be his last concert before retirement (these can be found on my channel) – and a brief solo broadcast performance. His playing here is, as in the other extant recordings, superb: beautiful tonal colours, impeccable voicing, natural timing, and sumptuous nuancing.
I continue to come across pianists I’d never heard of whose playing is certainly worthy of attention. One ‘new to me’ artist in the last year was Janine Weill. Born in Paris on January 13, 1897 (not February 1 as has been written in some sources), she was a pupil of Marguerite Long but not Alfred Cortot (though this has been published elsewhere) – she got her 1er Prix in 1915. She ranked amongst Ravel’s G Major Concerto’s first performers (as should be expected from a Long student, since Marguerite Long, both as a dedicatee and a teacher, was very much concerned with leaving her own stamp on the work).
Weill made a number of recordings for Decca in the 1930s – this clip lacks a few but this is a significant portion and all that I could locate. The playing throughout is marvellous, with wonderful full-bodied tone, terrific timing as regards rhythm and rubato, creative and attentive voicing (note the left hand in the Chopin Waltzes, for example), and transparent textures.
I was happy to share a recording by pianist-composer Frank Merrick’s May 3, 1937 of John Field’s Piano Sonata in C Minor Op.1 No.3. This work was recorded for the centenary of the composer’s death for the Parlophone label and is not particularly well-known amongst collectors, having rarely been reissued.
Merrick was a pupil of the great Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna and lived to the age of 95 but he recorded very little in his prime; some later LPs of Field and other composers do not do him (or the music) justice. In this performance, however, the English pianist and composer (who was named a CBE) was in very fine form. He plays with a lush singing sonority, wonderfully balanced textures, sprite rhythm, exquisite phrasing, and defined articulation.
The music here was awkwardly split across three 78rpm disc sides, each record change being in the middle of a movement, but fortunately with digital technology I was able to effect some seamless side joins – I change the image of the record at each of the two splices.
A couple of years ago I wrote a feature about Noel Mewton-Wood for the centenary of the ill-fated pianist who died by suicide at 31 in 1953 (click here for the feature). I was delighted to receive and be able to share an unpublished BBC broadcast of the Australian pianist playing two works by William Byrd, Sellinger’s Round (LXIV) and The Carmans Whistle. This rare recording, taken from a BBC transcription disc, was shared with me for upload by Nicholas Brown, to whom all thanks.
Mewton-Wood recorded a fair number of concerted works and a few solo outings, but naturally any unpublished performance by an artist of his stature is of great interest, and there is to my knowledge no otherwise available recording of him in this repertoire. His playing, as always, is superb: beautiful tone, fluid phrasing, and transparent voicing, all clarifying the beautiful melodic and harmonic content of Byrd’s writing.
Since running this page, I have become ever more enamoured with the pianism of Jakob Gimpel, a superb pianist whose career seemed to have the ingredients of major successes – including many recordings on the Electrola label in the 1950s, as well as playing his own arrangements in the 1953 Tom & Jerry cartoon Johann Mouse (which would go on to win an Academy Award) – yet who found that the nth degree of success eluded him.
I uploaded an increidlbe April 24, 1967 broadcast performance of Gimpel playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4 in G Major Op.58 at the Musikhalle Hamburg with the NDR-Sinfonieorchester conducted by Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt. He had set down a fine reading of this concerto with Arthur Rother and the Berlin Symphony Orchestra in 1960, yet this concert recording finds him in even more astounding form. While his tone, phrasing, and poise are always exquisite, we can hear in this account some utterly mesmerizing nuancing in the form of gentle but noticeable timing adjustments and some truly breathtaking dynamic shadings – among the most marvellous pianissimos I have heard (the first movement cadenza and the final measures of the 2nd movement are particularly glorious).
Many thanks to Francis Crociata for sharing this superb broadcast performance.
Another of the amazing pianists I first encountered while running my page is Fabienne Jacquinot, a pupil of Yves Nat who was a truly marvellous pianist who played with both remarkable strength and refined sensitivity. She recorded a significant number of 19th and 20th century concerted works for Parlophone from 1951 to 1953. Although she recorded a number of albums in the 1950s and more in the 1980s, she seems to have slipped into obscurity. She died just a few years ago, her greatness unfortunately forgotten.
I uploaded her July 7 & 8, 1953 recordings of the Debussy Fantasy for Piano & Orchestra and Poulenc’s Aubade, both with Anatole Fistoulari conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the moniker of Westminster Symphony Orchestra. At the same sessions that resulted in the two works presented here she also set down an account of the Piano Concerto No. 5 in F major of Saint-Saëns.
