Under the Piano Stool

I haven't gone away..

2011-10-22T10:34:00.000-04:00

... although it does appear to be that way.

A lot of my precious free time has been occupied with personal issues - preparing my mother's house for sale (it will be auctioned November 5), and packing and preparing for the move, not to mention finding and buying where I will live.

Future topics of discussion will be Lara Downes's Goldberg Project CD, and Nadejda Vlaeva's Hyperion CD of Bach transcriptions by Saint-Saens and Philipp.

Are virtuosos becoming a dime a dozen?

2011-08-13T11:07:00.003-04:00

Yuja Wang can play anythang.

It seems that New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini is trying to secure his place as the Harold Camping doomsday prophet of classical music. But this article makes some points. I quote his "thesis statement" and give you a link to the whole article.

That a young pianist has come along who can seemingly play anything, and easily, is not the big deal it would have been a short time ago.

The overall level of technical proficiency in instrumental playing, especially on the piano, has increased steadily over time. Many piano teachers, critics and commentators have noted the phenomenon, which is not unlike what happens in sports. The four-minute mile seemed an impossibility until Roger Bannister made the breakthrough in 1954. Since then, runners have knocked nearly 17 seconds off Bannister’s time.

Something similar has long been occurring with pianists. And in the last decade or so the growth of technical proficiency has seemed exponential.

Tommasini was not the first to make such a statement, and he won't be the last. One hundred and eleven years ago, music critic and author James Gibbons Huneker had this to say about the Godowsky paraphrases on the Chopin Etudes, practically a standard repertoire item these days:

Are the Godowsky transcriptions available? Certainly. In ten years - so rapid is the technical standard advancing - they will be used in the curriculum of students... He is writing for the next generation- presumably a generation of Rosenthals.

This from his book "Chopin: The Man and His Music" - one of the few books that is an enthralling read despite the misinformation, misquotes, and downright false statements on every page. In that respect Huneker must have been the Sarah Palin of his day. The book is very enjoyable if you skip the biographical section and read Huneker's detailed commentary on each and every Chopin piece of consequence. Purple prose warning, however.

But I digress. Click here to read Tommasini's thought-provoking article.

Interestingly enough, he does not mention Benjamin Grosvenor, who has been considered a contender for "greatness" since the ripe old age of 12 or so.

Thanks also to Susie Francis Dempsey for the tip about this article.

Champagne talent with a beer instrument?

2011-08-09T09:38:00.003-04:00

Sometimes when you go down a blind alley in YouTube, you find something amazing on the sidewalk.

This is Andrew Boss. He is the boyfriend of whoever posted this video. That is all the biographical information I have been able to dig up on Mr. Boss.

There are two things I would love to see from Mr. Boss:

1. A score to this set of variations, becasuse it is extremely well written, and:

2. Another performance of this on a well-regulated, preferably grand, piano.

See if you don't agree.

You weren't expecting that, now were you? Kind of an interesting mishmash of Arcadi Volodos and a sk8terboi.

I am aware that the instrument upon which he is playing is a quality electronic keyboard. I own a Yamaha Clavinova myself. I am sure that this keyboard is rather pricey. I am not criticizing the keyboard per se, but stating the fact that this piece demands to be played on a quality acoustic instrument in order to show the work, and his fine playing, to its best advantage. Here, we can hear the clicks of the keys as he plays, and the ending taxes the dynamic resources of this keyboard.

Please, Andrew Boss, come out, wherever you are. Contact me. I want to write a follow-up. I want to know what you are doing, if you are studying, and if you have access to a real piano.

While Googling, I did find a singer-songwriter by the name of Andrew Boss. This Andrew, however, has dark hair with a more wavy texture. The above video is a little over two years old, but I don't think these are the same person.

Then I came across this, and it IS the above Andrew Boss, from his "senior recital". High school or college? From the description, he was studying composition at the time.

Mark Ainley interviews Benjamin Grosvenor

2011-07-17T18:36:00.000-04:00

I admit to "cribbing" material from Mark Ainley's writing rather often - with documentation. But I recommend that you go to his blog, "The Piano Files" and read this interview with the latest candidate for the title of The Next Big Thing, young British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor.

Mark Ainley interviews Benjamin Grosvenor

Grosvenor's new Decca CD is available from Amazon at the link below. I will post some videos of his work soon.

Mama's Song

2011-07-07T11:12:00.004-04:00

As my regular readers know, my mother passed away last December after an extended illness, and I still haven't really gotten out of that cloud yet. You can read my December 2010 post about her, and our musical connection, here.

Late last night (July 6), I finally finished one of those projects that we had planned to do together. Mama wrote a song years ago, as a young girl. It may be better to say that she "made it up", since she could not read or write music. The name of the song was "In the Arms of Jesus", and to my knowledge there were never any words. I'm hoping that my her two living sisters, my aunts LaVelle and Frances, can shed more light on this subject - if there ever were words. (August 2011 update: A phone conversation with aunt LaVelle Langley affirmed my belief that there were no words to the song. Also, Aunt LaVelle recalls hearing Mama play it often, which is something that my brother and sister do not recall - understandable since they did not spend as much time with Mama at the piano as I did.)

I wanted to make videos of Mama's playing while she was still able, but she had "camera fright", and arthritis got to her before the COPD-related dementia did. The touch of my Baldwin grand was too heavy for her to play comfortably. I had promised her for years that I would write "her song" down.

That finally happened last night after a practice session with an old friend, the Liszt Sonetto 104 del Petrarca. I tinkered with Mama's song for around an hour, and decided to give it a new voice.

After I wrote it out, I decided to make a "demo" video to share with friends and family on Facebook. The original plan was to make another video for YouTube (and this blog) after church Sunday, on a better-regulated instrument. This Baldwin grand, my pride and joy (and a college-graduation gift from Mama and Papa Doug), has not been tuned since nineteen-eighty-something - one of the few "downsides" of living in the country is finding a reliable tuner/technician.

In the end I decided to post this "rough video" after all. This is where I had most recently heard her play her version, on this piano in this room, and this is a rare opportunity for me to let you in Mama's living room for possibly one last time as the estate is settled, as our family home may not stay in the family. (With five bedrooms, three bathrooms, and eleven ACRES of yard, it is far too large for me to maintain on my own. I am eyeing a cute little brick two-bedroom in town with hardwood floors, a fireplace with gas logs, and room for a teaching studio.)

Here it is. I have left her tune as is and recast it in "my style", rather than in the hymn-like chordal way in which she played it. I have retitled it "Mama's Song". Why?

We all have different religious beliefs, but we all have, or have had, a Mama.

Why the link to this book? Although it has nothing to do with music, it always reminded me of Mama - I loaned her my copy and she read it, and enjoyed it very much. Also, author Rick Bragg grew up in Jacksonville, Alabama and studied at Jacksonville State University at the very same time as me, so I remember well the places he describes in this book.

Happy Fourth of July!

2011-07-04T06:00:00.012-04:00

Ukelele virtuoso (and yes, he IS a ukelele virtuoso) Jake Shimabukuro plays "The Star Spangled Banner", opening for a Jimmy Buffett concert at Wrigley Field.

A reader in Australia searches for a sad bird

2011-06-18T10:27:00.001-04:00

Letters, I get letters...

Michael in Melbourne, Australia writes:

I heard "Sad Bird/Pajaro Triste" on the radio some time ago and later saw your video of one of your (very talented) students playing it. Anyway could you forward publication details for the piano sheet music as I have been unable to find it?

Anyone who compliments one of my students is a friend of mine.

The piece "Pajaro triste" is by Federico Mompou (1893-1987) and comes from a collection entitled "Impresiones intimas". (I have also seen it spelled "Impresiones intimes".) The original Union Musical Espanola (imagine the tilde) edition of the complete set costs mucho, mucho dinero, but is available from your favorite music dealer.

However...

People who wish to have this one piece are in luck. It is included in the Alfred anthology Keys to Stylistic Mastery, Book 3 by Dennis Alexander and Ingrid Jacobson Clarfield.

It is beautifully edited, with performance suggestions, and of course the rest of the collection is very valuable for teaching and repertoire purposes. This volume currently sells for $9.95. I recommend this series highly, as well as another similar series by the same two writers/editors, Keys to Artistic Performance.

There are many complete surveys of Mompou's music available on CDS, including those by Martin Jones and Jordi Maso.. Mompou himself recorded much of his music in the later "stereo LP" era so we can hear how he interpreted it. But for an all-around "sample disc", no one has beaten Stephen Hough in this repertoire. I have posted an Amazon link to this CD, and it is available on iTunes as well.

Where have I been?

2011-06-18T09:47:00.002-04:00

I'm still here.

Like many bloggers who "operate" alone, I have little periods of time where personal issues crop up and I have to stop posting for a while. I don't have an assistant who blogs in my absence.

Here at the Betty Ford Clinic, I'm only allowed thirty minutes of Internet time a day, and that is closely monitored.

No. Seriously, a summer storm zapped my main desktop computer, and until my computer guru Danita diagnoses the cause of my grief (we hope it is only the power supply, since it will not turn on at all, and my secondary computer was on and unharmed), it is the computer that has whatever files, pictures, etc. that I was saving for future prospects. As well as my iTunes and my sixteen-thousand-and-something songs. Hadn't backed up in a while, so I have only eight thousand or so to keep me company.

As much as I love my HP Mini for simple Internet chores and throwing shade at Starbucks, it is almost impossible to do any typing on this thing.

So until I know how much grief my computer has endured, and how much green it will take to fix it (and you teachers know we usually teach le$$ during the $ummer) there will be only tiny tease-type blog posts.

Rick

Who'd a' thunk it? - a Czerny Nocturne!

2011-05-25T11:25:00.002-04:00

Romantic stud muffin Carl Czerny

It seems that Carl Czerny (1791-1857) had a little moonlight in his heart after all.

I wouldn't say that this nocturne, op. 368 (!) no. 4 in D flat, will put Chopin's works to shame, but in my opinion it is at least on the level of those of John Field. Pianist Isabelle Oehmichen gives it all she's got, and it's enough to make us take notice of the piece, as well as her fine playing of it.

I've already checked imslp.org, and they do not have the score to this particular nocturne, but they do have the score for about ten more. And if we are to believe the blurb at the end of this clip, Miss Oehmichen plans to, or has already, performed and/or recorded all of them.

I have a little "inside information" that Martin Jones plans to record a complete cycle of the Czerny sonatas. If they're enough to hold his interest, perhaps they are enough to hold ours. Thanks to Atlanta area piano teacher Charles Hutton for the heads-up.

Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor - on wine glasses? YES!!!

2011-05-24T11:40:00.002-04:00

Words fail me. Robert Tiso renders this universally-popular selection on wine glasses. The video description says he is playing a glass harp, as opposed to the more familiar glass harmonica. From what I can see, he has grouped them more or less in a manner to enable polyphony, rather than in a strict keyboard-like arrangement.

Glass harp-Toccata and fugue in D minor-Bach! brought to you by Funny Pictures

Perhaps I should name Mark Ainley a "co-editor" of this blog, as this is yet another awesome link I shamelessly cribbed from him.

As we honor our mothers...

2011-05-08T09:17:00.002-04:00

This year was particularly difficult for me. In addition to my mother, in the past year, I lost three other friends, all musician friends, as well.

First my mother, Helen Robertson Moring, represented in a photo collage made by my sister-in-law Talitha Lynn Robertson:

A tribute to my mother can be found here.

And now to my mother-friends. Myra Williamson was my first piano teacher. I shared her with you in my very first post.

Jennifer Roberts was a colleague and a dear, dear friend. When my life was "darkest", she was there, willing to listen and give advice. She was often the first person to hear my compositions, right after they were written. She was a four-time cancer survivor, and during the last patch of illness, she came with her daughter Katie to a concert by pianist George Mann, who was playing one of my compositions. She walked in wearing a flaming red dress and matching turban, to hide the hair ravaged by repeated chemo treatments. To me she never looked more beautiful, because I knew what struggle she went through just to support me. As George played, she sat and beamed, like a proud parent would do, just as my mother would have done had she been there.

Here she is with daughter Taylor on her wedding day:

and with both daughters (both former students as well) Katie and Taylor as the cancer took control for the last time.

And last, a fellow church choir member, student parent, and dear, dear friend. Patricia Walters McCuiston was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and bone cancer, and lived only five weeks after her diagnosis. Here she is with daughter Tabitha during one of our two trips to Six Flags - the three of us went to Six Flags two summers in a row, and those are moments I will always remember.

If you still have a mother, hug her and tell her you love her. If you are a mother yourself, please accept my e-hug and e-love.

We now return you to Umi Garrett...

2011-05-07T12:50:00.001-04:00

in a stunning performance of Liszt's concert etude "Gnomenreigen". Thanks to UTPS reader Mike for the heads-up.

Never say the fugue is a dead art form

2011-05-04T10:23:00.000-04:00

Based on a theme from a Lady Gaga song.

Bad Romance. Pretty good fugue.

Here is a link to the score, if you simply must. Tempting.

Thanks to former Jacksonville State University classmate Matthew McMahan for the heads up.

Let's go back in time - to 1899, and meet (and hear) Alfred Grünfeld

2011-04-25T09:57:00.000-04:00

It's time we became reacquainted with this man.

Pianist Alfred Grünfeld (1852-1924) was born in Prague, studied at the Kullak Academy in Berlin and eventually moved to Vienna, where he became a popular teacher and performer. He was court pianist to Emperor Wilhelm I of Germany. He knew Brahms, Strauss and Leschetizky.

Based on extant concert programmes, Grünfeld was a pianist of intellect and virtuosic abilities. Famed Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick said of Grünfeld, "He is a musician beyond criticism; in public and in private one of the best known members of Vienna society, and the greatest favorite with all musical people. By his brilliant playing as well as his sweet expression and gay humour, he understands to perfection the art of charming his listeners in Vienna." That's high praise from a notoriously tough critic.

He performed many of the major works of Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Schumann, Schubert and Brahms, often including new works by composers of the day, such as Grieg’s Ballade, Op. 24. His brother, cellist Heinrich Grünfeld, was equally well known and made some recordings as well.

He was a prolific composer, mostly of shorter character pieces, and effective transcriptions. He toured extensively in Germany, Russia, Scandanavia, France, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and even the United States. He recorded extensively, as early as 1899 (on acoustic Berliners). So why is he forgotten today?

Actually, record collectors never forgot him. But most pianists think of him as a "salon artist", whiling away the time playing salon paraphrases of this and that. But he also recorded works by Brahms, Schubert, Grieg, and even something as "modern" as Debussy's "Golliwogg's Cakewalk"! On these discs it is evident that his style was elegant and charming, just as Hanslick notes. A pearly tone and tranlucent quality comes through on these recordings, even the earliest ones.

