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Producer’s Note ADD Among the 53 published 78rpm sides of Mischa Levitzki, there are no rarities. Yet, 61 years after his death, his records are still sought by collectors world-wide and his artistry is held in high esteem. Admittedly, Mischa Levitzki does not Great Pianists • Levitzki • 2 8.110769 rank among the twentieth century’s greatest pianists, for that distinguished honor belongs to only a handful. His records, however, are distinguished for their directness of approach without ever being the least bit dull. They demonstrate a formidable technique, always under control, as well as a lovely sound guided by an unerring ear for subtlety and nuance. Mischa Levitzki: Piano Recordings Vol. 2 - Gramophone Recordings 1927-1933 LISZT SCHUMANN: ! Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13 Piano Concerto No. 1 Sonata No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22 16:43 in A minor, S.244 9:03 1 I. So rasch wie möglich 4:43 Recorded 16th March 1933 2 II. Andantino: Getragen 4:39 Matrices 2B 6340-3, and 2B 6347-2; Hungarian Rhapsodies 3 III. Scherzo: Sehr rasch und markiert 1:43 Cat. DB 1905 4 IV. Rondo: Presto 5:35 Recorded 10th March 1933 @ Etude de Concert No. 3 La Campanella Matrices 2B 6335-2, 6336-3, 6337-1, and in D flat major, ‘Un sospiro’, S.144 4:56 6338-2; Cat. DB 1906/7 Recorded 21st November 1928 Matrix Cc 14780-3; Cat. D 1721 LISZT: # Etude d’exécution transcendante d’après Piano Concerto No. 1 Paganini No. 3 in G sharp minor, in E flat major, S.124 18:06 ‘La Campanella’, S.140 4:57 SCHUMANN With the London Symphony Orchestra Recorded 16th December 1927 conducted by Sir Landon Ronald Matrix Cc 12152-1; Cat. D 1489 5 I. Allegro maestoso 4:55 $ Etude d’exécution transcendante d’après Sonata No. 2 in G minor 6 II. Quasi Adagio 4:32 Paganini No. 3 in G sharp minor, 7 III. Allegretto vivace 4:10 ‘La Campanella’, S.140 4:55 8 IV. Allegro marziale animato 4:25 Recorded 22nd November 1928 Recorded 11th and 14th November 1929 Matrix Cc 12152-4; Cat. D 1489 Matrices CR 2467-4, 2468-1a, 2469-2a, and 2470-5; Cat. D 1775/6 MOSZKOWSKI: % La Jongleuse, Op. 52/4 1:37 9 Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6 Recorded 16th December 1927 Mischa Levitzki in D flat major, S.244 7:24 Matrix Bb 11789-4; Cat. EW 97 Recorded 15th December 1927 Matrices Cc 11790-2 and Cc 11791-2; Cat. D1383 LEVITZKI: ^ Waltz in A major, Op. 2 (Valse amour) 1:44 0 Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12 in Recorded 21 November 1929 C sharp minor, S.244 9:08 Matrix Bb 11788-5; Cat. EW 97 Recorded 16th March 1933 Historical Recordings 1927 - 1933 Matrices 2B 6348-1, and 2B 6349-2; Cat. DB 1904 8.110769 4 Great Pianists: Mischa Levitzki: Complete Recordings Vol. 2 Brailowsky had recorded it for Polydor and there was week recorded it for HMV. By this time the critics were even a version by the English pianist Anderson Tyrer not so enthusiastic about Levitzki. ‘Mr Levitzki is an Levitzki’s parents were from the Ukraine but had taken playing. He couldn’t make one nice phrase. I don’t with the British Symphony Orchestra conducted by accomplished virtuoso, and when that has been said American citizenship and happened to be on a visit to understand how he got his fame…..I don’t think he Adrian Boult available in 1926. Levitzki’s recording is there is little to add about his playing.’ We can hear his their homeland when Mischa was born on 25th May really knew how to play the piano. He didn’t make that of a young man; a brilliant, vibrant performance performance of this Schumann sonata recorded a day or 1898. At the age of three he began studies on the violin music’. It is also worth remembering that during the full of sparkling finger-work which sounds better than two after his Wigmore Hall recital. In it, Levitzki’s and at six began to learn to play the piano. Levitzki early 1930s the piano company of Steinway and Sons ever in this new transfer. Although the complete clarity and strong sense of rhythm can be heard and in studied with the great Polish pianist Alexander divided their roster of artists into separate groups and in concerto was recorded in Kingsway Hall in November the Andantino his pure singing tone is highlighted. Michalowski in Warsaw when he was seven, and made the highest, group A, were Ignace Paderewski, Josef 1929 only one side could be used and the whole work Detractors of Levitzki’s art have accused him of being his concert début a year later in Antwerp. He then Hofmann, Yolanda Merö and Mischa Levitzki. These was recorded again three days later in the Queen’s Hall. emotionally detached and concerned only