1928 IGNAZ FRIEDMAN Famous recording CHOPIN 12 MAZURKA

$

27

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A series of great Violin, Piano and Orchestra records on rare labels, from 1902 Monarch to 1940 War Germany recordings.

  

Ignaz Friedman in his most famous recording of CHOPIN MAZURKAS

recorded in September 1930 after 40!! rejected takes recorded the previous year

Friedman's Chopin interpretations, particularly those of the mazurkas, are considered by many to be unsurpassed.

  Mazurka No. 6 in A minor, Op. 7, No. 2 \

Mazurka No. 23 in D major, Op. 33, No. 2

Mazurka No. 7 in F minor, Op. 7, No. 3 

 Mazurka No. 25 in B minor, Op. 33, No. 4

Mazurka No. 17 in B flat major, Op. 24, No. 4 

Mazurka No. 26 in C sharp minor, Op. 41, No. 1

Mazurka No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 50, No. 2

Mazurka No. 45 in A minor, Op. 67, No. 4

Mazurka No. 47 in A minor, Op. 68, No. 2
Mazurka No. 41 in C sharp minor, Op. 63, No. 3 
Mazurka No. 44 in C major, Op. 67, No. 3

   Mazurka No. 5 in B flat major, Op. 7, No. 1 
                       
    
  

4x12" 78 rpm record w original Album M 159 and notes

EXCELLENT, scuffs, small surface irrelgularity before start of Op 7.3, does not affect music. Album solid, spine somewhat rough

Ignaz Friedman was born, as was Josef Hofmann, in Podgorze, a suburb of Krakow, Poland, in 1882. His father was a musician who played in a local theatre orchestra and after piano lessons with a local teacher Flora Grzywinska, Friedman left Krakow in 1900 to study composition at the Leipzig Conservatory with Hugo Riemann. It was not until 1901, when he was already nineteen, that he decided to go to Vienna for lessons with Theodore Leschetizky. As with Moiseiwitsch, Leschetizky was not enthusiastic when the young Friedman presented himself, but after three years of study (also becoming Leschetizky’s teaching assistant), Friedman was ready to make his Vienna début in November 1904 at which he played the D minor Concerto of Brahms, Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto and the E flat Concerto of Liszt. This début launched a touring career that began in 1905, and for the next forty years Friedman seemed to be perpetually on tour; he visited the United States twelve times, South America seven times, and Europe every year, as well as Iceland, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa, Palestine, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Although he did not often perform chamber music in public he collaborated with the greatest instrumentalists of the day, Casals, Huberman, Feuermann, Morini, Elman, Auer and Ysaÿe, and performed under the batons of Dorati, Gabrilowitsch, Mengelberg and Nikisch.

Until 1914 Friedman lived in Berlin but after the First World War he settled in Copenhagen. Friedman’s first visit to America was in 1920 and in April 1923 he made his first records for the American Columbia Company. After extensive and exhaustive touring, the onset of the Second World War meant Friedman had to move again, as Scandinavia was not a safe home for him. The Australian Broadcasting Commission invited him for a tour and during the early 1940s he played and broadcast regularly in Australia and New Zealand. Partial paralysis of his left hand made him retire in 1943 (he was only just over sixty) and he died in Sydney in January 1948.

Probably Friedman’s most famous recordings are the set of a dozen Chopin Mazurkas he recorded for the Columbia Company in London in 1930. These classic recordings are imbued with Polish spirit and are a lesson in the subtleties of rhythmic rubato. Although the performances sound natural and inspired, the recordings of this selection of Mazurkas were fraught with difficulties. On 10th October 1929 Friedman recorded two takes of each Mazurka and three of Op.63 No.3 and Op.67 No.2, but these were all rejected, so on the 15th October he tried two more takes of Op.7 and three more of Op.67 No.4 and Op.68 No.2. All were rejected, and it was not until February 1930 that he was able to record again all the twelve Mazurkas, two takes of each side. For some reason all of these sides were rejected; so far Friedman had recorded forty sides of Mazurkas, none of which were approved for release.

Seven months later on 13th September 1930, Friedman recorded two or three more takes of each side and from this session a take of each was approved, with the exception of Op.41 No.1. Four days later at the end of a session where he recorded some of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, Friedman made two more takes of this Mazurka and approved the last — take nine. The fact that Friedman made seven, eight and in some cases nine takes of each Mazurka leads one to question why this was the case. Could he really have been dissatisfied with his performances after six or more attempts? Friedman was a very impulsive and spontaneous player and sometimes his playing could sound exaggerated as a critic commented in 1928: "This exaggeration of speed, which appeared again in the Chopin group, where several times he rushed an accelerando in a way that destroyed its own effect, had counterparts in other exaggerations of dynamic gradation and expression. The difference between piano and forte was extreme…"

In the days of recording 78s problems were often caused by the recording process itself; even if an artist approved a side for release, if it was not technically acceptable to the engineers it would not be published. As Bryan Crimp has discovered, the reasons for so many attempts at recording these twelve Mazurkas were purely technical. In fact, the recordings from the first session of October 1929 were approved by Friedman, but the engineers described the surfaces as ‘rough and snappy’, so the sides were not released. Although the first few sessions were recorded in the acoustically superior Central Hall, Westminster, the sides that were eventually published were recorded in Columbia’s Petty France studios.

Some of the earlier takes have survived as test pressings and in the case of Op.41 No.1 the approved take was published in Britain, but in America take two from the first session of October 1929 was published so a comparison can be made.

At the end of January 1928 Friedman was in London where he gave a recital at the Royal Albert Hall in which he played Mozart’s Rondo in A minor, Brahms Variations and Fugue on a theme of Handel and a Chopin group. Columbia unfortunately did not ask him to record the Mozart or Brahms but instead asked for encore pieces and arrangements. The recording of Gluck’s Gavotte in an arrangement by Brahms comes from a recording session of 9th February 1928, a session that also included a recording of Friedman’s own Barcarolle that was not issued. Friedman as arranger of Gluck was recorded the next day in the guise of the Minuet from the Judgement of Paris and a few weeks later he recorded his arrangement of Schubert titled Alt Wien. Liszt had arranged some of Schubert’s music as nine Soirées de Vienne, Valses-Caprices d’aprés Franz Schubert and Friedman published two in similar vein as Alt-Wien — zwei Walzersuiten nach Tanzen von Franz Schubert bearbeitet von Ignaz Friedman. They were published in 1928 (the year of the recording) and both are heard, one on each side of the original disc. As in Friedman’s inimitably Polish Mazurkas one can again hear Friedman’s natural and instinctive rhythm, this time of old Vienna, and it is a great pity that his recordings of his own arrangements of Strauss Waltzes made in 1931 have not survived.

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