Here I present one of the rare 1899 Berliner recordings (alas, not mine) of the Grieg "Papillon", op. 43 no. 1.

His "Soiree de Vienne", op. 56 is still in the repertoire of pianists such as Evgeny Kissin, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and even Lang Lang has been known to pound insensitively through it. There are videos of many of these on You Tube, but let us see how Der Meister played it. If it sounds familiar, it's because it is a transcription of waltzes from Johann Strauss's "Die Fledermaus".

From my collection. Recorded c. 1905.

Scores of Grünfeld's works may be found at IMSLP by clicking here. The score for his best-known work, the above-performed Soiree de Vienne, is still under copyright in the United States and can be purchased through the link below.

Is Our Children Learning? Meet Naomi Druskic

2011-04-22T11:07:00.005-04:00

Here we have 12-year old Naomi Druskic. She was born on November 12,1998 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the age of 11 she finished music elementary school (OMBS "Novo Sarajevo") in the class of Suzana Bevanda Sijaric. She has received The top student of generation award at the school for 2009/2010. She now attends High Music School as a student of Vere Verbic.

She performed her first solo concert at age 8 in Sarajevo. So far she has played all across Bosnia, Croatia, Italy, Serbia,Germany and United States of America. She has also performed three times with the Sarajevo Philharmonic.

In September 2009 Naomi gave a concert in The World Bank in Washington D.C. (This cribbed shamelessly from her YouTube page.)

Naomi performs two Chopin Nocturnes, the C sharp minor, opus posthumous, and the one in B-flat minor, op. 9 no. 1. The latter is a personal favorite of yours truly, and it is refreshing to hear someone play it "outside of the cycle".

I haven't forgotten y'all...

2011-04-13T12:32:00.000-04:00

...it's been a tough couple of weeks. Got some ideas working, and hopefully I'll have some thinglets to share this weekend.

I'll give you a little tease, for starters. Wonder if anyone will recognize this cherubic beauty.

Frankly, I would have fired the painter.

A brief moment of Japanese genius

2011-04-02T20:12:00.000-04:00

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Just watch it, okay?

Happy Birthday, Sergei Rachmaninoff!

2011-04-01T16:02:00.000-04:00

And in the spirit of April Fools' Day, and the fact that our dear Sergei was referred to by Igor Stravinsky as a "six-foot-tall scowl", we take this angle to celebrate his birthday:

And another classic:

Earl Wild memoirs now available

2011-04-01T08:42:00.001-04:00

Surely Michael Rolland Davis won't mind me posting his ad, especially since it isn't costing him anything:

Link to the website is here. Word on the street is that this won't be a "sedate" read, and I can't wait to get my hands on a copy.

Happy Birthday, Dinu Lipatti!

2011-04-01T07:00:00.003-04:00

Today would have been the 94th birthday of Dinu Lipatti (1917-1950). (Hey, Mieczyslaw Horzowski lived - and performed and recorded - to age 100!)

So let's revisit two earlier posts on the subject of Lipatti:

Mark Ainley discusses Dinu Lipatti

Dinu Lipatti plays Ravel's "Alborada del gracioso"

It seems the birth-date issue was clarified. The previous post of March 19 was pulled and reposted on April 1, as Romania was suing the "old style" calendar at the time. The adjusted date is in fact April 1.

A teenager's first inspiration

2011-03-28T13:59:00.003-04:00

Ingrid Haebler.
Don't know her? You should.

When I was a teenage piano student growing up in rural Alabama, I didn't have much access to recordings of the "great pianists".

I was transitioning from method-book pieces and "teaching favorites" to more standard repertoire, and among that repertoire was Chopin Waltzes. My teacher at the time, Jimmy New, used the Chopin Waltzes as core repertoire (along with Beethoven Sonatas and Bach Inventions), and I probably played five or six of them during the two years I worked with him.

The Chopin Waltz op. 69 no. 1 was the first "repertoire" piece I performed in a recital. Before that, it had been a steady stream of Burgmüller, Heller, Anna Magdalena Bach Notebook, and the various delights that the John Thompson Modern Course for the Piano had to offer.

So, there in a drugstore (of all places! in Village Mall at Auburn, Alabama, I came across a box set of Chopin, played by the finest pianists the Vox Box had to offer. I snatched that baby up.

The set contained a disc of the Waltzes played by Ingrid Haebler. This was the first time I had ever actually heard a recording of a concert pianist playing a piece I was playing, and it was an epiphany. (Students nowadays can hear CD recordings of even the most basic piano repertoire, and there are even Heller and Burgmüller cycles on CD these days, but back then, we only had the Educo records, with variable and often terrible sound quality.)

Later I bought discs by better-known Chopin pianists, including the usually-preferred Arthur Rubinstein. But one never forgets their first love, and I found his waltz recordings cold compared to Ms. Haebler.

When Ingrid Haebler was included in Tom Deacon's Philips "Great Pianists of the Twentieth Century" collection, it was one of the more controversial choices. But not for me. Her Mozart is her calling card, and it is admired to this day. But I will always adore her Waltzes, because of the inspiration they gave to a teenage piano student. And I want to share some of her Chopin with you.

And if you've followed the trail of pianists whose work was cribbed and presented as the work of Joyce Hatto, you will find that "Hatto's" Mozart Sonatas are actually the work of Haebler for the Denon label.

I have been a "fan" of Ms. Haebler's playing for years. There are currently no Haebler recordings available on Amazon.com, but the diligent record collector can find copies of her recordings at other sources.

Many years later I gave that old LP box set to a student. I later regretted it, and searched eBay and used-record stores until I found an old Vox LP disc of her Waltzes - so I have her performances again.

I remember my first kiss, my first date, my first love - and my first Chopin. To this day. So thank you, Ingrid Haebler, for the inspiration you gave to this gangly teenage boy. And I know that I am just one of many who have been inspired by your playing.

Today's moment in TACKY

2011-03-21T09:04:00.000-04:00

Words fail me. I report, you decide.

The above one looks somewhat funeral-parlor-esque, don't you think?

If you simply must have one of these monstrosities, their website is here.

My latest crush - Jean-Efflam Bavouzet

2011-03-20T07:00:00.001-04:00

I am rapidly becoming grossly enamored of anything Jean-Efflam Bavouzet commits to the microphone, but this piano concerto by Gabriel Pierne caught me totally off-guard. Okay, the work is basically the Saint-Saens Piano Concerto no. 2.5 (especially the scherzo movement), and I even had it in another recording by some Vox Box pianist, sounding as if it was recorded on 8-track tape in someone's garage. Bavouzet makes this piece a repertoire item, and makes you forget the little lead soldiers.

Bavouzet is currently my favorite pianist in Debussy, having recorded the complete oeuvre on several discs for Chandos - a representative pic is below and a review is here.

And here is a video of him performing Debussy's "Reflets dans l'eau" from the first book of Debussy's "Images".

He shines in Haydn as well, and his Haydn performances have a peculiar "edge" - he's not above embellishing passages or adding cadenzas.

Give this man a listen.

Is Our Children Learning? Lorenzo Medel revisited, playing Beethoven

2011-03-19T10:56:00.000-04:00

I'm revisiting a young man who I feel needs a little more attention. For one thing, this series seems to feature little cupcakes playing musical bonbons - teeny children playing established finger-twisting favorites. My first posting under the (now infamous) "Is Our Children Learning?" category was Filipino pianist Lorenzo Medel. You can read that post here if you missed it the first time. (And if you are a member of the grammar police, please read this.)

Young Lorenzo shows us that he's capable of tackling something more substantial: the Beethoven Sonata in E flat, op. 31 no. 3, in its entirety. And the additional link I provide here will take you to a copy of the first printed edition. Sweet.

Is Our Children Learning? Meet Umi Garrett

2011-03-13T08:50:00.000-04:00

This article from From the Top features an interview and photos with young Umi. I am a fan of From the Top, but I guess I missed her performance there.

That's Unplayable!

2011-03-13T07:00:00.007-04:00

Although Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997) wrote pieces for "player piano" (unplayable by a sole ten-fingered human) for years, it might be argued that none of them are as enjoyable as this little romp by none other than Marc-Andre Hamelin (b.1961), the Circus Galop for player piano. Here it is in a MIDI realization with a facsimile of Hamelin's score.

There are attempts to play this on YouTube, perhaps someone will one day rearrange it for a piano ensemble. (I never made a claim that this piece was profound.)

This piece abounds in performance problems, but here the composer himself gives the best possible solution (alas, only an excerpt):

And here it is, in the closest thing I have found to a "hi-fi" performance - please, can't someone record this on a well-regulated Yamaha Disklavier, or the Bosendorfer used for Wayne Stahnke's Rachmaninoff sessions?

Thanks for the shout-outs, y'all..

2011-03-12T11:41:00.002-05:00

Edna Holland Mory, a classmate from my JSU days and a student of Susie Francis Dempsey and Patricia Parker as well, linked to us from her studio page.

La Danse de Puck (a blog in Spanish, despite the French title) linked to my William Kapell article (March 12).

Blogger Michael Monroe gave me a nice shout-out from his most interesting blog, MMmusing - a blog I have added to my Favorites, and will add to my fave-links page here.

Thanks, y'all. I'd 'preciate it if y'all lemme know when you shout-out to me, so I can return the favor. I'm sure there are many that I have overlooked.

Sketch by Gerard Hoffnung, posted for no other reason
than the fact that I love it.

And for a little extra, here's some composer cuteness from the MMMusing blog. Somehow I know a certain college piano teacher of mine will love these.

William Kapell plays - in only known video clip

2011-03-12T06:44:00.000-05:00

William Kapell (1922-1953) was a brilliant American pianist whose life and career were cut short by the crash of an airplane on which he was returning from an overseas tour in October 1953. He was barely 31, but was already acknowledged as the leading American pianist of his generation; some have said he would have been the greatest pianist of the 20th century.

Born in 1922, Kapell studied piano with Dorothea Anderson LaFollette at the Yorkville Settlement School in New York and with Olga Samaroff at the Philadelphia Conservatory and, later, at the Juilliard School. In 1941, he won both a Naumburg Award and the Philadelphia Orchestra Youth Concert competition. This gave him opportunities for major debuts both as a recitalist and as a player of concerti. In 1942, he was given the Town Hall Endowment Series Award, providing him with yet another Town Hall recital during the 1942-43 season. He then signed a contract with RCA Victor and recorded a wide variety of repertoire for that company. (All of Kapell's RCA recordings have been reissued in compact disc format.)

He toured North America annually thereafter, performing both with major orchestras and as a recitalist. He became an advocate of contemporary American piano music, and seems to have been especially prized by American composers. In 1945, he played a series of concerts in Australia, beginning to build an international reputation. He toured South America three times (1946, 1948, and 1951). He seemed to have a particular affection for music of South America that is reflected in his personal collection of piano music. He first played in Europe in 1947. In mid-1953 he performed in Tel Aviv, played at Casals's Prades Festival, and gave his final series of performances during the course of a three-month Australian tour. Returning from Australia, his plane crashed into a mountain moments before its scheduled landing in San Francisco. (This biographical sketch from the International Piano Archives website.)

This is the only known video footage of pianist William Kapell. He performs the Scarlatti Sonata in E major, K.380 (L.23), the Chopin Nocturne in E flat, op. 55 no. 2, and Gato, an Argentine dance by Emilio A. Napolitano.

And as an encore, here is his legendary performance of Liszt's Mephisto Waltz no. 1, recorded when he was only 22 and still considered among the best of this work.

William Kapell: A Documentary Life History of the American Pianist by Tim Page, available at amazon.com, as well as the CD collection below:

Myra Hess plays the "Appassionata" first movement - video

2011-03-05T20:17:00.002-05:00

A treasure of a video - unfortunately she only made a motion picture of the first movement. Dame Myra Hess (1890-1965) in a lunchtime concert at the National Gallery during World War II, playing the opening movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata in F minor, Op 57 ("Appassionata").

Father of 5 Browns pleads guilty to child sexual abuse

2011-03-01T09:11:00.000-05:00

The father of The 5 Browns musical group pleaded guilty February 17 to sexually abusing his daughters when they were children.

With scratches on his face from a car crash, 55-year-old Keith Brown entered his plea to three felony counts in Fourth District Court.

Dressed in dark slacks and a grey overcoat, Brown appeared in court with his sister-in-law by his side.

His response to the judge who asked for his plea on each charge was a barely audible, "guilty."

Court records show Utah County prosecutors charged Brown with one first-degree felony count of sodomy on a child and two second-degree felony counts of sexual abuse of a child.

Brown, who did not speak further during the hearing, could face a sentence of up to life in prison on the first-degree felony and up to 15 years each on the second-degree felonies.

The 5 Browns had severed their musical and personal relationship with their father in 2008. They have continued with their tour currently in progress, and have said that this is the best way for them to cope.

Our thoughts are with you, Melody, Desirae, and Deondra. It took a LOT of strength to do what you did. I'm a big fan, and hope to hear more from the five of you in the future.

Grieg "Concerto Motive" posting - new video added

2011-02-26T19:25:00.001-05:00

June 2011 update - Foiled again. It seems the Argerich/Maisky Copyright Police take down video files of this performance as soon as they come up. So, gentle reader, please search "grieg cello sonata maisky" on YouTube and catching a fleeting glimpse as they go by. Until then, here's a recital video by another cellist, Robert deMaine, that has an excerpt and starts right on one of the numerous "concerto quotes" that occur in this work - right off the bat, the cellist plays A --- E ----, A --- G#, E.......

The original post read as follows:

Some time ago, I posted a rambling discussion about a posting that Stephen Hough made at his blog concerning a motive from the Grieg Concerto that recurs in the Nocturne.

It turns out that at some point the video to which I linked was made private.

Weep not, gentle reader, for another enterprising soul has posted another set of videos of the Argerich/Maisky performance of the Grieg Cello Sonata.

That posting, with its revision, may be found here.

And for those of you, who like me, adore this work, here it is in its entirety - the Grieg Sonata for Cello and Piano in A Minor, op. 36, performed by cellist Mischa Maisky and pianist Martha Argerich.

Or, perhaps the Grieg Sonata for Piano and Cello in A Minor, op. 36. No arguments, please. Feel the love.

Let's raise a glass for the weekend...

2011-02-25T23:44:00.000-05:00

An old two-piano eight-hand favorite, sometimes thought of as a "teaching piece", but really comes across better under more mature hands. Fun to play, and even more fun to listen to, I present to you the "Champagne Toccata" by William Gillock, played by Lyons Quatour Piano from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

I have fond memories of playing this in the early eighties, with pianists Marcia Waddell, Edna Holland Mory, and Ellen Bean. "Waiter" Dan Shell brought us glasses of sparkling grape juice, and we toasted and "took a sip" before playing. We were all camp counselors at a college music camp at Jacksonville (Alabama) State University. There are pictures somewhere...

