The Wonders of Early Sound Recording

It is fascinating to consider how rapidly times change.

My PhD research is on the Russian-born pianist Arthur Friedheim (1859–1932), who in his youth studied with the two greatest pianists of the nineteenth century, Anton Rubinstein (1829–1894) and Franz Liszt (1811–1886). Friedheim went on to tour the world as a concert pianist for many decades.

Studying the life of an artist like Friedheim is somewhat mesmerising. He was born at a time when horses and buggies were the standard mode of transportation, and trains and steamships were only beginning to come into their own. By the end of Friedheim’s life, the world had changed. The great war had come and gone. There were now automobiles, aeroplanes, gramophones, pianos that could play themselves—radio! Friedheim could now be beamed over the air.

The lifetime of Friedheim’s son, Eric Friedheim, born in 1910 and living to 2002, saw America land on the moon, the rise of computers, the invention of the internet and even the dot-com bubble.

Unfortunately, as far as technology has come, it has yet to perfect the time machine. Or has it?

As a classical musician, we get used to the idea that the composers whom we study and whose music we enjoy so much tend to be long dead. Reading accounts of the performances of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Clara Schumann or Franz Liszt, we lament sorely that we will never get to hear their playing for ourselves. We accept the fact that the age of recording dawned much later, and the majestic triumphs of these artists remain consigned forever to the pages of history, like the fabled heroes of some Trojan war.

Studying the life of an artist like Friedheim, however, is a different experience.

Friedheim’s age was the age of recording.

It is just mind-boggling to me that so many of the artists whom Friedheim knew and performed with were recorded for posterity with the rapidly emerging technology.

Far from being long dead, the artists of Friedheim’s era seem to live on in these records. We can hear their art once more and study and learn from them in a way that was not possible in Friedheim’s youth. He had to uproot his life in Russia and travel, by horse and by train, to Germany to hear Liszt. Yet we today, separated by the infinity of time and space, can still hear Friedheim and his friends play and sing. The world of Arthur Friedheim comes to life through the magic of the talking machine.

In 1883, twenty-three-year-old Friedheim was just beginning his career, and looking for opportunities to perform. Thanks to the introduction of Liszt, Friedheim made the acquaintance of Ludwig Bösendorfer (1835–1919), the famous and well-connected piano builder in Vienna. Bösendorfer was all too happy to lend his pianos, and his company’s concert hall, the Bösendorfersaal (Bösendorfer Hall), to help launch the career of an up and coming young artist like Friedheim. Friedheim gave a series of solo recitals at the Bösendorfersaal in 1883 and 1884, and was summarily chastised by the stalwart Viennese press, who were as offended by Friedheim’s youthful impetuosity as a performer as much as his choice of repertoire and his long hair.

At Bösendorfersaal in mid-February 1884, Friedheim was given the opportunity to perform alongside a seasoned and well-established singer, no doubt at the suggestion of Bösendorfer, in an attempt to give Friedheim a leg up with Viennese audiences (the tradition of the support act apparently goes back a way). The singer was the German lyric tenor Gustav Walter (1834–1910). Walter, for some thirty years, had sung lead tenor roles at the Vienna Staatsoper, representing a broad range of composers from Mozart to Wagner. Later in his career, he focused his attention on lieder, and went on to teach at the Vienna Conservatory.

In February 1884, Friedheim played a selection of Chopin solos alongside Schubert lieder given by Walter. Though the Viennese critics, including Eduard Hanslick (1825–1904), Max Kalbeck (1850–1921) and Gustav Dömpke (1853–1923), lambasted the young Friedheim, they fawned over Walter’s masterful performances of Schubert’s lieder. He was clearly highly respected in the Viennese musical circles.

