Ignaz Friedman: Romantic Master Pianist [Hardcover]

Allan Evans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 29, 2009

Allan Evans's groundbreaking biography of Ignaz Friedman gives the reader the behind and the between of the life and career of this extraordinary pianist. Friedman's repertory emphasized the major works of Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms, but he was perhaps best known for his interpretation of the Chopin mazurkas, which by all accounts he played with the same rhythmic nuance as their composer. Evans examines Friedman's life as a cultured Jewish musician from Poland; his studies in Leipzig and Vienna; his marriage to Manya Schidlowsky—a Russian countess and relative of Tolstoy; and his performing career, teaching, and retirement in Australia.

(2011)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Nothing is harder to bring back to life than a dead pianist, no matter how effervescent or influential. The art dies with the fingers. What Allan Evans has done—not once but three times—is to make the late artist seem absolutely relevant to our times." —Norman Lebrecht

(Norman Lebrecht 2009)

"There was an early archaeologist in the first decades of the 15th century by the name of Ciriaco d'Ancona. When asked what he was doing, he replied: 'I wake the dead.' Allan Evans could claim the same. It is wonderful, how many hidden testimonies he rescues from oblivion!" —Ernst Gombrich

(Ernst Gombrich 2010)

"A remarkable and historic book that delivers an intimate and thorough portrait of the artist. The depth of research is staggering.... It is now possible to put a face, a life, a reality, a personality to the man who only existed in our ears, hearts, and musical minds." —Kenneth Cooper, Manhattan School of Music

(Kenneth Cooper, Manhattan School of Music 2009)

"Of great interest to pianists and their audiences... the accounts of lessons with Friedman are particularly riveting." —Kenneth Hamilton, Birmingham University

(Kenneth Hamilton, Birmingham University 2010)

"This book is a must read, above all, for those interested in Ignaz Friedman, and for those interested in the musical world of his time." —www.classicalmusicguide.com, September 8, 2009

(www.classicalmusicguide.com )

"Evans packs so much into these pages that it is not just an interesting biography but more an immersion into the entire piano world of the first half of the 20th century. The book includes a number of interesting photos; the appendixes are a rich source, meticulously documented, of Friedman's concert repertoire, recordings, compositions, and editorial work on the compositions of Frederic Chopin. This volume is a true labor of love.... Highly recommended." —Choice, January 2010

(Choice )

"This distinguished study brings back to the forefront a great artist who was in danger of being forgotten." —Gramophone, November 2009

(Gramophone )

"Ignaz Friedman is thoroughly researched and offers readers new insight into the life and activities of this pianistic giant." —Music Research Forum, Vol. 25, 2010

(Music Research Forum )

"Allan Evans's biography of Ignaz Friedman... is a beautifully written and marvelously researched book about one of the greatest piano virtuosos of the twentieth century.... This is a book to savor, to read and reread." —Clavier Companion

(Clavier Companion )

About the Author

Allan Evans is the founder of Arbiter of Cultural Traditions and has published more than 150 recordings by historic interpreters. He is editor (with Mark Mitchell) of Moriz Rosenthal in Word and Music: A Legacy of the Nineteenth Century (IUP, 2005). Evans teaches at the Mannes College of Music, New York. He lives in New York.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 402 pages
• Publisher: Indiana University Press (June 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0253353106
• ISBN-13: 978-0253353108
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #719,991 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful account of the pianist and his Age, June 29, 2009

By 

Rugby "Rugby" - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ignaz Friedman: Romantic Master Pianist (Hardcover)

If ever the written word alone can enable us to "hear" the piano playing of a great master, Allan Evans' biography of Ignaz Friedman is such a book.

Mr.Evans' achievement not only gives intimate insights into Friedman, his family, and his art, but also gives insights, not always flattering, into major artists of his time such as his teacher,Leschetizky, and Huberman, Rubinstein,Rosenthal,Hofmann,Mascagni, Sirota ,and others.Evans also provides a mini-biography of Friedman's extraordinary pupil Tiegerman, " the lost legend of Cairo."

Numerous concert reviews , and comments from some of Friedman's students , provide wonderful descriptions of his piano playing. Suggestions from his teachings should inform current artists.The detail of Friedman's preparation is astonishing.