The 2011 American Liszt Society conference, as described to a layman

2011-02-20T09:48:00.002-05:00

[This is a little note I posted to Facebook this morning, as many of my hometown friends do not understand or appreciate things that every reader of this blog takes for granted.

*** *** ***

I cannot begin to share how yesterday's experience at the American Liszt Society conference went - I felt like Cinderella at the ball. And as many of us classical music folks know, it is difficult to describe certain events to those of our friends who do not understand our fascination, or do not know the accomplishments of certain people we respect and idolize. So I will put it in layman's terms for you all, and send a private message later for those who really want to know the what and who.

When I arrived an hour and a half early, Paula Deen took me my the hand, hugged me, and we had lunch together, an unexpected surprise. Once that was over, she and I ran into Tyler Florence. Tyler had the inside scoop as to where Rachael Ray was, and he whisked me through the crowd to meet her. Rachael seemed happy to meet me face-to-face, as we have communicated for five years only by e-mail and one phone call, because of the time she used my recipe for Romantic Chicken Pasta Bake in her book "Cooking: Casserole By Casserole". She immediately introduced me to her traveling companion, an editor at Deep-Fat Frying Magazine - who actually expressed an interest in seeing some of my recipes, and possibly bringing back the idea of publishing an article about me, my small-town cooking career and my recipes, written by Emily Moe. (Emily is the only character in this narrative, other than me, who is identified by her real name.)

Paula proceeded to accompany me to all the other events. During Martha Stewart's lecture, we were amazed at the new ideas she is still able to produce. Betty Crocker bowled us over with a new recipe, proving to the crowd she still "had it" after all these years. She got the loudest, longest, and most heartfelt ovation of the day.

Several of us were surprised that Emeril Lagasse didn't show up, but you know, he's so last-decade. Aunt Jemima did attend Friday, however; I missed her presentation. Paula Deen was quite impressed with her, and told me that she even wore her trademark bandanna. Retro is good.

I will be forever in debt to Paula for thinking of me and inviting me to attend this convention - it was great to see Rachael, and perhaps, some of my recipes will FINALLY see the light in a more mainstream, and more readily available, cookbook.

(This write-up is dedicated to Matt Woods, who although he is an amazing musician, would have been more impressed, and far more envious, if the above narrative was what actually happened.)

I will reveal the identity of only one person in this write-up to you readers. "Paula Deen" is actually Gregor Benko, the co-founder of the International Piano Archives, and an idol of mine since my teen years. There's also a pretty strong clue here as to who Rachael Ray is.

Happy Birthday, Susie Francis Dempsey!

2011-02-18T06:40:00.000-05:00

At First Methodist Church in Jacksonville, Alabama, sometime in 2005.
L to R: Jan Calhoun Rhodes, Rick Robertson, Susie Francis Dempsey, Art Turner

Susie Francis Dempsey continues to teach piano in a private studio in Jacksonville, Alabama, after her retirement from Jacksonville State University. Not one to sit around and gather moss, she and husband J. Wayne Dempsey, a retired math professor, enjoy church work, travel, and spoiling their grandchildren. She teaches a large class of private piano students, and gives occasional performances for their benefit.

Her background includes degrees from Jacksonville State University, the University of Alabama, and the University of South Carolina. She has studied with Harold Thompson, Roy McAllister, and Max Camp.

A "teacher of teachers", her piano students have private studios and college positions throughout the Southeast, and her quickly-filled music theory and ear training classes have trained high-school and college band directors throughout as well. Although she rarely gave solo recitals during those years, she was in demand as an accompanist, and those rare recitals frequently featured two composers she played to perfection - Mozart and Debussy.

Her writings have appeared in national music-education magazines such as Clavier, and she has inspired at least one of her students (namely, me) to write as well. She has been and continues to be a positive influence in my life - an amazing woman. And I know that hubby of hers has something special planned for her today.

Happy Birthday, Susie!

Marc-Andre Hamelin plays the Berg Sonata

2011-02-17T22:49:00.000-05:00

This is for the "haters" - those who think Hamelin is all fingers and no soul. I share, with no comment other than this paragraph, his performance of the Berg Sonata for Piano, op. 1

Happy Valentine's Day!

2011-02-14T10:46:00.003-05:00

A link to a video that is, for me, appropriate to the season. This year, I am not having a Liebestraum or Liebeslieder Valentine's Day, but a Sonetto del Petrarca 104 Valentine's Day.

Here is a live-performance video of Vladimir Horowitz performing the Liszt Petrarch Sonnet no. 104 (from "Years of Pilgrimage", Book 1, Italy - jeez, what an unpicturesque name!), played in a rapturous, rhapsodic manner, with more than a touch of lyricism. Unrequited love can inspire some lovely music, can't it?

(one of many "standard" translations of the sonnet on which this piece is based:)

Warfare I cannot wage, yet know not peace;
I fear, I hope, I burn, I freeze again;
Mount to the skies, then bow to earth my face;
Grasp the whole world, yet nothing can obtain.
Pris'ner of one who deigns not to detain,
I am not made his own, nor giv'n release.
Love slays me not, nor yet will he unchain;
Nor life allot, nor stop my harm's increase.

Sightless I see my fair; though mute, I mourn;
I scorn existence, yet I court its stay;
Detest myself, and for another burn;
By grief I'm nurtured; and, though tearful, gay;
Death I despise, and life alike I hate:
Such, lady, do you make my wretched state!

Ilona Eibenschütz reminisces about Johannes Brahms - and plays

2011-02-07T08:53:00.001-05:00

Ilona Eibenschütz (1872-1967) was a Hungarian/Jewish pianist. She studied with Clara Schumann from 1885 to 1890). A great prodigy, she became a close friend and favorite pianist of Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), whom she first met in 1885 or 1886, and gave the world premiere of some of his piano works at his request. She formed a trio with Piatti and Joachim in London. Her career was short as she retired after her early marriage.

Eibenschütz said of Brahms that he "played as if he were improvising, with heart and soul, sometimes humming to himself, forgetting everything around him. His playing was altogether grand and noble, like his compositions."

During her reminiscences (broadcasted in 1952), she played some excerpts from Brahms's music:
At 0:51 Trio in C minor opus 101, Second movement
At 9:44 Ballade opus 10 no. 4 in B major (much, much faster than what is "normal" nowadays! Clara Schumann also criticized Eibenschütz because of her fast tempi in Brahms's opus 118 and 119).

Here is a rare opportunity to hear her as a young woman, a 1903 recording of the Ballade in G Minor, op. 119 no. 3. This exceedingly rare recording - and no, I do not own a copy - was made only six years after Brahms's death! It might be argued that the rushed tempo of the middle section was done to fit the entire piece on one side of a 78 rpm record, but Clara Schumann felt that Eibenschütz's tempi in late Brahms were rather fast. There are some videos on YouTube that feature her playing from player-piano rolls, but although they are "easier" to listen to, the tempo could be manipulated easily, and in my opinion the recordings give us a much better impression of what she sounded like, surface noise and all.

And yet there is another pianist who knew Brahms and lived long enough to talk about it in the "modern" era - Etelka Freund (1879-1977). And I plan to cover her at a later date.

More on the Miami sandbar piano

2011-02-05T06:00:00.002-05:00

(from Time Magazine)

An aspiring artist who placed a baby grand piano on the sandbar has spurred another fanciful display in the middle of the ocean.

Sixteen-year-old Nicholas Harrington's art school application became a sensation for its spontaneity last week. The sandy dune offshore in Miami's Biscayne Bay was affectionately titled “Piano Bar,” as fascinated residents attempted to figure out where the burnt-out baby grand came from. But authorities weren't awestruck, explaining that it was illegal to dump the instrument. So two admirers of the precariously perched piano and its Christo-style display came to its rescue – Carl Bentulan and his son decided to make the piano a collector's item.

(More on TIME.com: See the legacy of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, environmental artists.)

But that meant “Piano Bar” was left depressingly bare on Thursday, after days of bright-eyed gazers and bright-flashed photographers were left staring mystically. However, it didn't remain empty for very long. By Friday, the “Piano Bar” had morphed into a different type of establishment. A romantic scene from a restaurant was in place of the eloquent piano, complete with a small table, two chairs, a vase of red roses, and a bottle of wine. Standing by to take orders was a statue of a chef.

(More on TIME.com: See 50 authentic American experiences.)

It was a quaint scene for a quaint sandbar, but again, Miami's Department of Environmental Resources Management found the work more of a felony than a fascination. By mid-morning, the makeshift restaurant had been loaded onto a small boat and hauled away by officials – a much easier removal than the 650-pound baby grand piano.

Authorities are worried the site will become a chronic showcase for spontaneous environmental art – but would that really be so bad?

Chopin's B minor Prelude - A comparison

2011-02-04T10:22:00.001-05:00

This posting is for my friend Tess, whose son Dylan studied with me for two years before they moved "up north". She wanted me to recommend a recording for Dylan to hear, as he is now studying this popular Prelude. So here goes - the first video being a longish comparison of the opening played by several pianists. Then I will list a few performances by well-known artists, with brief comments.

Now, let's hear Maurizio Pollini, in a horridly-reproduced live video, but there is still much to learn from his sensitive playing.

Although the name of Arthur Rubinstein often comes to mind when "great Chopin pianists" are discussed, the Preludes as a whole were elusive to him. As my friend Hank Drake says, this recording is somewhat perfunctory. He did not re-record the Preludes during the LP era.

Ivo Pogorelich gained fame for NOT winning the Chopin Competition, in spite of his wholly individual artistry. That "individual artistry" does not bode well for this piece, as his slow tempo makes this piece drag into the next Christmas shopping season. (I preder Walmart, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, or iTunes gift cards myself, thank you.)

And for fun, here it is, rendered as a typing exercise. I must confess that I am cold to this man's videos. He claims to spend hours of research carefully determining each tempo that is perfect for what he is performing, and meanwhile his expression is evidently at the salon having its hair done.

And here is a complete performance, with the score, by Alfred Cortot.

There are also excellent recorded sets out there by Martha Argerich, Alexandre Tharaud, Tzimon Barto, Claudio Arrau, and Rafal Blechacz. My current favorite among the sets is by Nikolai Lugansky, although I must confess that I do NOT like his recording of no. 15 in D flat, the "Raindrop". But I have others to console me when I must hear this piece.

No strangers here, only friends not met (Episode 2)

2011-02-04T08:38:00.002-05:00

First let's visit an old friend that used to be a little more popular than it is nowadays - the Etude in B Flat Minor, op. 4 no. 3, by Karol Szymanowski. (A score of the op. 4 Etudes may be found here.) By far the best known of Szymanowski's solo piano works, it still isn't heard as often as it should be. And to hear it played as beautifully as it is here by Scott Meek in a 2007 doctoral recital at Indiana University, with perfect pacing, a beautifully-placed climax, and smooth handling of what is some pretty awkward writing - I know, I've played this piece myself.

A cursory glance at Meek's YouTube page shows him to be a whale of a pianist, and I would like to see where he floats up. Let's give him a little more attention by listening to Nikolai Kapustin's Variations, op. 40, a piece that would probably be in everyone's repertoire if the score wasn't so darned expensive. Marc-Andre Hamelin has recorded much of Kapustin's work, and most if not all of it sounds like this, a style that Kapustin himself has described as "notated jazz". This is from an October 2010 performance, which according to the webpage is taken from his final doctoral recital.

Most pianists know a few works by Alberto Ginastera - perhaps the Danzas Argentinas, some of the American Preludes, or perhaps even the First Sonata. First Sonata, you say? Yes, there are two more, but those are best saved for another time. Here we have the beautiful Cuyana, from Tres piezas, op. 6, which displays a rarely-seen lyrical side of Ginastera's piano output - because let's face it, most of us like the loud, driving, rhythmic side of Ginastera. This is pianist Atsuko Seta. (This score can be hard to find as well; the last copy I bought came by way of Elkin Music International.)

I will conclude with a video for the younger set. Here young Anna Stoll plays "By the Sea", op. 8 no.2, by George Posca. Dare I call this piece "Un sospiro semplice"? This jewel is still in print from Theodore Presser (although you may have to persuade your music dealer to order it), and is a piece that I enjoy teaching.

Witold Malcuzynski plays the Bach-Busoni Chaconne

2011-01-30T15:01:00.005-05:00

This paraphrased from Mark Ainley's description at his Facebook page:

Witold Malcuzynski (1914-1977) in a 1970 recording of the Bach-Busoni 'Chaconne' from late in his career. I produced this video at his daughter Christina's request, using photos and a recording she provided. She recalls how he needed to 'dare' to play Bach as his name had become inextricably linked with the music of his compatriot Chopin. Beautiful tone, wide dynamic range, and varied articulation all serve his large-scale vision.

Listen to this masterful interpretation of what I think is one of the "grandest musical structures" ever.

If you're on Facebook. the Malcuzunski group can be found here. The Facebook page "The Piano Files with Mark Ainley" may be found here.

Der Erl-Schnoodle (or, Lieder gone to the dogs)

2011-01-29T01:02:00.001-05:00

According to the description provided by the dog's owner: "Tucker, our one and a half year old Schnoodle, plays the piano and sings along at least 3 or 4 times every day. In spite of all of his practicing, he really isn't getting any better at it."

Words simply fail me, so I will just sing along, without any further comment.

Sorry, I cannot resist. I don't really believe in reincarnation, but have to wonder if this is a reincarnation of one of my favorite singers, Florence Foster Jenkins. The tonal quality and rhythmic sense are eerily similar.

Since many of my readers know of her Queen of the Night aria, I share with you a lesser known recording, which is quite similar to the above situation. I have said for years that this recording sounded like someone playing a Bach prelude on the piano while the beloved family pet tries to share in the spotlight.

Arthur Rubinstein plays four Chopin Etudes, live in concert, Moscow 1964

2011-01-28T13:22:00.000-05:00

Although Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982) was known in his day as the pre-eminent interpreter of Chopin and recorded almost his entire output - most genre sets at least twice - he never recorded the Etudes in their entirety. Never. Not on 78, not in the early mono LP days, and not during the stereo era. He supposedly said he could never do justice to all of them.