with travelled in 1908 with his parents to New York, where pianists received a $100 subsidy from Steinway for As The Gramophone said at the time, ‘The Liszt is technique. It is true that some of his recordings display a his father arranged for him to play for Frank Damrosch, each concert they gave. Horowitz and, it must be said recorded to admiration. I think I like Levitzki as well as strict underlying rhythm that is often too brusque and brother of Walter Damrosch, at that time director of the Rachmaninov too, were on the B list and did not receive anyone I have heard recorded in this work’. inflexible, yet his Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies show Boston Symphony Orchestra. Frank Damrosch was the subsidy. Levitzki played Schumann’s rarely heard Piano talent, technique and taste and the full sound he obtains director of the recently opened Institute of Musical Art It was not until 1927 that Levitzki made his London Sonata No. 2 in a Queen’s Hall recital in March 1928. in the opening chords of Rhapsody No. 13 is beautifully in New York, which was later to become the Juilliard début. He played Schumann’s Piano Concerto with the During the late 1920s he gave up to three solo recitals balanced. As Abram Chasins said of him, ‘He was a School of Music. The eleven-year-old Levitzki won a London Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Beecham per year in the large Queen’s Hall in London, but by vibrant master workman; everything was pure radiance; scholarship to study there for two years with the Polish and gave no less than three recitals at the Queen’s Hall, 1933 he was giving only two at London’s smaller every note shone like a sunbeam’. pianist and teacher Sigismond Stojowski, who had been a much larger venue than the Wigmore Hall, a more Wigmore Hall. Perhaps his popularity had begun to a pupil of Paderewski. When Levitzki was thirteen he usual venue for recital débuts. He played a wane. In March 1933 at the Wigmore Hall he played went to Berlin with his mother to study with Ernö conventional programme opening with a Bach-Liszt Schumann’s Piano Sonata No. 2 again and the same © Jonathan Summers Dohnányi at the Hochschule für Musik. The class was transcription (which appears in Vol. 1 of this series), only open, however, to pianists of sixteen and over, but and including Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata, a after Levitzki stunned the entrance board of examiners group of Chopin and some Debussy and Ravel. At his Ward Marston with his performance of Mendelssohn’s Piano third recital on the 9th November 1927 he played In 1997 Ward Marston was nominated for the Best Historical Album Grammy Award for his production work on Concerto in G minor, the boy was admitted. Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, but unfortunately he BMG’s Fritz Kreisler collection. According to the Chicago Tribune, Marston’s name is ‘synonymous with tender Levitzki made his New York début in 1916. This did not record any of the Beethoven piano sonatas. On loving care to collectors of historical CDs’. Opera News calls his work ‘revelatory’, and Fanfare deems him led to further engagements in America and from then the two days preceding the third recital Levitzki made ‘miraculous’. In 1996 Ward Marston received the Gramophone award for Historical Vocal Recording of the Year, on Levitzki led the life of a successful touring virtuoso. his first recordings for HMV in Studio C of the Small honouring his production and engineering work on Romophone’s complete recordings of Lucrezia Bori. He also After the First World War he was one of the first major Queen’s Hall. None of the eleven sides were issued, served as re-recording engineer for the Franklin Mint’s Arturo Toscanini issue and BMG’s Sergey Rachmaninov pianists to tour Australia and New Zealand in 1921, and and he returned for two more sessions on the 15th and recordings, both winners of the Best Historical Album Grammy. he made an extended tour of the Orient in 1925–26. 16th December. From these sessions come the Liszt Born blind in 1952, Ward Marston has amassed tens of thousands of opera classical records over the past four During the 1920s he was an extremely popular and Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6 and the first take of La decades. Following a stint in radio while a student at Williams College, he became well-known as a reissue producer successful pianist. Interestingly, Vladimir Horowitz, Campanella. Levitzki plays this work at a slower tempo in 1979, when he restored the earliest known stereo recording made by the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1932.