She plays here with a beautiful array of tonal colours and a broad dynamic range (what a thunderous bass sonority she produces!), sumptuous phrasing, exquisite clarity of texture, and a vibrant rhythmic pulse, with marvellous ensemble with the orchestra.
I can barely express how thrilled I was to finally be able to share film footage of Jascha Spivakovsky playing the final two movements of Chopin’s Piano Sonata No.2 in B-Flat Minor Op.35, filmed in an Australian TV studio in 1965. I was able to watch this when visiting the Spivakovsky family in late 2016 and was thrilled that they consented to me uploading this precious video.
Spivakovsky was a remarkable pianist who left Europe in 1933 to escape Nazism, emigrating to Australia, where he lived until his death in 1970. Although he continued to tour, he never issued any studio recordings. It is only in the last decade that his name has resurfaced when his son made available a series of privately produced and broadcast performances – there is much about him on my website to explore.
This remarkable video comes from the only known existing film broadcast of the pianist, visually showing his economy of movement while musically revealing his incredible sense of architecture, dramatic narrative, beauty of tone, and subtlety of nuance.
A year ago I filmed a conversation with Ruth Slenczynska, which I then uploaded towards the end of the year. Aged 98 at the time of this conversation, Ms. Slenczynska discusses the five famous pianistic legends with whom she had training in her formative years: Josef Hofmann, Alfred Cortot, Egon Petri, Artur Schnabel, and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
I have found that Ms. Slenczynska has often been asked about her time with some of these legendary artists individually but as I had never heard her discuss all five at the same time, this was the organizing principle of this conversation. This thoroughly engaging conversation provides an opportunity for the pianist to share some fascinating recollections. Of significant interest in this conversation is Slenczynska sharing the technique that Rachmaninoff taught her to create a big sound at the keyboard – a fascinating insight!
Many thanks to Shelly Moorman-Stahlman for having coordinated this opportunity!
And yet another ‘new to me’ pianist: Australian pianist Edward Cahill (1885-1975) in some incredibly rare recordings produced in Cape Town in 1955. These private recordings were remastered by Selene Records in Poland and pitch-corrected by Jonathan Summers (Curator of Classical Music at the British Library) – with a bit of level adjusting on one track by yours truly – and they are made available for this upload from the pianist’s nephew and biographer Michael Moran, to whom all thanks.
The largely forgotten Cahill lived a fascinating life, performing for Queen Mary in London and for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Paris. He was already active as a performing artist when he was invited by Alfred Cortot for lessons to fine-tune his skills, and he later trained with Leonie Gombrich, a pupil of and later assistant to the great Theodor Leschetizky. Despite being aged 70 at the time that these private recordings were produced, Cahill demonstrates truly astonishing technique and interpretative mastery. In the more demanding Chopin Scherzo No.2 and Polonaise No.6, he plays with great strength and bravura, and in both the vivacious and more nuanced works in this collection, he plays with extraordinary sensitivity and refinement.
I decided that I really need to be producing more video presentations and I did one this year for Record Store Day in 2024 in which I present five great historical recordings – one each by five legendary pianists – while recounting how I first came across these recordings while shopping in actual physical record stores… or otherwise. (Apologies for the occasional throat clearing: I stopped the video several times to do so off-camera but post-Covid this is an ongoing issue for me that I have been unable to fully clear.) Details about the recordings themselves are found in the text under the YouTube video screen.
And finally, my most recent upload is a staggering one: Austrian pianist Grete Scherzer in a series of recordings made for the Parlophone label in the 1950s. These are not her complete recordings for the label, but a selection of offerings that I could track down in 78rpm transfers. Many thanks to Tom Jardine, who assisted with declicking and noise reduction on a couple of the noisier transfers.
Scherzer was born in Wolfsberg, Austria in 1933. She started at the piano at the age of three and gave her first public recital at six, after which she began training at the Klagenfurt Conservatoire. She played a Mozart concerto with the Klagenfurt Symphony orchestra at age 9 and also made broadcasts from Graz, after which a scholarship took her to the State Music Academy, Vienna. She then appeared soloist with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra at the age of 14 and also began giving broadcasts throughout Austria. The 16-year-old won the 1949 International Schubert Competition in Geneva – the youngest ever winner – as well as the Vienna Music Critics’ Competition in 1950. She made her London début that year and was later invited to play at The Royal Festival Hall during the Festival of Britain. When she married architect and anthroposophist Rex Raab in 1957, she retired from public performance and little information about her is available from after that period.
The playing throughout these recordings – some produced in her late teens! – is absolutely sublime, with truly exquisite tonal colours, masterful phrasing, elegant lines, and impeccable clarity of textures and musical content. A true master pianist!
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Long live great piano recordings!