So it is a special event when we chance upon a Rubinstein recording of any of the Etudes. According to Donald Manildi's discography included in the biography "Rubinstein: A Life", there are recordings, mostly taken from concerts, of seven of the Etudes, and two studio recordings of the Trois Nouvelles Etudes:

op. 10 no. 4 in C sharp minor (1964, 1975)

op. 10 no. 5 in G flat "Black Key" (1960, 1964)

op. 10 no. 6 in E flat minor (1960)

op. 10 no. 8 in F (1960)

op. 10 no. 9 in F minor (1960)

op. 25 no. 1 in A flat "Aeolian Harp" (1964)

op. 25 no. 5 in E minor (1964, 1969, two from 1970, 1975)

(Evidently Rubinstein took a special liking to the E minor "Wrong Note" etude, rarely-played outside of the cycle. Horowitz recorded it as well, as it is included on the Sony Classical CD "The Last Recording".

Trois Nouvelles Etudes (1958, 1962)

To this we can add two more that have come to light since the publication of this book:

op. 10 no. 12 in C minor "Revolutionary" (1974)

op. 25 no. 3 in F "Cartwheel" (1974)

These last two performances are included in the excellent 2010 Marston release "A Century of Romantic Chopin" - and my article on this indispensable set may be found here.

Here we have a video taken from a 1964 performance in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.

The following four are played:

op. 25 no. 1 in A flat "Aeolian Harp"
op. 10 no. 5 in G flat "Black Key"
op. 25 no. 5 in E minor "Wrong Note"
op. 10 no. 4 in C sharp minor "Torrent"

The idea for this article was shamelessly cribbed from Mark Ainley. I must confess, that not long ago I searched for a video link to a Chopin etude, so I thank Mark for beating me to the punch.

Grand mystery as piano appears on sandbar

2011-01-26T14:48:00.000-05:00

Call it the latest piano bar, a large-scale mystery, or a whole new set of Florida Keys.

In Miami's Biscayne Bay, a grand piano has appeared -- perched on the highest point of a sandbar.

"We don't know how the piano got out there, we don't know who's responsible for putting the piano out there and at this point it's clearly a mystery," said Jorge Pino of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

And for now, it's staying put. Authorities told CNN they have no plans to remove it.

"What will probably happen is that the piano will just disintegrate because of the salt water and the salt air," said Pino, adding that it will not harm the wildlife.

The finding has struck a chord with residents and tourists, inspiring some to board their boats and check it out. But if they're planning to perform a concerto, their hopes will likely fall flat.

"This piano's so banged up you can't even bang out any tunes on it," reported Andre Hepkins of CNN affiliate WSVN, as he stood on the sandbar attempting to tickle the ivories.

The Miami Herald first alerted Pino to the mysterious piano last week, Pino told CNN.

As word spread, theories took off. Was it a publicity stunt? A music video gone bad? A frustrated musician? A jilted lover trashing an ex's instrument?

A Miami New Times blog offered explanations such as "The Little Mermaid was not a work of fiction" and "the powers that be are trying new tricks to get your attention about the end of the world."

Pino has his own ideas. "The person who did this obviously did it as a prank in my opinion," he said, "and they are getting exactly what they wanted to get, which is the notoriety of knowing that their story went viral."

It is illegal to dump things into those waters, Pino said. "If you're caught doing it, you can be arrested."

But for now, the Department of Environmental Resources Management has not begun an investigation, spokesman Luis Espinoza told CNN. "We're keeping an eye on it, looking into how it might have gotten there," he said, adding that an official investigation is "possible."

In November 2008 a piano was mysteriously discovered in Harwich, Massachusetts, by a woman who was walking a trail in the middle of the woods. That piano -- an upright, not a grand -- perplexed authorities. A CNN call Wednesday to Harwich police to find out if that mystery was ever solved was not immediately returned.

Biscayne Bay is home to commerce and tourism. The National Park Service describes it as "a shallow estuary, a place where freshwater from the land mixes with salt water from the sea and life abounds. It serves as a nursery where infant and juvenile marine life reside."

Pino said the piano was found on the sandbar well out into the water, less than half a mile from the shore. "It's amazing that somebody would go thru the trouble" of hauling "a 650 pound piece of equipment" out that far -- even one that's "not in good shape," he said.

Still, Pino said, "there's a lot worse things in the water."

"We know of a car... that somebody years ago dumped into the water, and the vehicle stayed there. And, as it turns out, the vehicle is quite the habitat for lobster now."

Pino added, "There's odd things in the water all the time -- shopping carts and tires and all kinds of stuff that people just decide to dump out there."

(From CNN)

Everything you ever needed to know about Joyce Hatto, in case you still care

2011-01-23T07:00:00.013-05:00

My friend Andrys Basten has assembled an excellent site that contains links to practically everything you could ever want to know about the biggest hoax ever perpetrated upon classical music - the 119 CD recordings released under the byline of the British pianist Joyce Hatto.

The Basten page is here.

To save you some time, a July 29, 2009 summary shameslssly cribbed from Kenneth Walton at newsscotsman.com:

Three years ago today [again, July 29, 2009], the English pianist Joyce Hatto died from cancer at the age of 77.

Having retired in 1976 after an unremarkable performing career, she had suddenly and quite inexplicably re-emerged in 2002 as a global recording sensation, aided by her husband and record producer, William Barrington-Coupe, and critically acclaimed by all, including the influential and trustworthy Gramophone magazine.

In the space of four years, and on Barrington-Coupe's own Concert Artists label, she had recorded the cream of the piano repertoire from Bach to Messiaen, including the complete piano works of Chopin, Brahms, Ravel, Debussy, Rachmaninov, Schubert, Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and Prokofiev. More than 100 recordings appeared, and all the while Hatto was battling ovarian cancer.

The story even went so far as to reveal that she had completed her final recording of Beethoven's Farewell Sonata seated on a wheelchair. Slighted in her younger years by the critics – the Times said of a 1953 performance that Hatto "grappled doggedly with too hasty tempi in Mozart's D Minor Piano Concerto" – Hatto had suddenly resurfaced to become the very stuff of classical music legend.

A glowing obituary in the Boston Globe by its highly respected critic, Richard Dyer, eulogised her late flowering as "the largest recording legacy left by any pianist, with the possible exception of Sviatoslav Richter.

"More important than the size of Miss Hatto's discography is its quality," Dyer continued. "Her playing throughout is on a superb technical level that is matched by profound expressivity and a deep humanity."

At the time such lavish praise seemed perfectly reasonable, given that Hatto's recordings were beginning to outsell even those of Alfred Brendel or Vladimir Ashkenazy. But one of music's greatest shams was about to be spectacularly uncovered by a young American financier, Brian Ventura. He had transferred one of Hatto's discs to his iPod before setting off that morning to his office on Wall Street. En route, he realised the name popping up on his screen was that of the Hungarian virtuoso Laszlo Simon, not Hatto. He immediately contacted Gramophone.

Suddenly, the music critics who had been drooling over the septuagenarian's miraculous return from the cold ran for cover. Further forensic investigation revealed Hatto's recordings to be ingeniously disguised fakes. Barrington-Coupe had used his technical expertise to plunder recordings by such unsuspecting virtuoso pianists as Paul Kim and Marc-André Hamelin, and reissue them under his wife's name.

He had simply slowed down some passages, speeded up others, occasionally altered the balance between the treble and bass, and even swapped channels to reverse the stereo effect.

When it came to concertos, he invented the non-existent conductor René Kohler (apparently the name of a popular German lavatory manufacturer), and equally mythical National Philharmonic-Symphony and Warsaw Philharmonic orchestras, when in fact the performances were doctored versions conducted by the likes of André Previn and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

The fact that he had openly acknowledged recording many of the discs in the couple's garden hut seemed to have passed the critics by.

The whole story is told in Channel 4's First Cut series this Friday in The Great Piano Scam, a documentary by the young film-maker Susannah Price, which includes revealing interviews with some of the duped critics. More importantly, her film includes an interview with Barrington-Coupe himself, speaking publicly for the first time about his role in the plot.

Will he come clean? To date, Barrington-Coupe has remained obstinately vague about his involvement and that of his late wife. Was she party to the plot? They were, without a doubt, a questionable pair. Hatto once claimed to be the daughter of an antiques dealer when, in truth, her father owned a sweet shop. Barrington-Coupe spent a year in prison for tax irregularities in 1966.

While the line spun by Barrington-Coupe about his wife's sudden withdrawal from concert life in 1976 – marked by a dramatic mid-concert collapse over the keys during a Wigmore Hall recital – was that she had contracted cancer (untrue at the time, but ironically what eventually killed her), the general feeling was that she had taken umbrage at worsening reviews and a belief that she was being vilified by what she called the "Royal Academy attitude" of the British musical establishment. She had an undoubted chip on her shoulder.

Was the ultimate musical con, then, a case of Hatto and her husband sticking two fingers up at the critics, or a desperate attempt to become part of the establishment they apparently despised?

If Channel 4 can answer that, then we might finally understand what led an apparently quiet and unassuming 70-year-old in twinset and pearls to take the musical world for mugs.

I own two Hatto CDs, sent to me before the storm hit by record archivist Ernst Lumpe. I was bowled over by her playing - or shall I now say the playing of Joanna Trzeciak, who brought the maligned Chopin Rondos to life - and had sent copies to Gregor Benko, in hopes that he could find a distributor for them in the US. Benko, like so many others, was impressed, and made some contacts. Fortunately, the storm hit before the inevitable conclusion.

A day in Venice with Ethelbert Nevin and Phillip Sear

2011-01-22T07:00:00.000-05:00

Ethelbert Nevin: Un giorno di Venezia (A Day in Venice), op. 25
Alba (Dawn)
Gondolieri (Gondoliers)

   Canzone Amoroso (Venetian Love Song)
   Buona Notte (Good Night)

The American composer Ethelbert Nevin (1862-1901) first studied music in Pittsburgh and Boston, before completing his training - like so many of his compatriots - in Germany. While there, he studied piano with Hans von Bulow in Dresden and Klindworth in Berlin. Thereafter, he divided his time between the USA and Europe. His most famous piano piece is 'Narcissus' - to me (in Sear's words) an early forerunner of the novelty rag style. Nevin had actually spent a year in Venice before he wrote this short suite (in Boston, in 1898) so he knew his subject matter! This short suite is remarkable for the degree of sentimentality - however, the sentiment is always heartfelt and touching. It has always been a favourite of mine, and I have played it in recital. The last movement (Buona Notte) starts with an ' Ave Maria ' before the gondoliers call out 'Addio' against a background of chiming bells.   (Edited from Phillip Sear's video desription.)

(My additions to Sear's excellent annotations) This set of pieces could once be found in every damsel's piano bench, and it might actually be worth a fresh hearing. I find the last two movements especially effective, but the Gondolieri movement was probably the most popular of the set in its day, because of its "Narcissus"-like lilt.

I cannot find this title available at the site of Theodore Presser, the owner of the rights to the original John Church edition. A pdf can be found here.

And I must admit that Ethelbert Nevin was certainly saddled with an unfortunate name. But it could have been worse. Just ask Marijuana Pepsi Sawyer. (A name Mrs. Sawyer has embraced and worn with dignity - as Van Cliburn has said about Texas arts patron Ima Hogg.)

Amazon lists one CD of Nevin piano music, and for some reason it is horrendously overpriced. The late Malcolm Frager recorded a couple of more substantial Nevin pieces (two Etudes, op. 18) on a CD entitled "Edward MacDowell and Company", which is not listed at Amazon.com, but can be found at the iTunes Store.

Should "is" be "are"?

2011-01-21T09:56:00.000-05:00

A reader commented to one of the posts in my "Is Our Children Learning?" thread - asking a perfectly sensible question - 'Isn't the "is" supposed to be "are"?'

My reply may have been a bit smug: 'I am quoting former President George W. Bush here. Seriously. "Is" be intentional. It do, I promise. '

But perhaps some of the readers who live outside of the United States are not familiar with this phrase, so here is a little video souvenir, which includes another Bushism on the same subject - "Childrens do learn, when standards are high, and results are measured."

I said I wouldn't be political, but this quote is too priceless to pass up.

Alfred Cortot in rare video footage

2011-01-21T07:00:00.003-05:00

Alfred Cortot (1877-1962)

A video clip of Alfred Cortot playing two pieces - the Waltz in A Flat ("L'Adieu"), op. 69 no. 1, and "Der Dichter spricht" ("The Poet Speaks") from Schumann's "Scenes of Childhood", op. 15. In the silent footage between the two he is playing the Chopin Etude in C, op. 10 no. 1 (the section in slow motion is most illuminating), and the Schumann performance includes comments - alas, in French.

A Bach masterclass with Angela Hewitt

2011-01-20T10:03:00.000-05:00

Master Class with Angela Hewitt from The Chamber Music Society on Vimeo.

Taped December 11, 2008, and although it is long, it is well worth a view. Enjoy. Although Hewitt is known for her Bach performances and recordings, her Couperin, Chabrier, and especially her Ravel, are a joy as well.

[The following is from the Hyperion site]

Angela Hewitt’s father was a distinguished organist from Yorkshire. When offered the choice of being assistant organist at Westminster Abbey or organist of Ottawa Cathedral he chose the latter, leaving England in 1931. As a child Angela Hewitt also played the violin and recorder, and took ballet lessons, but her first piano recital was nevertheless given at the age of seven where she played Bach inventions. From the age of six Hewitt studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Ottawa, remaining for nine years and graduating at eighteen with a Bachelor of Music degree. Hewitt then studied with Jean-Paul Sevilla at the University of Ottawa, although she credits her father for having had most musical influence on her. Two years later she decided to go to Paris, living in a studio at the Cité des Arts and eventually staying for seven years. During this time Hewitt joined the competition circuit, taking part in the Dino Ciani Competition in Milan, the Casadesus Competition in Cleveland, the Schumann Competition in Zwickau, and the International Bach Competitions in Leipzig and Washington DC. Hewitt made her New York debut at Alice Tully Hall and won first place at the Viotti Competition in Vercelli, Italy, but it was her first place in the 1985 Toronto Bach Competition that secured her position as an eminent Bach player. Added exposure was gained with a recording for Deutsche Grammophon which was part of the Competition first prize. Since then Hewitt has played throughout North America and Europe (making her London debut at the Wigmore Hall), Russia, Japan, Australia, Mexico and China. In 1995 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Ottawa and two years later the Key to the City of Ottawa.

Hewitt’s style of Bach playing is certainly more in the fashion of Tatyana Nikolayeva and Richard Goode than that of her compatriot Glenn Gould. What she brings to Bach is lucidity, grace, style and poise, nor does she play the piano as if it were a harpsichord. Early recordings for CBC include three Bach keyboard concertos, whilst her disc for Deutsche Grammophon made as a result of winning the Toronto Bach Competition is a Bach recital including the Italian Concerto BWV 971, the C minor Toccata BWV 911, Four Duets BWV 802–805 and the English Suite No. 6 in D minor BWV 811. No further discs followed from Deutsche Grammophon.