Miraculously, Walter also lived long enough to make recordings—at the age of 70, in October 1904, he stepped in front of the recording horn for the Gramophone Company in Vienna to sing Schubert's “Am Meer”:

Fast forward a few years to 1889, Friedheim’s career had taken off, he had married, and was now on his second expansive European tour, this time alongside the American-born soprano known as Nikita (1872–death unknown). Born Margaret Louise Putnam Nicholson, the talented singer was brought to Europe in 1887 to launch her career, and was soon taken up by the enterprising manager Moritz Strakosch (1825–1887), who had made his name through his “discovery” of Adelina Patti (1843–1919) some years earlier. Strakosch also “discovered” Margaret Nicholson, whom he promptly rechristened Mademoiselle Nikita, attached a fanciful backstory, and began marketing as a young prodigy in 1887. Though Strakosch died that same year, Nikita continued her career, propelled as much, it seems, by sensational publicity as by her talents as a singer.

In 1889, Friedheim and Nikita undertook a tour. Beginning in Lille, France on 10 November, at the "Salle de l'Hippodrome," they continued on to Leipzig, Dresden, Vienna, Prague, Jassy (Romania), and Helsingfors (Finland). By February, Nikita was performing in Moscow and St Petersburg, including for a concert for Czar Alexander III conducted by Anton Rubinstein (1829–1894). It is unclear whether Friedheim was involved in any of these Russian performances, as he is not mentioned in any of the press notices. It is an astonishing fact that some of the only surviving recordings of Nikita, made on Edison cylinder by Julius Block on 3 March 1890 (19 February 1890 O.S.) were captured during this very Russian tour. Hear Nikita singing in ecstatic style, a beautiful aria by Donizetti:

The complete collection of cylinders recorded by Julius Block in Russia in the 1890s can be heard on a CD made by Marston Records.

A different twist of fate and it might have been Friedheim accompanying Nikita on these recordings, but alas he was already back in Leipzig by 26 February to give a recital at the old Gewandhaus.

By 1912, Friedheim was at the zenith of his career. As a proud pupil of Franz Liszt, he had made his name playing Liszt’s works, and established himself as something of an authority on their performance. Thus, when the year 1911 rolled around, the centenary of Liszt’s birth, and concert organisations the world over began planning their Liszt celebration concerts, Friedheim found himself in high demand. These musical festivities continued into 1912, and Friedheim had the busiest season of his entire career, performing in at least forty concerts given in six months, in twenty-eight different cities in Germany and North America.

One of the works of Liszt that Friedheim had been playing most frequently on this tour, on both sides of the Atlantic, was Liszt’s fifth Transcendental Etude, known by the title Feux Follets (Will o’ the Wisp). Though Friedheim writes of playing the eleventh Transcendental Etude (Harmonies du Soir) for Liszt as early as 1882, the earliest mention of Friedheim playing Feux Follets was not until 1895, a decade after Liszt’s death. It is therefore not certain whether he studied this particular piece with Liszt. Friedheim was however present at a masterclass in Weimar, Germany on 24 August 1885, when the young Scottish pianist Frederick Lamond (1868–1948) played the work for Liszt.

Both Lamond and Friedheim made disc recordings of Feux Follets.

Friedheim’s recording was made for Columbia in New York on 7 January 1912, amidst his busy tours for the Liszt centenary year. This recording was made right at the peak of Friedheim’s career, when he was being celebrated by audiences and press everywhere.

Lamond’s recording was made a number of years later, in 1929. Thanks to the improvements in recording technology, Lamond’s recording is of much higher quality, the playback is clearer and has much greater dynamic range. Though there are some differences in interpretation, there is a noticeable kinship between the performances of Friedheim and Lamond. They take a similar tempo, with a similar sense of freedom with rhythm, and both play with an enviable lightness of touch in this incredibly difficult work. Most importantly, the spirit is the same. Both performers highlight the mischievous and effervescent character of the work, without drawing attention to the technical fireworks in the right hand. We hear the poetical drifting of the Will o’ the Wisp rather than the inexorable scurrying of chromatic double thirds and sixths.

Somehow even more incredible is the fact that we can hear Lamond’s own voice on record, recounting his first meeting with Liszt, including the introduction which was made by none other than Arthur Friedheim.

Early recordings are a truly wondrous resource for classical musicians. So many famous musicians and composers of the past are captured here, waiting for us to listen and explore. Thanks to the likes of YouTube, and the hard work of record collectors and technical experts who take the time to preserve these fragile documents in digital formats and make them publicly available, this incredible resource is more accessible than ever!