leopold godowsay [j...chopin-godowsky: etude, op. 10, no. 6 for the left hand alone (4:11)—robert...
TRANSCRIPT
LEOPOLD GODOWSAY [J S LOOO
plano Recital |
+
NO DORIS PINES, PIA
Produced by Robert Commagere
STEREO GS 1000
Piano Music of Leopold Godowsky
SIDE ONE
1. RAMEAU-GODOWSKY: Renaissance
Tambourin (3:12)—Carl Fischer, Inc.
_ GODOWSKY: Wienerisch (2:46)—Carl Fischer, Inc. NO
DORIS PINES, piano
SIDE TWO
32. GODOWSKY: Miniatures for Piano, Four Hands, Humoresque
with Linda Friedman (1:48)—Carl Fischer, Inc. 2. GODOWSKY: Java Suite
4. CHOPIN-GODOWSKY: Etude, Op. 10, No. 6 for the Left
Hand Alone (4:11)—Robert Lienau Musikverlag
5. CHOPIN-GODOWSKY: Badinage (1:37)—Robert Lienau Musikverlag 3. GODOWSKY: Java Suite
6. STRAUSS-GODOWSKY: Die Fledermaus (9:50)—
Robert Lienau Musikverlag
1. GODOWSKY: Sonata in E Minor
First Movement—Allegro (15:34)
Robert Lienau Musikverlag
Gamelan (2:56)—Carl Fischer, Inc.
Chattering Monkeys (2:00)—
Carl Fischer, Inc.
RELEASED TO HONOR THE CENTENARY OF A GREAT MUSICIAN
O lapidary ever practiced his craft with more finesse
than did Leopold Godowsky the art of music. With
ik ls fastidious precision Godowsky set to paper a great
Als 4 ‘I rq series of original works, transcriptions and paraphrases.
penn fA To look at them is to be hypnotized by their
: complex perfection; to hear them is to experience
romantic pianism at its outer limits. These works abound in linear writing of a sort equalled, perhaps,
only by Busoni or Sorabji. One looks back to Mozart and still
further to Bach for lines so consistently directed and voices so
carefully balanced. This music is real music—without any filler, any
excess. All its parts, so finely detailed, belong to the whole as
threads to a masterpiece of tapestry. Omit just one and an integral
part of the design is lost. Yet, despite the contrapuntal celebration
of Godowsky’s music, the piano never loses its identity. The tone
and mood of every Godowsky piece are grounded in an ambience of pianistic timbre, governed by a marriage of touch and pedal to a
degree almost loftily idealistic, and colored by a prismatic harmonic
imagination so sophisticated as to have escaped notice by all save
the most musically discerning. Because of their Olympian demands upon performers, Godowsky’s
works seldom appear in public recitals. The composer himself had
reservations about performing them before concert audiences though,
when he did, the results were sensational. His technique—finished,
polished as no other—encompassed every diabolical polyphonic
trap and with consummate ease made sparkle every jewel-like facet.
But Godowsky played even better at home before small groups of
colleagues and admirers. There he transcended himself, emerging
legendarily (in Harold Schonberg’s words) as “‘the ultimate phenome-
non. To James Huneker he was ‘‘the superman of piano playing.”
And Josef Hofmann told Abram Chasins, after an extraordinary
evening at Godowsky’s, ‘Never forget what you heard tonight;
never lose the memory of that sound. There’s nothing like it in this world .. .”’ Ferruccio Busoni, Rudolph Ganz, Mark Hambourg,
Vladimir de Pachmann and Moriz Rosenthal numbered among those
professionals who regarded Godowsky with respect bordering on
awe. But Godowsky did not compose as he did merely to astound.
His purposes were far more serious. Godowsky believed in the piano. He had faith that its expressive
and technical boundaries might be explored and extended beyond the horizons known to his 19th century forebears. Around the turn
of the century he unveiled his then-new transformations of the
Chopin Etudes—to the amazed delight of many and to the sheer horror of a few who clung to Chopin’s originals as to the Holy
Grail itself. These latter missed the point; highly creative composi-
tions can be built quite justifiably on other composers’ works,
themes or ideas if to do so adds to our perception of the originals
and if additional possibilities and implications are revealed. Godowsky turned to Chopin’s Etudes because they were “universally ac-
knowledged to be the highest attainment in the realm of beautiful
Noll ORT
pianoforte music combined with indispensible mechanical and technical usefulness” and because he needed “their solid and invulnerable foundation, for the purpose of furthering the art of pianoforte playing.”” Thus Godowsky did for Chopin what Busoni
did for Bach—during almost the same period—and the legacy of the piano grew still richer.
This record is a tribute to Godowsky’s fascinating output of
works both large and small. Its opening selection, Tambourin, comes from a set of “Free Transcriptions of Old Masterpieces” published collectively in 1906 as Renaissance. Rameau’s sturdy
little piece with its heavily emphasized downbeats emerges here
rather jauntily and in altogether more lightweight rhythmic garb.