Hewitt decided to make a recording at her own expense of Bach’s inventions. She had previously approached Ted Perry of Hyperion Records, but he was already recording Bach played by Tatyana Nikolayeva. A second approach was successful, because Nikolayeva had died in the interim. Perry now accepted Hewitt and in 1994 she was signed up to record the major works of Bach. It has been these recordings that have placed her in the spotlight and catapulted her into the forefront of world pianists, becoming a major Bach player of the day. It is unfortunate however that a record critic should have described her as ‘The pianist who will define Bach performance on the piano for years to come’, for there are great Bach interpreters such as Tatyana Nikolayeva, András Schiff and Richard Goode who are precluded by such remarks. Hewitt does not restrict herself to Bach alone and has recorded works by Messiaen and Granados whilst a recent project includes some discs of Couperin. Hewitt has also recorded the complete solo works of Ravel on two compact discs where her stylistic approach stems from Bach rather than Liszt. The playing is cool and clear, but lacks weight and substance. Fanfare magazine found it ‘…a bit too underplayed and untheatrical in several major works’, but the American Record Guide published a damning review describing the recording as ‘…very disappointing and best forgotten’.

For Hyperion, Hewitt has already recorded Bach’s inventions, English and French Suites, partitas, Das wohltemperierte Klavier and the ‘Goldberg’ Variations. The programming of these compact discs also incorporates less familiar works by Bach such as the Sonata in D minor BWV 964, three sets of ‘little’ preludes and the Capriccio in E major BWV 993 which is a highlight along with the French Overture in B minor BWV 831. All have received the highest of critical praise and reference is often made to the dance-like quality Hewitt brings to these works.

Happy Birthday to Me

2011-01-19T10:55:00.004-05:00

January 1968, my eighth birthday - We had lived in Roanoke, Alabama five months, and the grass hadn't been planted in the yard yet. Here I pose in front of an old International Scout, (I remember riding the pastures in that thing) wearing a pair of Liberty overalls given to me by my great-uncle Daniel Howze. Uncle Dan'l always wore Liberty overalls, and I wanted to be just like him. I still have these overalls.

It is now 2011. I am 51 years old. I have outlived my father's life-span by ten years, but I have twenty-nine to go before I match my mother's. And I can only hope that I will have touched as many lives as she did.

It was two years after this photo was taken before I had my first piano lesson. Yep, that's late for someone who claims to be something of a professional. British pianist Nick van Bloss has me beat by a year, though - he started at eleven, and he has a "real" career.

I guess I'll just have to accept that it is probably my destiny to be known as a record archivist, and perhaps a blogger. There are still things I want to do with my life. I want to be published. As a composer. Not self-published, but I want to have some titles in print by a "real" publisher. It's not too late and I'm not too old. I certainly haven't caught up with Giuseppe Verdi yet. Yep, there is the magazine article (don't think anyone else in my high-school graduating class has been published in a national magazine, although we do have an author with three published novels to her credit) I want students to play and enjoy my music.

Like young Dylan here, in a video made two years ago:

And if I may trouble you with one more video - AUDIO ONLY with some pictures attached. This "video" will have to do until I get the "round tuit" and make a "live video" of this, my best-known piece, a Romance in D flat written in 2003. (Privately published, and available at Hutchins and Rea in Atlanta.)

The audio is from the premiere performance on May 22, 2005 in LaGrange, Georgia.

PICTURED WITH ME, in order:
Susie Francis Dempsey, my college piano teacher at Jacksonville (Alabama) State University, and the person to whom the piece is dedicated.
Sanford Watson, a former student from my earliest teaching years, who also graduated from Jacksonville State and is now band director at Handley Middle School in Roanoke, Alabama.
My great-niece, Harlin Nicole Hodges. She did not take the "early indoctrination" I attempted and does not play the piano.
My former student, Tiffany Oliver Cole, a young woman of much determination and talent. You can read "our" story here at this blog as well.

I'll keep trying. And thank you for indulging me. And a BIG thank you for allowing me to share my love of music with you.

We will return to our regularly scheduled blog tomorrow.

Musical Innovation: A Grander Grand Piano

2011-01-18T14:14:00.000-05:00

(from National Public Radio Music News)

Most pianos have 88 keys. And most great piano music comes from the middle of the keyboard — only rarely do the player’s fingers venture onto the tinkly keys at the top of the keyboard, or the booming bass notes at the bottom. But a craftsman in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, thinks the instrument has room to grow; and he wants to nudge the piano out of complacent middle age. He has designed a grand with an unprecedented 102 keys.

The Stuart and Sons grand piano has 14 more keys than most, which means its lowest and highest notes live very much on the edge. Its designer, Wayne Stuart, says a few other grands can play as low as this 102-key model, but none can play as high.

"I'd hate to go back to the 88-key piano," he says. "I couldn't stand it. It's too limited."

The extra notes might lend themselves to great feats of acrobatics, but they're not exactly musical. So why have them?

For color, Stuart says, and resonance. "There's a tremendous amount of energy in the low-octave notes, and you can hear the power."

The power is evident even in pieces where the lowest notes aren't played. Concert pianist Gerard Willems has recorded most of Beethoven's works on a Stuart grand, and he found the extra keys made a difference.

Pictures courtesy of Stuart and Sons

This piano is made from Tasmanian Huon pine, a type of ancient timber found in southwest Tasmania.

"Beethoven would have loved the sound of the Stuart piano," he says. Beethoven only had about 70 keys on his piano and would surely have used more notes if he'd had them, he says.

But don't focus too much on the keys, Willems says. This Stuart piano has other innovations, like a device that makes the strings vibrate differently, so each note sings out clear and separate. "It's almost like pulling wool apart — you can feel and sense and smell each layer of the sound."

But if the Stuart piano is going to attract more attention, it has to attract living composers — to write for it. And slowly, that’s happening.

New Age jazz musician Fiona Joy Hawkins has composed pieces for the Stuart piano, and she says it's the best piano she's ever played on. A single note on the Stuart, she says, can sustain for a long time.

"It just doesn't have any bend in the decay — it just goes straight. It goes forever, so you get these incredible harmonics that last," she says.

Some people say the Stuart has a distinctly Australian sound — as clear and bright as sun on the beach. But in Australia, the instrument has its critics. Pianist and music professor Geoffrey Lancaster would not say this piano is "sunny."

"I find the sounds very cold," Lancaster says. "They don't have that dimension of warmth that, say, a great Steinway or a great Bosendorfer has. It's this clarity — this so-called clarity or crystalline quality, it's really quite icy."

The Stuart grand can't compete with a giant like Steinway; only about 40 of the grands have been sold worldwide. But Lancaster says the Stuart raises an important question: When do we stop innovating?

"The idea 150 years ago was that each piano should be a masterpiece in its own right, and should not necessarily resemble the piano that was made before it," Lancaster says. "That's all changed, of course. So I'm all for innovation in the modern piano. To me, the piano is a pinnacle of human achievement. So it seems right and proper that it should continue to develop."

How you innovate, he says, depends, as always, on personal taste. But if you want to debut with a Stuart, you'll also need money: It costs up to $300,000, delivered.

A link to the original NPR post is here. There you will find a link to a recorded performance by jazz pianist Fiona Hawkins recorded on a Stuart and Sons piano.

Alex Ross discusses "walking bass"

2011-01-16T08:11:00.001-05:00

Alex Ross is a music critic for The New Yorker, and an author as well. His blog is here, as well as on the "blog list" on this here home page.

Paul Lewis on Schubert

2011-01-15T23:55:00.000-05:00

Paul Lewis discusses the piano sonatas of Schubert., and his own beginnings as a pianist.

"When I think of Schubert on the basis of the music itself, I don't think of him as gruff, but rather as a man of great tenderness and intimacy," Lewis reflects. "Everything is on a smaller scale than Beethoven; he is not in search of the big effect, but something more graded and intimate. This is something I came to realise during the last sonata cycle 10 years ago, and wanted to return to, after so many years with Beethoven".

The whole interview may be found here.

Catching up with George Li

2011-01-15T06:28:00.000-05:00

Performing at a fundraiser for the Preparatory School at the New England Conservatory, January 8, 2011.

Chopin Waltz in A Flat, op. 42 - Harry Truman's favorite waltz.

George gives 'em hell here as well, with a faster tempo in some sections to which we are accustomed.

It works.

More Chopin - this time the exquisite Nocturne in C Minor, op. 48 no. 1. This lovely nocturne towers over all the rest, and was a favorite of Chopin for teaching to his students, as numerous copies with notations in his handwriting exist. He spent a great deal of time with each student on the first section. George plays this beautifully, with a deep understanding that belies his youth.

Click here to read a previous article on George. We will hear more from this major talent in the future.

Glimpses into the past - Pachmann, Rachmaninoff, Brahms

2011-01-13T17:01:00.000-05:00

A 1933 silent film of Vladimir de Pachmann playing a piano roll. Whoever posted this video has superimposed a recording of Pachmann's piano roll of the Chopin Impromptu no. 2 in F sharp. Priceless.

According to a comment posted at the YouTube site, "the original nitrate film was kept by Reginald Reynolds, the Aeolian Company's Duo-Art recording producer in London, who appears in the film. When Reynolds died in the 1950s, it ended up with his daughters, latterly the younger one, Yvonne Hinde-Smith. Yvonne passed it to the Player Piano Group, and Gerald Stonehill arranged for several copies to be made, and so it has survived. The original film is silent, and the order of the scenes is different."

A rare glimpse into the family life of Sergei Rachmaninoff:

This transfer of the Johannes Brahms 1889 Edison cylinder enables you to hear more of the music and less of the surface noise than on the old LP transfer that I have.

Cover girl (and boy) - Anderson and Roe featured in "Clavier Companion"

2011-01-12T07:00:00.003-05:00

My fave peeps, the Anderson and Roe Piano Duo, are on the cover of the current issue (January/February 2011) of Clavier Companion. Their comment from their Facebook page reads as follows: "The corresponding article is spot-on: Nick Romeo (the author) actually "gets" us, our mission, and our artistic pursuits, and he swirls it all together into a mighty read! Kudos to Nick!"

A link to the article may be found here. There is a video link there as well.

A link to Clavier Companion's website may be found here. To subscribe to this excellent magazine (I do), a direct link is here.

And in case you have missed my other numerous articles on these two, their YouTube page is here.

A Little Snack: Scriabin's Sonata no. 5, op. 53 - served with a choice

2011-01-11T12:15:00.002-05:00

Alexander Scriabin. Hair by Pantene.

The Fifth Piano Sonata of Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) certainly belongs on my short list of Favorite Piano Pieces Of All Time. Every time I hear it, I hear something different and new in it, and it seems that although few pianists REALLY bring it off (more on that later) it seems that everyone who attempts it brings something new as well.

I will also admit that as much as I admire the music of Scriabin, I must admit that this admiration stops after op. 53. I simply do not enjoy the later works, where it seems that his aim shifts from the erotic to the comatose or hallucinogenic. When you build an entire sonata on one chord, you lose me.

Many people admire Sviatoslav Richter in this work. Although I find some interesting points made here, I find this performance to be a bit sloppy.

Here we have master pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin in a live performance, alas, cut in two because of YouTube's time restrictions (now they allow videos over ten minutes, and I have received notice that I have joined some sort of elite crew, and that I can upload videos longer than that - so there!) I have no idea why some people find Hamelin cold. I just think that they're jealous. I know I am.

Currently my favorite studio recordings are by Marc-Andre Hamelin and Bernd Glemser, (and for once I might sway my allegiance more toward Glemser over Hamelin - you just have to hear it!) and links to those are provided below. I am also enamored of Yevgeny Sudbin in this work (his performance is almost NC-17), and Simon Trpceski's debut CD contains an inpressive performance. And one cannot forget the eroticism that the late Joseph Villa brought to this work.

Is Our Children Learning? Meet young conductor Jonathan

2011-01-08T09:33:00.002-05:00

(Following paragraph from the video description) This is 3 year old Jonathan conducting to the 4th movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. This piece was originally conducted by Herbert von Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker, one of Jonathan's favorite conductors and orchestras. Jonathan's passion for classical music became apparent when he was only eight months old. Shortly after that he began conducting on his own.

WATCH IT ALL THE WAY TO THE END.

And like any good conductor, he plans to master at least one instrument:

You can track Jonathan's progress at his family's YouTube channel here - there is a charming video (embedding disbled, or it would be here) of him playing the Dvorak Humoresque in an orchestra concert, with harp accompaniment. The young conductor has a large repertoire.

A Little Snack - What was once Russian avant-garde...

2011-01-05T15:29:00.003-05:00

... makes a STUNNING teaching piece.

(The following copied from the YouTube video description)

Rails, Op. 16

Vladimir Deshevov (1889-1955) was just one of the many forgotten and repressed composers of the Soviet era. In the 1920s and 1930s, he was distinguished as an exceptional composer of avant-garde ballet, incidental music, and other various genres for the stage. His orchestral style shows influences of Mosolov, especially in the evocation of mechanist and urban sounds. "Ice and Steel" and "Rails" are his two most famous works and reveal a fascination with industrial machinery and the revolutionary spirit of the time. Deshevov was a true modernist and his inclination to the avant-garde was treated with suspicion and eventually hositiliy during Stalin's reign.

Like Shostakovich and a slew of other fortunate Soviet composers, Deshevov was able to escape severe punishment by changing his idiom and producing acceptable propaganda pieces. Operas, ballet, film, and incidental music constitute the bulk of his oeuvre. However, there are a handful of early solo piano works that deserve some attention.

"Rails" is one of them. It is not a very musically substantial piece, although I think it deserves a better performance than exhibited in the present recording. I've posted this more as a historical curiosity. The origins of this piano composition are probably linked to Deshevov's incidental music to a play of the same name. In the 1920s this little piano piece was greatly esteemed by other Soviet modernists and was even cited as a shining model of avant-garde composition. One can detect Prokofiev in the toccata-like motion, Stravinsky or Bartok in the savage repeated notes, and perhaps a little of Alkan vis-à-vis "The Railway".

With thanks, much thanks, to YouTube member Hexameron.

There is a much better recording by Marc-Andre Hamelin available, on the 1992 Husum "Rarities of Piano Music" Festival recording. This recording is available at iTunes as a complete CD upload or the track is available individually. There, the title is translated as "Tracks".

For some odd reason, Amazon has this CD listed at $79.95. If that's not a reason to upload iTunes, I don't know what is.

Don't try this at home...

2011-01-02T10:05:00.000-05:00

... unless you have a really old crappy grand piano.

Thanks to Francesco Libetta for the tip.

