[HINT: Eventually, if you stick it out, we've even got a spot o' music!]
MONDAY EVENING UPDATE: The Brahms waltzes in their full four-handed glory (near the end of the post)
TUESDAY UPDATE: The CMS Fleisher tribute was absolutely swell in all sorts of ways, most hilariously for pianist Jonathan Biss's story of earning -- though through no fault of his own, really -- his old teacher's withering scorn at LF's 2007 Kennedy Center Honors event. When the recording is posted, it should turn up in the link for all the Chamber Music Society Heritage programs. LATEST WORD is that as of Friday, May 28, the Fleisher Heritage program can be accessed at this link.
Leon Fleisher (1928-2020)
We hear LF, age 28, play No. 1 in B and (at 0:47) No. 2 in E from Brahms's solo version of his delectable Op. 39 set of 16 four-hand-piano mini-waltzes, recorded in Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York City, in August 1956.
by Ken
Big-time apologies. The last four or five days have been a strange time for me, with closer to three days than two without Internet, phone, or e-mail access. Still, by later yesterday it should have been possible for me to get up, in more timely fashion, the intended reminder about the latest installment in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Musical Heritage series, devoted to Leon Fleisher -- again, tonight (Monday) at 7:30. If the timing is just right, you might still be able to register. Happily, even if you can't, we know now that all of CMS's Heritage programs can be accessed online.
Even I was surprised, when I went looking for the post that contained the CMS Musical Heritage link (which turned out to be from April 4, the day before the Pablo Casals tribute) and tried searching by "Leon Fleisher," to see how many SC posts that turned up. Mostly, of course, they pertain to the initial, physically unencumbered part of LF's career, when with his remarkable pianistic capabilities and his preternaturally early full-blown musical maturity, it seemed like he could do anything that can be done at a keyboard.
Pardon me for saying it again, but it still hits home for me that the recordings LF made with George Szell of the combined seven piano concertos of Beethoven and Brahms (with a fine assortment of others, like Schumann and Grieg, thrown in as a bonus) have for some six decades remained pretty much continuously available in the recorded-music medium-of-the-day, and through all those decades have remained part of the elite circle of best-ever recordings of some of the most-recorded works in the repertory.
WHO COULD HAVE IMAGINED THAT LF'S CAREER WAS
GOING TO TAKE A MARKEDLY DIFFERENT DIRECTION?
It was loss of control of that confounded right hand, of which there was a seeming epidemic around that time. And LF had to adapt, which he did with singular success, becoming not just a "left-hand pianist" but a key musical figure as conductor and educator and "artistic director" (for more than one important musical organization) as well as chamber musician and general musical presence -- what we might call an "influencer" for several generations of rising musicians, if the term had real meaning instead of being so utterly and hatefully corrupt
Of course Sony's "Complete Album Collection" box documenting that early portion of LF's career (and, come to think of it, his later performing career as well) --
remains eminently worth having if you stumble across an affordable copy. (The prices I'm seeing quoted online not only boggle my mind but leave my poor mind feeling unaccustomedly smug for having, for once, had the sense to grab the damned thing when it was released.) Otherwise, you can at least treat yourself to Sony's five-CD box with the complete Beethoven and Brahms concertos -- plus:
• the Mozart 25 that was the original LP disc-mate of the recording of Beethoven 4 (what a fascinating coupling: Mozart's grandest concerto and Beethoven's most intimate!), before the powers-that-be had the eternally good sense to have Fleisher and Szell expand the Beethoven concerto into a cycle, which however had the undesirable effect of orphaning the Mozart concerto.
• great fillers for the two Brahms concertos (also included in the two-CD set of just the Brahms concertos), from the two sides of a 1956 mono Brahms LP: the majestic Op. 24 Handel Variations (1861) and the infinitely treasurable Op. 39 set of 16 mini-waltzes (1865), from which we heard Nos. 1-2 at the top of this post.
UPDATE: The Brahms waltzes in their full four-handed glory
I mentioned in the original version of the post that Leon Fleisher's recording of the Brahms Op. 39 Waltzes is of the composer's own solo-piano version of music that was conceived for piano four hands. I was reminded while rooting around online that Brahms in fact offered his publisher three versions: in addition to the four-hand one, two solo arrangements, one simplified, the other not. (It was also pointed out by my source that, much to the composer's surprise, all three versions sold really, really well. I don't think we're surprised, though. Can you imagine anyone who heard, or heard about, or especially contributed two hands to a music-owning friend's pair, not wanting to own these splendiferous waltzes themselves?)
The point I'm trying to get to is that in my head this music always plays in the four-hand version, a format Brahms seems to have loved, and for which he wrote lovingly -- it seems to have struck him that with all those keys on the piano keyboard, too many go to waste when only two hands are applied to it. Remember that the Hungarian Dances were written for piano four hands, and written so ingeniously that they're more fun this way than in their various orchestral forms, entertaining though the latter are. In other words, it's the exact opposite of the case with Dvořák's clearly-Brahms-inspired (as Dvořák was in so many ways) Slavonic Dances, which are delightful enough in their four-hand-piano version but expand almost magically in the composer's own orchestrations.
In part, my love of the four-hand version of the Op. 39 Waltzes is a product of one of my unforgettable musical experiences: hearing the set played in tag-team fashion by a clutch of pianists from the faculty of the Yale School of Music -- a team of richly pedigreed performing artists shuttling onto and off the piano bench to play their exuberant hearts out.
Anyway, since I brought the whole thing up, I couldn't let this go without targeting the same waltzes we heard in their solo-piano versions for presentation in their full four-handed glory. So let's share a fond remembrance of those super-famous piano-playing Kontarsky brothers, Alfons (1932-2010) and Aloys (1931-2017).
BRAHMS: Waltzes (16), Op. 39: No. 1 in B; No. 2 in E
I'm pretty sure that's Alfons Kontarsky seated and Aloys standing, or crouching (or else it's the other way around), in the photo DG used for their famous LP of the Brahms Hungarian Dances. Here in Op. 39 are they maybe a little heavy on the downbeats in Waltz No. 1, with the lusciously thundering chords of the four-hand version? Or maybe the idea was that these are rustic waltzes?
[No. 2 at 0:50] Alfons and Aloys Kontarsky, four-handed piano. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin, 1980-81
FINALLY: A SNEAK PREVIEW OF WHAT I'M WORKING ON
Yup, it's yet another Brahms sidewise diversion. Here's an early Brahms piece (it actually predates at least the completion of the work, the monumental Op. 5 Sonata in F minor, which as we established last week, in the post "Arthur Rubinstein leads us on the next leg of our expedition through Brahms's First Piano Concerto," was such a crucial breakthrough for the 20-year-old composer) that on recent rehearing -- along with a slightly later Brahms solo-piano compositional effort, which we'll be listening to -- kind of set my head spinning.
BRAHMS: Solo-piano work that comes before Op. 5
Some kind of keyboard magician (don't you think?), piano. DG, recorded in the Beethovensaal, Hannover (Germany), March 1958
Coming soon! Really and truly, honestly! (Heck, I'm this close to being almost absolutely sure!)
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