Mr. Evans has also given us a front -row seat upon an Age not likely to return, and its transition to modernity.Thus, not only is this book a must for pianophiles, but also for historians,sociologists, and artists of all persuasions. Friedman's extensive World travel was a marvel itself, but also a testament to some of the economic difficulties and racial biases he encountered between the Wars. Discussions of the "old" and "new" Poland help clarify the cultural setting in which Friedman's art first grew.

I am inspired to add more Friedman to my collection.Hopefully Mr.Evans' label Arbiter Records will be able to publish improved versions.

I also reflect upon how poorly most of the recent Cliburn Competition performances compare. Hardly a new observation: " Friedman's most infamous charlantanisms have more in common with art and poetry than those young bravura players who, with their factory-made techniques, earn millions of dollars in America." Aladar Toth's ( husband of pianist Annie Fischer) review in Budapest's "Pesti Naplo", March23,1939 (copyright 2009,Allan Evans). Perhaps competitions will now add reading Mr.Evans' book to their required "works".

Fortunately for us, Evans has captured much about the man, his manner, his colleagues, his teaching,and his times, which would otherwise have vanished. The life of Friedman demonstrates values our current artistic and civil society would do well to emulate, Evans' achievement all that more relevant.

In Sydney, June 25,1927, Friedman's programme was in this order (copyright 2009 by Allan Evans,with permission):

Beethoven Sonata,Op.111
Scarlatti-Tausig Capriccio
Schumann "Papillons"; Symphonic Etudes
Chopin Waltz
Chopin Nocturne Op.62,#2; Impromptu Op.29;Scherzo Op.20
Gartner-Friedman Viennese Dance # 4
Szymanowski Prelude
Suk Minuet
Henselt-Godowsky Etude "If I Were a Bird"
Strauss-Godowsky "Fledermaus" Paraphrase
Encores Liszt: Liebestraume # 3 ; God Save the Queen

From 1946-47 student Patricia Rovik, in a 1988 interview (copyright 2009 by Allan Evans):

" He was a grand person.There was something of a mastery about him at the piano, a quietness; he was never grandiose and I always felt that he was communing with music, that he was a special gift to us from the God of Music himself. When he played the Revolutionary Etude one felt it it was an avalanche and any movable object would be removed from its path.He could be quite grand in the sonatas,too.I didn't hear him banging, in what was thought to be the tradition of the nineteenth century.There was a certain philosophical restfulness about him. He would make wonderful statements,especially with Chopin. I was just so in awe of the man and I still am to an extent after forty years. It was almost quite a breathless experience."

After completing this book, you also will be in awe of Friedman and Mr.Evans' achievement here. Highly reccomended not only as a detailed yet very readable, very humane biography ; and not only as a commentary on the art of pianism that can stand with efforts by Harold Schonberg, Arthur Schnabel , Joseph Horowitz, Charles Rosen ; but also more broadly as a re-creation of a lost Age.

Rugby

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "Must Read" for any serious lover of great piano playing!, December 7, 2009

By 

David Abbott (Albion, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ignaz Friedman: Romantic Master Pianist (Hardcover)

I cannot say how long I have waited for Mr. Evans book on Ignaz Friedman. Not only did it not dissapoint but I was literally overwhelmed by the years of painstaking work which clearly went into this book. Travelling literally over the globe as he discovered more and more human "connections" with Friedman and his family or musical disciples, the book is filled with enormous detail both about his family, ethnic background etc., not to mention a tremendous amount of information as to Friedman's musical style and even his teaching philosophy. It was especially interesting to learn more about his marvelously gifted and sadly all too unknown student Ignaz Tiegerman (be sure to purchase a copy of the excellent CD of Tiegerman's playing on ARBITER records), who as a contemporary of Horowitz, was considered the Russian pianist's equal when they were both young pianists performing in Europe.

The music world is indeed a small place. When I was teaching in Switzerland at the Zuerich Musikkonservatorium, a young boy came into my piano class whose father was Egyptian. Although the man was not a pianist, he loved music passionately and after talking one day, I discovered that his sister many years earlier was a pupil in Cairo of Tiegerman. Hanna spoke quite a bit about him to me.

My own first contact with Friedman's art came in my piano lessons years earlier at Juilliard, while a student of the great pedagogue Sascha Gorodnitzki. As I played Chopin Etudes to him at a lesson, we began discussing his teacher Josef Lhevinne whose own recordings of the Op. 25/6 Etude in thirds and Op. 25/10 Etude in Octaves among others were legendary and so inspirational to me. Imagine my surprise when expecting Mr. "G" to agree about the greatness of Lhevinne's performances (which he of course had the privilege of hearing many times live) but instead he spoke about Friedman's Etudes and Mazurkas played in Carnegie Hall and describing how those concerts had been the most memorable performances he knew of those works!