Godowsky has shifted the recurrent low Es to beat two, inter-
mingled the tune and accompaniment patterns and connected every-
thing by a thin web of chromatic passing tones. Wienerisch is the 22nd of ‘‘24 Tone-fantasies in Three-quarter
Time” called Walzermasken (published in 1912, with a dedication to Dr. Wilhelm Stekel!) Here one finds all the charm of late romantic
salon music: whimsical up-and-down phrases, lavendar chord progres-
sions, supple figurations and the faint fragrance of sachet.
The little Humoresque belongs to a six-volume set of 46 Miniatures for piano four-hands which Godowsky composed in
1917 and revised in 1934. The upper part spans only five notes and was meant for a beginner to play; the lower, for the teacher, accompanies the simple melody with hushed chordal eighths and
sixteenths. Godowsky wrote that the beginner should be able “‘to start the art of piano playing with music as good and inspirational,
as aesthetic and character-building, as the music we hear at serious
public concerts” and that his aim was “‘to interest while I instruct; to educate while I entertain.”
The two Etudes, among the most marvelous and clever of Godowsky’s pieces, are found in the tremendous five-volume collec-
tion of 53 Studies on the Etudes of Chopin (published as a unit in 1914). The Etude in e-flat minor, op. 10, no. 6 sings forth to new
advantage in its guise for left hand alone. Godowsky has lavished
great care in creating a particularly beautiful garland of swirling thirty-second notes to bedeck Chopin’s doleful melody —with ravish- ing effect. Godowsky’s famous combination of the “Black Key”
and ‘Butterfly’ Etudes (op. 10 no. 5 and op. 25 no. 9 respectively) “was not intended,” he wrote, “‘as a virtuoso trick: the idea came...
as a musical ‘Espieglerie,’ as a polyphonic ‘Badinage’.”’ In his search for clarity he added, ‘“‘the whole study must sound light, graceful
and waggish!”’ The Fledermaus-Paraphrase, which dates from 1912, joins com-
pany with Godowsky’s other fantastic waltz transmutations (Wein,
Weib und Gesang, Kunsterleben and Schatzwalzer) under the awe- some genus ‘Symphonic Metamorphoses.” There a vast concept of the keyboard is exploited ingeniously, sumptuously, heartily —while
the listener is left gasping. In the realm of keyboard settings of
dance music these pieces have no peer.
Cover photos of Miss Pines by Robert Commagere/Genesis Records, Inc./225 Santa Monica Blvd./Santa Monica, California 90401
The first movement from the vast five-emovement Sonata in e
minor (1911) shows Godowsky’s masterful handling of a large traditional form. Broadly paced and rather tranquil, the movement
seems deeply felt (it bears the dedication, “to my dear wife’) and
almost a private matter of emotions and feelings. Its counterpoint
and polyrhythms serve the musical ideas with great subtlety, never
obtruding, ever aiding the unremitting forward flow. The Java Suite, twelve pieces arranged as four groups of three,
is part of a large project titled Phonoramas, subtitled “Tonal
Journeys for the Pianoforte.” It saw publication in 1925 and won widespread notoriety at once for its unabashed exoticism. Gamelan
evokes the sound and atmosphere of Java’s indigenous percussion orchestra—‘‘weird, spectral, bewitching.”’ The music begins languidly, becomes more agitated, rises to a clangorous climax and drifts away on the scented air. Chattering Monkeys on the Sacred Lake of Wendit is a scene of musical humor and animation. Godowsky
described it, ““On every side are jabbering monkeys. . . jumping from tree to tree, running up and down the trunks and branches, while
others, nearer the ground, are springing on and off the roofs of the
small hotel and the bath houses, snatching bananas from the visitors.” —FRANK COOPER
Professor of Piano, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana
MEBRGORIS PINES, who is a New Yorker, studied at the ® Julliard School with Ernest Hutcheson, After Hutche-
son’s death, she continued her studies with Clarence
Adler who wasa life-long friend of Leopold Godowsky. ™@ Miss Pines has played many recitals in the eastern
United States and Canada and won a standing ovation at her Vienna recital in the Brahmsaal where her program included
the Chopin B Flat Minor Sonata, the Schumann Carnaval and Pro-
kofiev’s Seventh Sonata. On Long Island, Miss Pines played the Liszt
E Flat Concerto with the Great Neck Symphony and, three years ago,
the Benjamin Britten Concerto with the Chautauqua Symphony.
Miss Pines is also a composer, and Leopold Stokowski and the NBC
Symphony performed her early work, The Wind, written when she
was nine. She later studied composition under Vittorio Giannini and Frederick Jacoby, and her works include fugues for piano, string quartets and orchestral works. Of her all-Godowsky recital, given in
honor of Clarence Adler, Robert Sherman of the New York Times writes ‘‘All of this music is tremendously complex, with overlays of voices and dovetailing contrapuntal figurations. Miss Pines sailed
through it in the best possible way: making it sound easy. Her
playing had dash and assurance, not to mention remarkable accuracy;
she produced a firm, fluid tone; she kept the thematic lines clear and the rhythms flexible.”
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