Days of auld lang syne

2011-01-01T08:59:00.006-05:00

New Year's Eve in London. I wonder if my cousin Michelle was there.

In case you've ever wondered - "days of auld lang syne" means in modern English, "days of old long since" (or "old long ago"). We are experiencing "auld lang syne" in my family during this time. Thanks again for the positive energy you all have sent to us. May 2011 be a wonderful year, full of opportunities and growth for each and every one of us.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days of auld lang syne!

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

So... what did you read here in 2010? What caught your attention the most?

By far, the most-read article on this here site was the one about Alice Herz-Sommer, the oldest living Holocaust survivor. She dashed out of the starting line, snatched a tiara off of Tiffany Oliver Cole's head, and ran like the dickens to 1387 views, 5 comments.

Second place was an article about pianist Alice Sara Ott, who still continues to amaze and inspire me. 227 views, 1 comment.

Third place went to my article on World AIDS Day, and the talent we have lost to HIV and AIDS-related illnesses. I thought this article would be controversial, but it was not. 222 views, and at 9 comments, the most commented-upon.

Fourth place went to the article on my former student Tiffany Oliver Cole and her work as a piano student, despite what some may call a handicap - certainly to one who wishes to play the piano. 183 views, 2 comments.

And Noah Gray-Cabey, at the last minute, snatched fifth place away from one of the most outstanding CD releases of 2010, Marston Records's "A Century of Romantic Chopin". Young Noah got 180 views and 2 comments, and probably made more money as a TV actor than most of the pianists we discuss. Oh well.

What fell flat?

Although I do not have "figures for the bottom end", I thought the fans of beefcake would adore James Valenti. I was wrong. Evidently many of you are not fans of opera, male pulchritude, or an admittedly successful combination of both in the case of Valenti. Likewise my article on Edith Mason's Butterfly recording - C'mon, people, listen past the surface noise!

The "vintage record collecting community" is not exactly visiting this site in droves, but the article on one of my favorite old pianists, Moissaye Boguslawski, did get 102 views, a second-place showing of 7 comments, and some more information from you readers about his records.

I admit I wrote more about James Rhodes than probably any one else thus far, but I still find him fascinating, and if I don't convert you all, at least you'll be informed of his doings. His numbers are by no means shabby, so I know you're reading about him. He has a new CD coming out stateside this month. Some of the most-viewed articles such as Herz-Sommer, World AIDS Day, and Tiffany Oliver Cole have an interest that lies as well beyond the field of music, hence those numbers.

I'm sorta pleased with the way things have developed here in the past five months. I hope to find more interesting content to share with you.

And now, it's the Liszt year! 1811/2011

2011-01-01T01:10:00.004-05:00

Franz Liszt
1811-1886

Last year, it was all Chopin and Schumann. Okay, it was all Chopin with a dash of Schumann. Well, readers, 2011 is the Liszt year! We'll start the year off with a little Horowitz - the lovely Third Consolation in D flat, recorded live in Vienna.

The Polonaise no. 2 in E Major is one of the few polonaises NOT written by Chopin to gain a foothold in the repertoire. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was overplayed to an extreme - Liszt supposedly refused to hear it in masterclasses for this reason - and it seems to be rarely performed these days. Let's give it a fresh listen, performed here by Denys Masliuk in the 2008 Franz Liszt Competition in Utrecht.

Stephen Hough has also given us an excellent recording of the Polonaise.

Everyone has a favorite or two among the Hungarian Rhapsodies - nos, 2, 6, 11, 13 come to mind. I have featured no. 11 recently with young George Li, so I want to take you down another path altogether - to (in my opinion) the most underrated of all the Rhapsodies, no. 3 in B flat. It never "gets fast", so it never gets played. Zeljko Blahovic performs it here, in a Stuttgart recital from 2008. There are a few retouches in the text here and there, and he tends to overthunder the thunder (perhaps to make up for the lack of showy passages?) but this is in no way a negligible performance of a negligible work. The eccentric pianist Ervin Nyiregyhazi made this work his own, but perhaps one should hear a performance that is closer to the score before one hears what Nyiregyhazi brought to it.

I would like to conclude with my favorite Liszt piece - but then I always loved the French Impressionists. (Yes, that was intentional.)

Earl Wild, the Master, gives us "Les jeux d'eau a la Villa d'Este" (from the third volume of "Years of Pilgrimage",) with a few textual changes that add to the effect by relieving us of some of Liszt's use of the tremolo. Although the title refers to the fountains of the Villa d'Este, Liszt gives the water a double meaning by placing a quote - from the Gospel of John, chapter 4 verse 11, in the New Testament - below the opening of the middle section:

"The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water?"

Happy New Year 2011! And be sure to place Liszt on your list - of resolutions. You probably won't lose those fifteen pounds anyway.

Songs my mother taught me

2010-12-31T08:15:00.002-05:00

Please indulge me. I promise I will soon return to your regularly scheduled blog.

I have been wanting to write a piano transcription of this song for some time - Dvorak's "Songs My Mother Taught Me", sung in German by Pilar Lorengar.

Mama's friend Mary Agnes Messer loves this song, and her daughter Lynne introduced it to me. I was completely unfamiliar with Josh Groban.

This one needs no introduction, and some "classical singers" could learn a thing or two about how the Young Elvis colored his voice.

This may have been my mother's favorite hymn, and I am sure she would have loved this performance by the Coal Miner's Daughter.

Thanks to all of you who have sent messages of comfort and support. I will admit that I am a mama's boy, and this will be tough for me. And thanks for your support for the blog. I hope to continue into 2011 with more research, more byways on the repertoire road, and share with you more goodies from my collection. May you all have a happy and prosperous New Year.

Hug your mother and tell her you love her.

Today, I said goodbye to my mother

2010-12-30T14:08:00.009-05:00

Joyce Helen French Robertson Moring
May 26, 1930 - December 29, 2010

She wasn't famous, but she did play the piano. By ear. And pretty good at that. She also sang, with a clear, pleasant voice, on key, but in a baritone range. She always said it was because of a tonsillectomy she had relatively late in life, but I suspect it really was the years of smoking.

My mother ended her battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) yesterday. The past year had been especially tough, as dementia took hold of her brain in late 2009, with a brief but not complete respite during the summer months of 2010. Although her memory was not reliable, she never "forgot who we were" - well, she did call me by my late father's name once, but just once - and just this past Monday morning I took my laptop computer to the hospital to show her the video I had shot of our family Christmas Eve get-together. She watched the video, pointing out her great-grandchildren and commenting on how pretty the decorations were. She was unable to come home for Christmas, and my brother, his son's family, and I had worked until the morning of Christmas Eve to decorate the house for the gathering.

Mama loved Christmas. She loved the music. She loved the decorations. Oh, how she loved the decorations. Candles in the windows, wreaths on the shutters and on the big front door, at least two hand-painted ceramic manger scenes displayed throughout the house, all the knick-knacks packed up and replaced with special Christmas knick-knacks, and two Christmas trees. One "real", and one aluminum tree. When aluminum trees fell out of fashion, We just had a "real" one, which was eventually replaced with a tasteful artificial green tree.

Christmas 1962. I'm the cute one..

The console stereo in the living room would be fitted with a stack of Christmas LPs: Floyd Cramer, the Lennon Sisters, Ferrante and Teicher, Andy Williams, Roger Williams, and the Organ and Chimes of Robert Rheims. We wore out at least three copies of that organ and chimes record through the years.

I think my childhood love of music came from the Christmas season, from the lush harmonies and orchestrations of the records she played during that time of the year. As I grew older, I found these lush sounds in the music of my piano lessons - Chopin, Debussy, Beethoven, Bartok. Mama never really cared much for most of the classical music I played, but she supported me just the same.

After a few years of spiritual wandering, I returned to church music in August of 2006, taking a post as pianist in a small United Methodist Church in Franklin, Georgia. My affiliation with this church went back a long way, as many of their members' children had studied with me. I am still there and thankful for that congregation, and its pastor, Rev. Brett Mathews.

Anytime I played for family gatherings, Mama would say, "Now, play my piece". In three recitals that I performed in churches, she asked me to play "her" piece as an encore, and I did. When she became ill, I dropped it from my repertoire. An incident happened at my church recently, and I felt led to play the piece as a special music offering, without having practiced or played it in over ten months. After church, I made the video below.

Mama, can you hear me?

(Andrae Crouch's My Tribute (To God Be the Glory) - modeled after Dino Kartsonakis' arrangement)

JULY 2011 UPDATE: I wrote an arrangement of a song Mama made up as a young girl and often played for me. That story, and a link to a video performance, may be found here.

*** *** ***

Joyce Helen French Robertson Moring

(ROANOKE, ALABAMA) The funeral for Joyce Helen French Robertson Moring, 80, of Roanoke was held at 1 p.m., Friday, Dec. 31, 2010, at First United Methodist Church with the Rev. Steve Baccus officiating. Burial followed in Randolph Memory Gardens. Mrs. Moring died Wednesday, Dec. 29, at Randolph Medical Center, after a long battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder.

Mrs. Moring was born May 26, 1930, the daughter of James Monroe and Mary Ella Sikes French. She was a member of Roanoke First United Methodist Church, had been a homemaker, and managed a family business, Bob's Grocery.

Mrs. Moring is survived by one daughter, Deborah Ann (husband Paul) McMurray of Roanoke; two sons, H.G. "Robbie" Robertson and Richard Earl "Rick" Robertson of Roanoke; two sisters, LaVelle Langley of Roanoke and Frances Johnson of McDonough, Ga.; seven grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

Mrs. Moring was preceded in death by her husband of 24 years (1947-1971), Hansard "Bob" Robertson; her husband of 30 years (1977-2007), Douglas Grice Moring; her parents; and nine other brothers and sisters.

Pallbearers were Harry Botsford, Bobby Robertson, Steven Robertson, Gus McMurray, Will McMurray, Gilbert L. Huey Jr., David Cummings, and Steve Cummings.

Quattlebaum Funeral Home, Roanoke.

A picture from 1947, the year she married my father. The picture is inscribed to him on the back.

Meet George Li, a 2010 Young Concert Artists winner!

2010-12-29T09:18:00.001-05:00

At 15, pianist George Li won First Prize in the 2010 Young Concert Artists International Auditions. He was also awarded the Sander Buchman Award, the Ruth Laredo Award, the John Browning Prize, and the Paul A. Fish Memorial Award for career development, the Slomovic Prize for a concert engagement, concerts with the Boise Philharmonic and the Vancouver Recital Society, and the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Prize and Usedom Music Festival Prize (both in Germany). As a new winner, Mr. Li will be presented in the two Young Concert Artists Series next season in his New York debut, in the Peter Marino concert at Merkin Hall, and at the Kennedy Center, sponsored by the Alexander Kasza-Kasser Prize, as well as in Boston at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

This season, Mr. Li performs Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2 with the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra (NJ), Chopin’s Concerto No. 1 with the Waltham Symphony Orchestra (MA), and Beethoven’s Concerto No. 4 with Symphony Pro Musica (MA) and with the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra of the New England Conservatory in Albany, Boston and on tour in Europe. He appears in recital at the First Presbyterian Church in Utica (NY), the Parish Center for the Arts in Westford (MA) and in the “Prodigies and Masters of Tomorrow” Discovery Series in Miami.

George Li gave his first public performance at Boston’s Steinway Hall at the age of nine. He has a wide range of concerto repertoire and has appeared as soloist with orchestras including the Cleveland Orchestra as First Prize winner of the Cooper Piano Competition, the Xiamen Philharmonic in China, the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in Venezuela, the Boston, Brooklyn, and Spartanburg (SC) Philharmonic Orchestras, the Miami, Princeton, Albany, and Lexington orchestras, the Nordic Chamber Orchestra in Sweden, and with “I Solisti di Perugia” in Italy.

Mr. Li performed at the opening ceremony of Boston’s new Institute of Contemporary Art and the inauguration of President Tony Woodcock at the New England Conservatory. He has appeared in recital at Boston’s Steinway Hall and was presented by the Hilton Head International Piano Competition and as Second Prize winner of the 2008 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition. As a chamber musician, Mr. Li performs with the New England Conservatory’s Vivace Trio, which has played on “From the Top” on NPR and WNET. The Trio has also performed for members of US Congress at the Senate Office Building in Washington, DC.

Mr. Li’s awards include First Prize in the MMTA Piano Competition at the age of six and seven and Second Prizes in both the Virginia Waring International Piano Competition and the World Piano Competition at the age of nine. Mr. Li is a 10^th grade student at the Walnut Hill School and studies at the New England Conservatory with Wha Kyung Byun. (from the YCA site)

*** *** ***

I have been following George Li on YouTube for quite some time, and planned to feature him in an "Is Our Children Learning?" segment. No need for that, because it is obvious that he be learning.

His website is here. Keep an eye on this gifted young man. He is already often compared to Lang Lang - and favorably at that.

No strangers here, only friends not met

2010-12-27T07:00:00.001-05:00

I enjoy looking for repertoire that is off the beaten path, and am constantly amazed at the amount of "forgotten" music that is out there - some by well-known composers that perhaps did not give much attention to the piano, and some by pianist-composers who rarely wrote for other media and slid into obscurity. I would like to introduce you to some of my discoveries:

A GORGEOUS piece by stone-faced old Jean Sibelius - the Impromptu in B Minor, op. 5 no. 5, beautifully performed by performed by Rob Marshall at All Saints Church in Mumbles, Swansea on August 21st 2010. This piece certainly should be added to your list of "water pieces".

We all have our favorites in the Grieg Lyric Pieces. One of mine is the relatively unknown "Einsame Wanderer", op. 43 no. 2 (Solitary Wanderer, Solitary Traveler, what-have-you) - Such pathos packed in two pages with such little technical difficulty, and a perfect piece for a sensitive performer. Here is is, played by Hakan Austbo. (I really dig these "videos" with the scores visible.)

I do not know what it is about this next piece that captivates me. Perhaps it is the little ritornello that makes this piece (and the Beethoven Six Ecossaises) similar to current pop music, but this Theme Varie, op. 89, by Cecile Chaminade, is a stunner. Please give this a listen, and try to forget that she wrote the Scarf Dance.

And what about To the Rising Sun, op. 4 no. 1, by Trygyve Torjussen? This little gem used to be popular, but has receded into the background. Since all the YouTube videos of this piece appear to be by students, I may as well choose one of mine. Keller Porter of LaGrange, Georgia, plays this picturesque piece.

And in the less-popular-sister category (the piece, not the pianist), we have the Liebestraum NUMBER TWO by Franz Liszt, in a live recital performance by a pianist we only know as Becky. Not Cher, not Madonna, but Becky. And our Becky has nothing to be ashamed of here.