Immediately I rushed over to the Performing Arts Division of the New York Public Library and filling out my cards requesting the 78 recordings to be played by remote playback booths in the research carrels. When I first heard the Revolutionary Etude, I thought I had literally died and gone to heaven, pianistically speaking! A pupil of Friedman aptly describes these performances in Evan's book better than I could. The Mazurkas however in Friedman's hands were a the greatest revelation to me. Never had I heard these played so compellingly as they truly were meant to be played with unusually strong and powerfully rhythmic gestures and dynamics far beyond anything I had thought possible (nor up to that point musically appropriate0. Read Eigeldinger's excellent book on "Chopin as Teacher and Pianist". There the first-person recollections of Chopin's playing of Mazurkas and other works by his pupils and renowned musicians such as Carl Reinecke confirm this tradition of specifically how Chopin played his music. The discussion of Chopin's playing was the same tradition which Friedman clearly followed and passed on to the next generation. It is only sad for me when people now hear Friedman's playing and label it "mannered", or "anachronistic" Such short-sighted comments are purely ignorance on the part of those who fail to understand the earlier traditions of playing that came before our time.

This book is a revelation on many levels. At one point, Evans shares how Tiegerman treated the opening D-flat arpeggio which opens as a transition from the first into the second section of Chopin's Fantasy-Impromptu, Op. 66. Asking his pupils to emphasize the low opening D-flat for musical emphasis and continuity into the beautiful melodic theme which follows, Tiegerman quoted Leschetitzky's term of "tonal rubato" for playing this passage. I have always instinctively played this passage myself with a deliberate prolongation of the bass note, slowly transitioning into the appropriate tempo before the entrance new melody in the right hand and yet I can't count how many times I have heard young pianists ignorantly plow through this transitional passage with no slackening in tempo simply because the composer didn't notate the score with a change of tempo here. Could that Chopin simply thought it unnecessary to indicate the "obvious" here. I have devoted many years of my professional career to studying and carefully re-evaluating the rubato and "pacing" of my phrasing and more and more, I realize that it is must in all cases be related to the harmonic implications of the particular phrase. I would perhaps modestly add one more word to Leschetitzky's phrase by coining it "harmonic tonal rubato".

Listen to recordings of Rachmaninoff playing Rachmaninoff or works by other composers. Today when one hears his playing or the early recordings of Hofmann or Paderewski, their interpretations seem excessive in terms of rubato and overall phrasing and dynamics. Yet can audiences have been wrong when these pianists were considered the greatest performing artists of their time? I think it is not a matter of just taste but rather a sign of the inevitable change in musical traditions that change interpretively generation to generation. We are fortunate to have recordings of these great artists and for that I am ever grateful. As a performing artist, these great musical traditions have permanently changed the way I play approach a score. Imagine what many people would think if they could hear actual gramophone recordings of Liszt or Chopin themselves? I am quite sure many in our contemporary audiences would find their playing interpretively inappropriate today as well.

I can not adequately thank Mr. Evans enough for finally making this labor of love available to all of us as well as his other many recordings both on the Arbiter label as well as the earlier (now out of print but excellent boxed LP set of the Complete Friedman recordings on Danacord). Thank goodness there continues to be people dedicated to the great artists of the past: Harold Schoenberg, Jon Samuels (executive producer of the excellent RCA reissues of William Kapell), Gregor Benko and the International Piano Achives at the University of Maryland, to name only a few. Great traditions are something we should not ignore or ridicule, but rather study and try to learn from. This newest biography of Ignaz Friedman by Allen Evans is a case in point. I cannot recommend this book more highly to anyone seriously interested in the rich musical and pianistic culture from the end of the 19th Century into the early decades of the 20th century. Bravo!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Splendid, September 26, 2009

By 

pianophile (Minneapolis, MN United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ignaz Friedman: Romantic Master Pianist (Hardcover)

Broad and deep in its evident erudition, this everything-but-the-kitchen-sink biography of IF is probably the best we can hope for, unless some previously-unknown trove of documents emerges. If you care about Golden Age pianism, you need to read this book.