Ignaz Friedman: Romantic Master Pianist
by Allan Evans
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Book Summary Information
Author: Allan EvansEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-06-29
ISBN: 0253353106
Number of pages: 402
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Book Reviews of Ignaz Friedman: Romantic Master Pianist
Book Review: A "Must Read" for any serious lover of great piano playing!
Summary: 5 Stars
I cannot say how long I have waited for Mr. Evans book on Ignaz Friedman. Not only did it not dissapoint but I was literally overwhelmed by the years of painstaking work which clearly went into this book. Travelling literally over the globe as he discovered more and more human "connections" with Friedman and his family or musical disciples, the book is filled with enormous detail both about his family, ethnic background etc., not to mention a tremendous amount of information as to Friedman's musical style and even his teaching philosophy. It was especially interesting to learn more about his marvelously gifted and sadly all too unknown student Ignaz Tiegerman (be sure to purchase a copy of the excellent CD of Tiegerman's playing on ARBITER records), who as a contemporary of Horowitz, was considered the Russian pianist's equal when they were both young pianists performing in Europe.
The music world is indeed a small place. When I was teaching in Switzerland at the Zuerich Musikkonservatorium, a young boy came into my piano class whose father was Egyptian. Although the man was not a pianist, he loved music passionately and after talking one day, I discovered that his sister many years earlier was a pupil in Cairo of Tiegerman. Hanna spoke quite a bit about him to me.
My own first contact with Friedman's art came in my piano lessons years earlier at Juilliard, while a student of the great pedagogue Sascha Gorodnitzki. As I played Chopin Etudes to him at a lesson, we began discussing his teacher Josef Lhevinne whose own recordings of the Op. 25/6 Etude in thirds and Op. 25/10 Etude in Octaves among others were legendary and so inspirational to me. Imagine my surprise when expecting Mr. "G" to agree about the greatness of Lhevinne's performances (which he of course had the privilege of hearing many times live) but instead he spoke about Friedman's Etudes and Mazurkas played in Carnegie Hall and describing how those concerts had been the most memorable performances he knew of those works!
Immediately I rushed over to the Performing Arts Division of the New York Public Library and filling out my cards requesting the 78 recordings to be played by remote playback booths in the research carrels. When I first heard the Revolutionary Etude, I thought I had literally died and gone to heaven, pianistically speaking! A pupil of Friedman aptly describes these performances in Evan's book better than I could. The Mazurkas however in Friedman's hands were a the greatest revelation to me. Never had I heard these played so compellingly as they truly were meant to be played with unusually strong and powerfully rhythmic gestures and dynamics far beyond anything I had thought possible (nor up to that point musically appropriate0. Read Eigeldinger's excellent book on "Chopin as Teacher and Pianist". There the first-person recollections of Chopin's playing of Mazurkas and other works by his pupils and renowned musicians such as Carl Reinecke confirm this tradition of specifically how Chopin played his music. The discussion of Chopin's playing was the same tradition which Friedman clearly followed and passed on to the next generation. It is only sad for me when people now hear Friedman's playing and label it "mannered", or "anachronistic" Such short-sighted comments are purely ignorance on the part of those who fail to understand the earlier traditions of playing that came before our time.
This book is a revelation on many levels. At one point, Evans shares how Tiegerman treated the opening D-flat arpeggio which opens as a transition from the first into the second section of Chopin's Fantasy-Impromptu, Op. 66. Asking his pupils to emphasize the low opening D-flat for musical emphasis and continuity into the beautiful melodic theme which follows, Tiegerman quoted Leschetitzky's term of "tonal rubato" for playing this passage. I have always instinctively played this passage myself with a deliberate prolongation of the bass note, slowly transitioning into the appropriate tempo before the entrance new melody in the right hand and yet I can't count how many times I have heard young pianists ignorantly plow through this transitional passage with no slackening in tempo simply because the composer didn't notate the score with a change of tempo here. Could that Chopin simply thought it unnecessary to indicate the "obvious" here. I have devoted many years of my professional career to studying and carefully re-evaluating the rubato and "pacing" of my phrasing and more and more, I realize that it is must in all cases be related to the harmonic implications of the particular phrase. I would perhaps modestly add one more word to Leschetitzky's phrase by coining it "harmonic tonal rubato".
Listen to recordings of Rachmaninoff playing Rachmaninoff or works by other composers. Today when one hears his playing or the early recordings of Hofmann or Paderewski, their interpretations seem excessive in terms of rubato and overall phrasing and dynamics. Yet can audiences have been wrong when these pianists were considered the greatest performing artists of their time? I think it is not a matter of just taste but rather a sign of the inevitable change in musical traditions that change interpretively generation to generation. We are fortunate to have recordings of these great artists and for that I am ever grateful. As a performing artist, these great musical traditions have permanently changed the way I play approach a score. Imagine what many people would think if they could hear actual gramophone recordings of Liszt or Chopin themselves? I am quite sure many in our contemporary audiences would find their playing interpretively inappropriate today as well.
I can not adequately thank Mr. Evans enough for finally making this labor of love available to all of us as well as his other many recordings both on the Arbiter label as well as the earlier (now out of print but excellent boxed LP set of the Complete Friedman recordings on Danacord). Thank goodness there continues to be people dedicated to the great artists of the past: Harold Schoenberg, Jon Samuels (executive producer of the excellent RCA reissues of William Kapell), Gregor Benko and the International Piano Achives at the University of Maryland, to name only a few. Great traditions are something we should not ignore or ridicule, but rather study and try to learn from. This newest biography of Ignaz Friedman by Allen Evans is a case in point. I cannot recommend this book more highly to anyone seriously interested in the rich musical and pianistic culture from the end of the 19th Century into the early decades of the 20th century. Bravo!
Summary of Ignaz Friedman: Romantic Master Pianist
Allan Evans's groundbreaking biography of Ignaz Friedman gives the reader the behind and the between of the life and career of this extraordinary pianist. Friedman's repertory emphasized the major works of Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms, but he was perhaps best known for his interpretation of the Chopin mazurkas, which by all accounts he played with the same rhythmic nuance as their composer. Evans examines Friedman's life as a cultured Jewish musician from Poland; his studies in Leipzig and Vienna; his marriage to Manya Schidlowsky?a Russian countess and relative of Tolstoy; and his performing career, teaching, and retirement in Australia.
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