Edith Mason, American soprano

2010-12-26T07:37:00.003-05:00

This record occupies a place of pride in my collection. The picture above is my copy of what is arguably the finest recording on 78 of this scene - Edith Mason's 1924 recording of "Ancora un passo" - Madame Butterfly's entrance aria. In fact, some might argue that it is the loveliest recording of all time of this aria, vocally.

Edith Mason (1892-1973) was an American soprano, and a possessor of one of the loveliest voices on early phonograph records.

She studied in Boston, Philadelphia, and Paris (with Edmond Clement). She made her debut on January 27, 1912, as Nedda in Pagliacci with the Boston Opera Company. During the next three years, she sang in Europe at Nice, Marseilles, and Paris. In 1914 she was singing at the Opera Comique in Paris when the war terminated her engagement. Returning to America, she made her debut at the Metropolitan as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier on Nov. 20, 1915. In 1917-19, she was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Company. In 1919 she married Giorgio Polacco. In 1921 she became one of the leading singers of the Chicago Opera Association.

She made a small handful of recordings for the American Brunswick label in 1924 - the very tail end of the "acoustic period", where horns rather than microphones were used to capture the sound. She made a few more records, again for Brunswick, as late as 1928, but most were remakes of her first recordings using the new electric process, and the acoustic recordings have a better sound. Brunswick's early electrical "Light-Ray" recording process was not as successful as what Victor and Columbia were using, but they had switched to more conventional microphone recording by 1927.

Admittedly off-topic a bit, but the beauty of her voice never ceases to amaze me - how well this recording sounds after all these years.

On the other hand, I simply couldn't get through this article without saying - LISTEN TO THAT D FLAT!!!

Classical music for, or inspired by, the Christmas season

2010-12-25T10:05:00.001-05:00

To the layman, Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride" is THE piece of classical music that is inspired by the season. Anderson did do a piano solo arrangement that is worth investigating, in addition to the duet version that has become a standard. Here we have H. Gerald Anderson, Professor of Music at Olivet Nazarene University playing a Christmas concert on December 16, 2007 at Pearson Piano in Crete, IL on a limited production Steingraeber 205 grand piano. There are some slips (the hazards of live performance, and Dr. Anderson is human after all) but I chose this one over others posted at YouTube, because this one is very close to Anderson's solo version, with a few gimmicks, and his spirit saves the day.

Franz Liszt's suite "Weinachtsbaum" (The Christmas Tree) is in my opinion a crashing bore. It does quote many familiar Christmas tunes, such as "O Come All Ye Faithful" and "In dulci jubilo", and most of it is in the technical reach of a high-school piano student. On the other hand, it packs the excitement of.. well, nothing.

This piece may be an exception, the March of the Three Holy Kings:

Sergei Liapunov (or Lyapunov, or Lyapounov, or whatever) wrote a set of four pieces entitled Fetes de Noel, op. 41 (Christmas Festivals), but as beautiful and well-laid-out as it is, I do not hear any tunes that are familiar to anyone on this side of the globe. This is, however, a composer worth investigating any time of the year. His Balakirev-influenced writing is highly effective on the piano.

There is also the set of Roumanian Christmas Carols by Bela Bartok, but I must confess that as much as I love Bartok, I find nothing of interest here, and the only performances of selections from the set on YouTube are by young students.

To the pianist or piano student. the best-known adaptation of a Christmas tune in the standard piano repertoire is the middle section of Chopin's Scherzo in B Minor, op. 20. Chopin uses the tune from a Polish Christmas carol, often known in English as "Sleep thou, my jewel". Here is that scherzo, performed by Yundi Li:

I wish to you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

As you may have noticed, I have not been posting as frequently in recent days. My mother is in the hospital, in what might be the last stages of chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, or COPD. I ask you all to please send positive energy appropriate to your faith in her direction. We do not expect miracles. We know this is terminal, and the damage to her brain is irreversible, but we wish her suffering to be minimal. She is 80 and was active to the very point where this disease took its hold. And in her mind, she is probably still itching for warm weather to get here so she can go outside and work in the yard.

The Boston Pops, featuring guest conductor SHAQUILLE O'NEAL?

2010-12-21T14:32:00.000-05:00

The Boston Pops had a rather large guest on Monday night, as Celtics center Shaquille O'Neal served as guest conductor tonight during the performance at Symphony Hall.

The multi-talented Shaq, who has appeared on rap albums as well as in several movies, conducted three songs -- Sleigh Ride, Can You Feel It (a Michael Jackson rendition) and We Are The Champions by Queen.

"Actually you know I have a whole new respect for conductors," Shaq said before the performance. "Went through a little rehearsal today and my arms are shot right now."

Shaq is no stranger to being out of his element. His reality show, "Shaq Vs.," matched him up against athletes and celebrities at their own game, such as dancing vs. Justin Bieber or cooking against Rachael Ray.

On Monday, he rehearsed in the evening, then joined the Pops performance, which began at 8 p.m., at 8:30.

When asked about being accepted in Boston, Shaq said, "I think I've sort of been grandfathered in. I think, you know, people kind of appreciate my humor [and] appreciate my hard work."

A link to video, and the original link from the Celtics Blog, may be found here.

Washington Post's Top Ten Classical Recordings for 2010

2010-12-18T17:03:00.005-05:00

Washington Post has released their list of the top ten classical recordings for 2010, and you can read the article here. There are three piano recordings on the list:

"Jeremy Denk Plays Ives" [Think Denk Media]. Denk's piano playing mingles urbanity with unabashed beauty. The combination, coupled with an engaging intelligence, has brought him into the limelight in the past couple of years, and it sheds plenty of light on Charles Ives, who's become something of a calling card, on this self-produced CD, which illuminates through thoughtful liner notes and playing that removes the spines from this usually thorny composer, making him less off-putting than downright seductive.

Tchaikovsky, "The Three Piano Concertos." Stephen Hough; Osmo Vanska, Minnesota Orchestra [Hyperion]. More Tchaikovsky. Hyperion's marvelous "Romantic Piano Concerto" series, which offers excellent performances of scholarly editions of more- and less-known works, marked its 50th release with a bang: the biggest romantic concerto in the repertory, paired with its less-known siblings, played by an artist who mines the nuance (yes, nuance) of the scores, supported by one of America's best orchestra-conductor teams.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, "Ravel, Debussy, Massenet." Yan Pascal Tortelier, BBC Symphony Orchestra [Chandos]. Not everyone appreciates Debussy's early piano-concerto-like "Fantasie," but Bavouzet does, and he and Tortelier make an eminently convincing case for it on this strong and very French disk, which traces a jazz influence from Debussy through swinging performances of both Ravel concertos. Boulez and Aimard offered another fine (and French) recording of them this year, but this SACD has more bang (and verve) for the buck.

A few video picks - Christmas Shopping Edition

2010-12-18T08:01:00.000-05:00

I have read that although Heinrich Neuhaus (1888-1964) was a most inspiring teacher (after all, he taught Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, Alexander Slobodyanik, Eliso Virsaladze, Alexei Lubimov, Radu Lupu. and a host of other pianists), that many found him to be a less-than-inspring performer.

This video dispels that story pretty effectively:

How well did he teach? Let's hear the one many call his "best student", and others call "the greatest pianist of the twentieth century", Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997):

Here a trio of flute, viola, and harp (what a French combination) known as Dolce Suono (what an Italian name, and a little crazy at that, I expect a blood-soaked Lucia di Lammermoor to enter stage left and sing) give a totally charming performance of a work that seems to be ascending to chamber-music standard status on its own merits - a transcription by Carlos Salzedo (1885-1961) of Maurice Ravel's Sonatine. Alas, only the first movement is available on YouTube as played by these excellent performers:

I must admit that as much as I love this work in the original version for piano solo (and play it myself), I listen to a recording of this trio version quite often. It reminds me of champagne and fancy cheese, and sometimes I get in those moods.

And as I head out the door to do some Christmas shopping and errands, let me leave you with one totally unrelated, but awesome, clip. Perhaps this one should be filed under "Is Our Children Learning?" - my high school choir never did stuff like this.

Christmas straight, no chaser

2010-12-16T07:30:00.001-05:00

This a cappella men's group originating from Indiana University has just what it takes to get us into the holiday season.

Another one in the same vein:

But, seriously:

I have both of the currently available Christmas collections, as well as one of the usual run of standards, reimagined in their inimitable style.

You can find their website here.

Jean-Yves Thibaudet plays the Khachaturian Concerto

2010-12-15T11:35:00.002-05:00

Dear Jean-Yves Thibaudet,

You are one of my favorite pianists in the French repertoire. This is my favorite piano concerto in the whole wide world. No one else agrees with me. All of my friends hate it. They say it is trash.

It was good enough for William Kapell. You and Charles Dutoit make it magical. Will you record it? Circle yes or no.

YES

NO

Later, dude.

Heart,
Rick

P.S. I promise I won't ask you to record his Sonata. It really IS trash.

Aram Ilich Khachaturian (Armenian: Արամ Խաչատրյան, Russian: Аpaм Ильич Xaчaтypян) (June 6, 1903 – May 1, 1978) was a composer of classical music.

Khachaturian was born in Tiflis, Georgia, Russia (now Tbilisi, Georgia) to a poor Armenian family (the influence of Armenian folk music is prominent in his work). In his youth, he was fascinated by the music he heard around him, but at first he did not study music or learn to read it. In 1921, he travelled to Moscow all on his own in order to begin his musical studies, having almost no musical education and unable to speak a word of Russian. However, he showed such a great musical talent that he was admitted to the Gnesin Institute where he studied cello under Mikhail Gnesin and entered a composition class (1925). In 1929, he transferred to the Moscow Conservatory where he studied under Nikolai Myaskovsky. In the 1930's he married the composer Nina Makarova, a fellow student from Myaskovsky's class. In 1951, he became professor at the Gnesiny State Musical and Pedagogical Institute (Moscow) and the Moscow Conservatory.

His works include concertos for violin, cello and piano (the latter originally including an early part for the flexatone), concerto-rhapsodies for the same instruments, three symphonies the third containing parts for fifteen trumpets and organ, and the ballets Spartak (Spartacus) and Gayane, the latter featuring in its final act what is probably his most famous movement, the 'Sabre Dance'. He also composed some film music. The cinematic quality of his music for Spartacus was clearly seen when it was used as the theme for a popular BBC drama series, The Onedin Line, during the 1970s. Since then, it has become one of the most popular of all classical pieces for UK audiences.
He died in Moscow, short of his 75th birthday, in 1978.

The Amazon link I have provided will take you to an excellent reissue coupling this with the admittedly stronger Violin Concerto. The performer here is Alicia de Larrocha, and this is MY benchmark recording of the work. Many do not like her more majestic tempi, but I do. (Thibaudet is faster, pretty much throughout, but he does so much with color here!) This admittedly splashy and FABULOUS concerto holds up beautifully in Thibaudet's hands, however.

Jacob Lateiner, Pianist and Scholar, Dies at 82

2010-12-14T09:42:00.000-05:00

(from the New York Times) Jacob Lateiner, a concert pianist renowned for his interpretations both of Beethoven and of 20th-century music, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 82 and lived in Manhattan.

His death was confirmed by the Juilliard School, at which Mr. Lateiner (pronounced la-TYE-ner) had taught from 1966 until his retirement last year. He was also a longtime faculty member of Mannes College the New School for Music.

Mr. Lateiner, who made his debut as a teenager in the 1940s, was a member of the cohort of young American pianists — or YAPs, as they were known to the classical-music trade — that included Eugene Istomin, Gary Graffman, Claude Frank and Leon Fleisher.

He was known in particular for his technical virtuosity, the beauty and flexibility of his tone and a deep musical understanding that was rooted in his fealty to the composer’s original intent. (Mr. Lateiner was an avid collector of music manuscripts and first editions, over which he pored studiously before performing the work in question.)

As a soloist, Mr. Lateiner appeared with many of the world’s leading orchestras, among them the New York and Berlin Philharmonics, the Boston and Chicago Symphonies and the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras. As a chamber musician, he performed frequently with the violinist Jascha Heifetz and the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky.

Mr. Lateiner commissioned Elliott Carter’s Piano Concerto, whose premiere he gave in 1967 with the Boston Symphony, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf. He also gave the premiere of Roger Sessions’s Third Piano Sonata, composed in 1965.

Jacob Lateiner was born in Havana in 1928 to Jewish parents who had come from Poland. A gifted pianist as a child, he was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia when he was about 12; his principal teacher there was Isabelle Vengerova.

In 1944, at 16, the young Mr. Lateiner made his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra, performing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. In 1948, he made his New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall in a program of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Berg and Prokofieff.

Reviewing the recital in The New York Times, Olin Downes called it “astonishing,” going on to praise Mr. Lateiner’s “maturity of technique and musicianship.”

After three years’ Army service in the early 1950s, Mr. Lateiner made his New York Philharmonic debut in 1954, performing Prokofieff’s Third Piano Concerto under the baton of Franco Autori.

Among Mr. Lateiner’s recordings, a series he made for RCA Victor in the 1960s is especially esteemed by critics and collectors. They include Beethoven’s Piano Trio Opus 1, No. 1, with Heifetz and Piatigorsky, which received a Grammy Award in 1965; Mr. Carter’s Piano Concerto, with Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony; and the Brahms C Minor Piano Quartet, with Heifetz, Piatigorsky and the violist Sanford Schonbach.

Mr. Lateiner’s brother, the violinist Isidore Lateiner, died in 2005. Information on other survivors could not be confirmed.

In 2000, Mr. Lateiner was the subject of a festschrift, “Pianist, Scholar, Connoisseur: Essays in Honor of Jacob Lateiner,”edited by the pianist Bruce Brubaker - a former pupil of his - and Jane Gottlieb.

Pianists in my home state of Alabama may recall the name of Lateiner's teacher Isabelle Vengerova, as she was also the teacher of beloved pedagogue Roy McAllister, who studied with her at the Curtis Institute of Music.

From the Organ Loft

2010-12-13T10:40:00.000-05:00

Many of my students find it hard to believe that organists have to play notes with their feet. So, here goes. For the more knowledgeable among you, we can all stand to hear the Widor Toccata played so well, in a video so well produced.

Frederick Hohman plays the popular Toccata from the Fifth Organ Symphony in F, Op 42 #1, by Charles-Marie Widor on the Schantz pipe organ at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, New Jersey USA

This performance of Widor's Toccata from the Fifth Organ Symphony is found on the CD recording from PRO ORGANO entitled "A Couple of French Fifths" - Pro Organo CD 7021. This recording contains the complete Widor's Fifth Symphony as well as the complete Fifth Organ Symphony of Louis Vierne. To access details, link to http://www.zarex.com/bin and enter 7021 in the Search Box.

