Grieg, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and More!
In last month’s blog post, I shared some thoughts about how studying the life of the pianist Arthur Friedheim (1859–1932) has been rather mesmerising. Friedheim’s age was the age of recording, and it is miraculous to me that the art of so many of his friends and colleagues have transcended the passage of time through the wonders of sound recording.
An important perspective is to realise that Friedheim was nearly an exact contemporary of Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931), the great American inventor. I’ve recently been reading an excellent biography of Edison by Edmund Morris. The incredible genius of Edison is difficult to fathom. We all know about the light bulb. But did you know Edison executed a total of 1,093 U.S. patents in his lifetime? His interests were wide-ranging and eclectic, he developed new ideas in fields most of us have never heard of. I think the modern age and its die-hard faith in the inexorable progress of technology, owes a lot to the persistence and determination of Edison and his generation.
It’s hard to say which of Edison’s inventions might be the most important—light bulbs, motion pictures, the idea of an industrial research laboratory. His improvements to the fluoroscope are fundamental to the modern-day X-ray. But among Edison’s earliest and most enduring masterpieces was the Phonograph, one of the first successful methods of recording sound.
Though Edison himself was hard of hearing, of all his endeavours, the Phonograph remained closest to his heart, according to Edmund Morris. In the early days, in 1877, the device recorded on tinfoil, but moved quickly to wax, then from cylinder to disc, from acoustic to electric. Edison was certainly not the only individual involved in the rapid progression of the technology—and in fact stepped away from it to focus on other projects like electric lighting—but he continued to remain abreast of developments, overseeing its refinement and commercialisation through his Edison Records company for decades.
The early history of sound recording is told in exciting detail in The Fabulous Phonograph by Roland Gelatt, which is sadly no longer in print. The story of the technology is one of passion, dedication and cut-throat business manoeuvres, towards the quest for commercial dominance and “high fidelity”.
Like all technological arms-races, sound recording has left behind a bewildering array of standards and formats, as the industry moved from one break-through to the next. But the history of sound recording has also left behind something more—living testimony of the playing of some of history’s greatest composers and musicians.
Today, I wanted to share what is to me the most mind-blowing aspect of studying early sound recordings—just how many of history’s most famous composers left behind recordings. In my last blog post I mentioned how we take it as written that our favourite composers tend to all be long dead, never to be heard again. Yet so many of them made recordings. As a piano student, growing up, I was unaware that so many of my favourite composers made recordings—nobody ever told me—so here we are to share some miracles.
Today I’ll only be sharing sound recordings, but in a future blog post I’ll share some famous composers who recorded on reproducing piano rolls.
Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) is perhaps the earliest and most revered master on record—made in 1889 on an Edison cylinder. Unfortunately the technology was in such an early state that frustratingly little detail can be heard of his playing of his Hungarian Dance No.1. But still—it’s Brahms, on record!!!
Sadly it’s not music, but we can hear the voices of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) and Anton Rubinstein (1829–1894) talking on an Edison cylinder from 1890.
Just a decade later, technology had improved considerably. We can hear French composer-pianist Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944) playing her Air de Ballet Op. 30 with considerable charm and virtuosity in a recording made in 1901 for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company:
The Gramophone and Typewriter Company also made several recordings of Edvard Grieg (1843–1907), in 1903, including favourites from his Lyric Pieces: An den Frühling (To Spring) and Wedding Day at Troldhaugen.
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921), the Frenchman who is best remembered today for orchestral works like Carnival of the Animals and Danse Macabre, was in his day famous as a phenomenally gifted pianist and organist, as well as composer. He made a number of disc recordings. In 1904 he recorded an excerpt from the first movement of his Piano Concerto No.2 in G minor, played quite differently from how we tend to hear it today.
Even more incredibly, there is also 1914 silent film footage of Saint-Saëns playing a delightful but forgotten piece called Valse Mignonne—of which he also recorded a disc in 1919—Jack Gibbons on YouTube has cleverly combined the film and audio:
Perhaps the most famous French composer, Claude Debussy (1862–1918), is best known for his piano miniature Clair de Lune. It is well-known that Debussy recorded a number of reproducing piano rolls. Less well-known are his 1904 disc recordings made with the soprano Mary Garden (1874–1967), Debussy accompanying at the piano:
Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881–1945) is well-loved for his energetic and exciting music inspired by Hungarian folk traditions. He was also a virtuoso pianist who made a considerable number of recordings, of his own compositions and others. While pianists today like to think of Bartók’s music as unerringly rhythmic, usually requiring a strict tempo, his own recordings reveal a remarkable sense of flexibility and freedom:
Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953), much like Bartók, was a highly gifted pianist as well as composer. Also like Bartók, Prokofiev plays with a much greater rhythmic flexibility than we tend to expect today. His playing is subtle and poetic, and he is a master of varying moods: creating the mysterious as well as the energetic like few pianists before or since. Hear him playing his popular Suggestion Diablolique, and one of my favourites, the Visions Fugitives:
Here is Prokofiev playing his own very popular Piano Concerto No.3:
The American composer-pianist George Gershwin (1898–1937) is a favourite with everyone. I genuinely don’t why it’s not better known that Gershwin himself recorded his most famous work, Rhapsody in Blue, with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, the ensemble for whom the work was written, which features Ross Gorman, the very clarinettist who originally improvised the famous glissando at the beginning of the work—in 1924, the same year the work was premiered!
Another recording with the same ensemble was released three years later in higher quality thanks to improved technology:
It is amazing how many great composers were also marvellous pianists. Perhaps the greatest master of both the piano and timelessly enduring melodies, is Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943). It’s a fact that Franz Liszt died before recording was invented—a lamentable tragedy indeed—but I don’t think it’s celebrated enough that a master like Rachmaninoff made so many recordings. Rachmaninoff was not a pupil of Liszt, but he was the cousin of Alexander Siloti, one of Liszt’s favourite pupils, who no doubt discussed and shared Liszt’s teaching with Rachmaninoff. It’s worth noting that Adele aus der Ohe, another of Liszt’s favourite pupils, saw in Rachmaninoff a pianist of Lisztian descent. His technical attainments are fabled, he was an artist of incredible refinement and vision, who worked tirelessly at music all his life. It is well-known among pianists, I hope, that he recorded the first three of his famous Piano Concertos, plus the Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini. These works become more and more popular by the day, it seems, and here we have the composer, himself a matchless pianist on record playing them himself. In addition to these, and other of his own works, there is an enormous catalogue of Rachmaninoff playing works by other composers—Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, Tchaikovsky… Here are some highlights:
Rachmaninoff plays Saint-Saëns “The Swan” arranged by Alexander Siloti:
Rachmaninoff plays Schubert-Liszt "Ständchen" (Serenade):
One of my all-time favourite recordings is Rachmaninoff playing Schumann’s Carnaval:
But it should be required listening, for any pianist, to hear Rachmaninov play his own piano concertos. Rachmaninoff plays his Piano Concerto No.2:
Rachmaninoff plays his Piano Concerto No.3:
Happy listening!