Concerning Bolet, just listening to him in a 1974 Carnegie Hall recital playing Liszt transcriptions and other virtuoso fare on Idagio.
Almost super-human immaculate dexterity.
Almost super-human immaculate dexterity.
Classical Music for Aficionados
I would like to start a thread, similar to Orpheus’ jazz site, for lovers of classical music.
I will list some of my favorite recordings, CDs as well as LP’s. While good sound is not a prime requisite, it will be a consideration.
Classical music lovers please feel free to add to my lists.
Discussion of musical and recording issues will be welcome.
I’ll start with a list of CDs. Records to follow in a later post.
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique. Chesky — Royal Phil. Orch. Freccia, conductor.
Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Vanguard Classics — Vienna Festival Orch. Prohaska, conductor.
Prokofiev: Scythian Suite et. al. DG — Chicago Symphony Abbado, conductor.
Brahms: Symphony #1. Chesky — London Symph. Orch. Horenstein, conductor.
Stravinsky: L’Histoire du Soldat. HDTT — Ars Nova. Mandell, conductor.
Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances. Analogue Productions. — Dallas Symph Orch. Johanos, cond.
Respighi: Roman Festivals et. al. Chesky — Royal Phil. Orch. Freccia, conductor.
All of the above happen to be great sounding recordings, but, as I said, sonics is not a prerequisite.
I will list some of my favorite recordings, CDs as well as LP’s. While good sound is not a prime requisite, it will be a consideration.
Classical music lovers please feel free to add to my lists.
Discussion of musical and recording issues will be welcome.
I’ll start with a list of CDs. Records to follow in a later post.
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique. Chesky — Royal Phil. Orch. Freccia, conductor.
Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Vanguard Classics — Vienna Festival Orch. Prohaska, conductor.
Prokofiev: Scythian Suite et. al. DG — Chicago Symphony Abbado, conductor.
Brahms: Symphony #1. Chesky — London Symph. Orch. Horenstein, conductor.
Stravinsky: L’Histoire du Soldat. HDTT — Ars Nova. Mandell, conductor.
Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances. Analogue Productions. — Dallas Symph Orch. Johanos, cond.
Respighi: Roman Festivals et. al. Chesky — Royal Phil. Orch. Freccia, conductor.
All of the above happen to be great sounding recordings, but, as I said, sonics is not a prerequisite.
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Stephen Hough, first Liszt recital (not the Italian one), starts with Mephisto Waltz and continues with Tarantella. One wonders how anyone can move their fingers this fast, and yet also in a clean, precise, controlled and highly expressive fashion. If this is how Liszt himself played, no wonder he left his audiences slack-jawed. |
@rvpiano I have just read your discourse on Bolet and I also love that you enjoyed the Carnegie Hall performance. When you consider who his teachers were it's a who's who of giants from the late 19th century. We have Moritz Rosentahl probably the best of List's students because he didn't die young and he didn't forget the piano to write operas. His other teachers were no less exaulted was Josef Hoffman who's teacher was the great Anton Rubinstein , also Leopold Godowsky who tutored Bolet on Godowsky's finger twisting creations . Unfortunately Bolet did not get on well with the big recording companies because none of them at the time wanted the Liszt Piano Sonata and his Transcedental Etudes so he did not get any big recording contracts until that stupendous Carnegie Hall recital. Thankfully Decca grabbed him up and they gave him a blank canvas to record what he felt like so we got a lot of Liszt and other virtuoso fare. He was actually primed to do some of Godowsky's Studies on the Chopin Etudes and I was there in Glasgow one day when he was giving a lecture on Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto and he had three students who were also taking a masterclass and being recorded by the BBC. When he was finished giving the masterclass both audience and orchestra gave him a standing ovation and quite buoyed by it he came back on and gave us an encore and it was one of the Godowsky Chopin etudes and it was two separate etudes at the one time and I still don't know how he did it. I was trying how to work out how it was possible because there skips and playing through the hands I just could not believe it and when he finished he gave a delighted bow and that was the last time I saw him. Yes Mr Bolet was a very special link to another age. |
Leopold Godowsky
It is during these early years of the 1930s that Bolet had some sessions with the legendary pianist Leopold Godowsky, going up to New York City for lessons. JB’s teacher at Curtis, David Saperton was Godowsky’s son-in-law and had arranged the connection. (Godowsky resided in the luxurious Ansonia Hotel on the Upper West Side, at 2109 Broadway, between West 73rd and 74th Streets, but moved into an apartment with his daughter Dagmar on Riverside Drive overlooking the Hudson River after his wife Frieda’s death in December 1933.) Bolet would practise some of Godowsky’s fiendishly difficult music (few other of his contemporaries were up to the task) and then play it to the composer.
‘Jorge’s scores of these pieces bore Godowsky’s markings in red crayon—the daunting “Passacaglia,” based on themes from Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphony; the “Fledermaus” and “Kunstlerleben” symphonic metamorphoses; the “Java Suite”; the Sonata in E minor; pieces from the “Triakontameron.” ’ [Albert McGrigor]
Bolet listed these lessons for 1932-3 in a submission to Grove's Dictionary; but they do not seem to have been systematic lessons. Gregor Benko has said, 'I remember a party at Sidney Foster’s house when he, Bolet and Abbey Simon reminisced about Leopold Godowsky, who apparently used sarcasm and insults with students..., and it left an indelible impression on these great artists, who had all played for him and suffered abuse.' Godowsky's biographer, Jeremy Nicholas, states: ‘Occasionally, Saperton and Bolet would go to New York and visit Godowsky, and Bolet would play Godowsky to Godowsky, as it were, and get advice from him. He said that in that sense, yes, he had studied with Godowsky. Of course he also, in the same way, had advice from (and played for) Hofmann as he was head of piano at Curtis. But his main teacher was Saperton, though Bolet told me the greatest purely musical influence was the French musician Marcel Tabuteau, first oboe with the Philadelphia Orchestra – the greatest musical mind I have ever known.’ Who was Godowsky?more here, including pictures https://jorge-bolet.webs.com/1930s |
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