The complete 30-minute Midnight Pipes video is also available from http://www.zarex.com.bin . To access details on this video, enter 9018 in the Search Box.

The organ at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart was originally built and installed in the 1950s by the Schantz Organ Company of Orrville, Ohio http://www.schantzorgan.com/ . In 1989, renovations were made, which included a new 4-manual console located in the Chancel of the Cathedral, which is seen in this video. Frederick Hohman was engaged as a featured organist in the dedication program of this organ in 1990, when he appeared with orchestra in Jongen's Symphonie Concertante before a capacity audience.

Frederick Hohman's website is: http://www.frederickhohman.net

(Information shamelessly cribbed from the video description at YouTube, but since I left the sales links and web links intact, surely they won't mind.)

Also from the same Pro Organo YouTube page, we meet the Japanese-Korean concert organist, and First Prize Winner of the prestigious 20th Grand Prix de Chartres organ competition in France, Dong-ill Shin. This video was made on the occasion of Mr. Shin's recording sessions for his debut CD on the Pro Organo label. In this video, we hear Mr. Shin playing the Prelude and Fugue on BACH by Franz Liszt, and the artist tells us about his background and training in France and in America. The organ played in his new CD and in this video is the Rildia Bee O'Bryan Cliburn organ, given by the family of the famed pianist Van Cliburn, built by Casavant of Canada. This pipe organ is the largest French-romantic styled pipe organ in the United States, and is known nationally as one of the finest pipe organs of the world.

And for an encore, something so tacky it's fabulous:

More enlightening (as well as entertaining) organ videos may be seen at their YouTube channel, which may be found here. Pro Organo's website (where one may order CDs, etc.) may be found here.

Florence Foster Jenkins - the Carnegie Hall Program!

2010-12-12T08:39:00.001-05:00

A little sleuthing on the Internet can give us some of the most interesting things.

All I can say is - oh, to have been there.

Lady Florence (as she preferred to be called) in her younger years.
Us record collectors lovingly call her Flofojen.

Pictured below is what I believe to be the first commercial issue of the Florence Foster Jenkins recordings, a 10-inch LP containing only the Jenkins tracks. It was later released on a 12-inch LP, deleting "Serenata mexicana" and including the "Jenny Williams and Thomas Burns" Faust recordings on the reverse. There is also a two-45 rpm record set of the same material, which I own, but can't get my hands on at the moment. She made her recordings at Melotone Studios in New York City, which was a label that made "vanity" recordings. In other words, you paid, you recorded, you got boxes of records. At least one of these (the Magic Flute aria) was sold commercially (and actually reviewed in record magazines!), but these were mostly made available to friends and admirers.

And even though I have shown it elsewhere, here is a copy of one of the Melotone 78 rpm records. I am proud to own a complete set of the known extant recordings, and this one is by far the most scarce.

This DVD pictured on the left, produced by Donald Collup, is a highly recommended documentary of the life and times of Lady Florence. It is beautifully and sensitively done, and gives the viewer a great deal of insight as to what drove her to perform. The old BMG (formerly RCA Victor) CD "The Glory (???) Of the Human Voice" is the standard old collection of Flofojen chestnuts, it is readily available, but does not include the "Valse caressante" featured on the Lennick "Murder on the High C's" on Naxos, or Gregor Benko's "The Muse Surmounted" on Homophone/VAI. "The Muse Surmounted" is reviewed in depth on this blog, and that post may be read here. I am probably not exaggerating when I say that my sense of humor, and my love of music, has been influenced by Florence Foster Jenkins, as I had a vinyl LP copy of her Victor album since my teenage years, and modeled a stage persona from my college years, "Tessie Tura", after her. It's hard to deny that through the cacophony, the lack of rhythm, and frankly the lack of much else that marks even mediocre singing ability, that there was no lack of joy in her singing,

Holiday Gift Guide for the Procrastinator

2010-12-12T02:12:00.010-05:00

Although this CD has been out for some time now, I am amazed at how many of my musical friends are unaware of its existence. Become aware, dear readers:

The Muse Surmounted: Florence Foster Jenkins and Eleven of Her Rivals
Homophone 1001, originally released November 2004
Produced by Gregor Benko
Transfers by Ward Marston

“Homophone” was originally the name of a record label inaugurated in 1905, its first release being a disc by the Wagnerian tenor Ernest van Dyck. At this time Van Dyck was far past his prime, and Gregor Benko continues this tradition (the singers, not Benko; he is still churning out material!) with his new incarnation of the Homophone name.

“The Muse Surmounted”, Homophone’s first offering, is an uproariously funny excursion into what I would label “mal canto”. Each singer in this collection set her (in one case, his) own substandard for vocal art, and each one is presented in transfers that allow the holes in one’s technique to shine through. Brightly.

The disc opens with an “overture” of sorts, a “Carmen” potpourri by the original Homophone Orchestra. If you like your Bizet with slap-tongued baritone saxophones and your Toreadors to boast to a fox-trot beat, this one’s for you.

Next in line is a certain Rosalina Mello, in a “fado portugues” that is rendered in a tone reminiscent of a cat in heat. She also approaches several high A’s in this piece with a long-discarded vocal technique known as “portamentissimo”. Better put Warm-and-Fuzzy outside before giving Mme. Mello a listen.

Next we encounter Alice Gerstl Duschak, a long-time teacher at Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory. Benko’s (excellent, I might add) program notes state that she was Jessye Norman’s teacher while Norman was at Peabody, and I might add that Gerstl Duschak’s voice, as represented here, had no sideways.

The name Betty-Jo Schramm was hilarious enough for me – before hearing the track, I could picture her in pigtail and poodle skirt. According to Benko, she was a pioneer in the early-music movement, singing the music a half-tone lower than we normally hear it today. However, she failed to cue the orchestra in on her innovation.

Tryphosa Bates-Batcheller, another favorite of the producer, cut her precious few discs at the same Melotone studio where her more famous predecessor, Florence Foster Jenkins, sought to perpetuate her art. And what an art it is. She is represented with a Meyer-Helmund song and an American folk song. Edith Helena at 81 sang better than this.

My favorite – at least for now – is Natalia de Andrade, a most interesting character, who imposes upon the role of Manon a rather distinctive tritone tremolo reminiscent of the dearly departed Mrs. Elva Miller. It takes a life of its own, creating a somewhat minimalist rhythmic shift and will cause you to wonder what Philip Glass would have written for this voice.

Olive Middleton, beloved diva assoluta of the La Puma Opera Workshop, is represented with her acclaimed “Miserere” from “Trovatore”, her alleged high C ringing rather clearly through the speakers.

A lovely surprise was the discovery of Norma-Jean Erdmann-Chadbourne, who is in fact the “Jenny Williams” of the Victor “Faust Travesty”. If you thought her final trio from Faust (sung as a duet) with her partner “Thomas Burns” (actually Ellis Chadbourne, listed here as Thomas Garcia – he had to change his name a lot, as he was always running into trouble because of what he was teaching his young students) was simply the living end of opera finales, just you wait until you hear their Tomb Scene from Aida. Benko says that there are more operatic gems recorded by this couple, and hopefully there will be a Muse II.

A certain Sylvia Sawyer, who evidently actually filled in a few mezzo-soprano roles on some early-fifties opera LPs, offers an Aida excerpt (Amneris) that, although shows no gross lapses of pitch, taste, or intonation, is a precious textbook example of bland mediocrity. One wonders if the Capitol label thought to check the Yellow Pages under “mezzo-sopranos” when casting for this Aida album, as there had to be another mezzo out there somewhere. One with nuance.

From the lamented Remington label comes the “Tosca from Hell”, an infamous performance by Vassilka Petrova.

Madame Mari Lyn (although the program notes claim that she was a woman, and a widow to boot, I swear I think this person was a drag queen!) gives her special vocal rendition of “Una voce poco fa” with an in-depth analytical lecture on the “overcadenzorizing” of this aria. The video below (available from Donald Collup) contains a sample of the tumultuous talents of Madame Lyn, not to be confused with Loretta Lynn. By any means.

By far the most disturbing performance on the disc is a 1980 performance by socialite and trophy-wife Sari Bunchuk Wontner (the “most real” of any so-called Real Housewives, about thirty years before her time), who gave staged performances of “Traviata” in her home – with full casts and orchestra. (One hell of a Tupperware party, don’t you think?) Of course, art imitates life, and she was Violetta. Secretly taped from a live performance (presumably by a “former friend”, I can imagine an 80s NeNe Leakes with a cassette Walkman), this first-act scene defies description. She is often several beats ahead of or behind the orchestra, she may be as much as a third off of the key in either direction, and the whole affair sounds as if she had a flask of tequila hidden behind each prop. A year after this performance, she fell overboard from her yacht. Perhaps she was rehearsing for a future Tosca.

Surely the best-known name included is that of Florence Foster Jenkins, arguably the most famous of the daffier divas. The track, a Cosme McMoon decomposition entitled “Valse Caressante”, is not included in the Victor reissue of dear Flofojen’s legendary Melotone discs; in fact it is not included in the Jenkins discography in the magazine “The Record Collector”. (The story among record collectors is that there are only four extant copies of this disc, and guess who has one!) This rather long affair seems to find the diva, the pianist, and the flautist all on a bad day, with the result being a performance that is cheaper than a home perm and twice as curly on your hair.

Since these are rarer than Stradivarius violins,
can I name this copy after me?

The last track is a recording of Jenkins’ accompanist, Cosme McMoon, reminiscing about his musical life with our dear Flofojen. Benko also clears the air, after careful research, about the “Cosme McMoon was actually Edwin McArthur” rumor. Buy the CD to find the answer.

The program notes alone are worth the price of the CD. Benko has carefully researched these singers, often waiting years for leads to information. In fact, a picture of Natalia de Andrade arrived after the disc went to press, and it is posted below, as taken from the Homophone website. Our poor Manon looks like trailer trash showing up for a Jerry Springer taping.

Natalia de Andrade

Another picture of interest to many will be the penultimate photo – a picture of Cosme McMoon, radiant in a 70s combover, flanked by ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER and Bobby Birdsong at the 1974 Mr. Universe Contest, during the time he (McMoon) had given up his music career and was working as a desk clerk in a bath house.

This should be the Party Album of the 21^st Century, as I cannot imagine anyone “bettering” what Benko has given us, in expert audio restorations by the legendary Ward Marston.

VAI will be distributing the disc, and more information, pictures, and audio clips can be found here. Anyone who appreciates the deservedly obscure will NOT be disappointed with this disc.

Arthur Rubinstein Master Class - Chopin Ballade in G minor, op. 23

2010-12-12T01:22:00.002-05:00

Let us learn from the Master. Although blind - he has to hunch over to see the keyboard - and unable to demonstrate certain passages, he still has much to offer this young (unidentified) pianist.

And as the Master played it, the April 29, 1959 studio recording:

Sorry, but I could NOT resist this picture:

A Little Snack - New from the Anderson and Roe Piano Duo

2010-12-09T16:41:00.005-05:00

They never cease to amaze me.

Here they are, in arrangement by Greg Anderson of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean".

And yes, it works.

You can find their website here, or use the search at the bottom of the page to find more pages about them on this blog.

A rhythmic "Revolution". (Or is it "arhythmic revolution?)

2010-12-09T11:00:00.003-05:00

Here we have a video of a pianist by the name of Bill Kelly playing the Chopin Etude in C Minor, op. 10 no. 12, (known as the "Revolutionary Etude" in case you either have lived in a cave all your life, or believe as these people do that the Lester Piano outplays Steinways, Boesendorfers, and whatever else you've got.)

This from the description to the video on YouTube:

Bill Kelly is playing a 6 feet 2 inch Lester Parlor Grand Piano that has been completely restored by Tommy L. Wilson, RPT & Terry L. Wilson in Dyersburg, Tennessee. It took over five months to restore this wonderful masterpiece. As you can tell it sounds wonderful. Bill Kelly who is playing the piano has performed at Carnegie Hall and has recorded two CDs. Mr. Kelly claims that this Lester Grand piano plays better than any piano he has ever played in over twenty years including new Knabe Grand Piano, Baldwin, Samick, even several nine foot Steinways and Bosendorfers.

Lester pianos have long been quality instruments and continue to be the choice among many of todays pianists. For example, Billy Joel started his career by playing on a Lester Piano. Additionally, many renowned music conservatories such as the New England Conservatory of Boston and the Syracuse University Broad Street Conservatory in Philadelphia have been influenced by the quality and beauty of the Lester Piano. The sweetness tone (sic) of the Lester Grand piano sounded so remarkable that it became of the official piano (sic) of The Philadelphia Orchestra.

Now, my friends, enjoy the video. Note the sweetness tone:

I just have one question. When the right hand skipped beats and came in early, where did the accompanying left-hand sixteenth notes go? (Hey, it IS a legitimate question.)

Okay, two questions. In the past twenty years, what pianos have served as comparison to Mr. Kelly? Twenty-year-old Baldwin Hamiltons that have been stored in a barn, perhaps?

I will admit that I have played one restored Lester piano in my life. The local antique auction offered one, with a built-in player attachment (working), with a tall matching cabinet filled with piano rolls. I recall being invited by the auction dealer to come by and try it out - I showed up in overalls and a plaid shirt (I live in Alabama, ya know), driving my Ford Ranger, and someone in the warehouse took me to the piano. I took it through the paces with a little Clair de lune, Maple Leaf Rag, a couple of Chopin Nocturnes, and even the opening of the A flat Polonaise. Poor man was a little surprised that hicks like me could play like that. It played quite well for an old piano, and was reasonably in tune.

For a collector of player-pianos, it would have been a great deal - especially with the matching cabinet. Unfortunately, the meticulous restoration was marred by the choice of finish - both pieces were "antiqued" in red with faux goldleaf. NOT red like the piano pictured above, but that thick opaque layered stuff people were ruining furniture with back in the '70s. Groovy.

Poulenc and Fevrier play the Poulenc Double Concerto

2010-12-08T09:42:00.001-05:00

Poulenc Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestras with Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), Jacques Février (1900-1979) and Orchestra National de la RTF conducted by Georges Prêtre (b.1924). (Poulenc and Fevrier gave the first performance of this delightful work.)

First movement:

Second movement:

Third movement:

I realize others have played this with more precision (Labeque sisters, anyone?) but what joy we hear here! This piece is one of my favorites, and always perks me up when I am depressed.

And as an encore: another performance of a work by its creators - Jean-Pierre Rampal (1922-2000) and Francis Poulenc play the second movement of the sublime Flute Sonata. (According to the person who posted the video, only the second movement was performed at this concert, so I presume this is the only movement captured by these two on video. I would love to be proven wrong.