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GREAT PIANISTS • EMIL GILELS ADD Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764): Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without Words), Great Pianists • Emil Gilels 8.111350 Suite for harpsichord in E minor Book 3, Op. 38 1 X: La villageoise 2:09 ! No. 18 in A flat major, Op. 38, No. 6, ‘Duetto’ 3:13 Recorded in 1951; 78 rpm; CCCP 19533 Recorded in 1947; 78 rpm; CCCP 14574 2 V: Le rappel des oiseaux 2:40 Recorded in 1951; 78 rpm; CCCP 19534 Bedfiich Smetana (1824-1884): Czech Dances, Book 1 EARLY Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938): @ No. 2: Polka in A minor 2:22 Renaissance, Book 2 Recorded in 1950; 78 rpm; CCCP 18784 RECORDINGS • 1 3 XII. Gigue in E major (transcription of the Gigue # No. 3: Polka in F major 2:41 from Harpsichord Suite No. 1 in G minor Recorded in 1950; 78 rpm; CCCP 18785 1935-1951 by Jean-Baptiste Loeillet, 1680-1730) 2:06 Recorded in 1935; 78 rpm; CCCP 524 (1862-1918): Suite bergamasque (1756-1791): $ III: Clair de lune 4:34 Piano Sonata No. 14 in C minor, K. 457 22:26 Recorded in 1946; Melodiya LP D 04046 4 I. Molto allegro 8:17 5 II. Adagio 9:23 Claude Debussy RAMEAU 6 III. Allegro assai 4:46 (arr. Leonard Borwick, 1868-1925) Recorded in 1950; Melodiya LP D 04046/7 Nocturnes MOZART % No. 2: Fêtes 6:08 (1810-1856): Recorded in 1937; 78 rpm; CCCP 8241/42 7 Toccata in C, Op. 7 4:44 SCHUMANN Recorded in 1935; 78 rpm; CCCP 526/527 (1875 - 1937): Fantasiestücke, Op. 12 Le Tombeau de Couperin 8 No. 7: Traumes Wirren 2:18 ^ I: Prélude 3:11 SMETANA Recorded in 1937; 78 rpm; CCCP 5077 & III: Forlane 6:52 Spanisches Liederspiel, Op. 74 * VI: Toccata 4:10 DEBUSSY 9 No. 10: Der Kontrabandiste (arr. C. Tausig) 1:49 Recorded in 1950; Melodiya LP D 04046 Recorded in 1935; 78 rpm; CCCP 525 All tracks recorded in the USSR RAVEL Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): 3 Fantaisies ou caprices, Op. 16 Producer: Jonathan Summers 0 No. 2: Scherzo 2:18 Audio Restoration Engineer: Ward Marston Recorded in 1940; 78 rpm; CCCP 10662 Special thanks to Donald Manildi Emil Gilels

8.111350 4 111350 bk Gilels EU 14/8/08 13:22 Page 2

Great Pianists: Emil Gilels (1916-1985) Gilels played very little of Mozart’s music in his Rameau throughout his career. At his first examination early career. He explained that when he was young, concert in 1924 at eight years of age he played Early Recordings • 1 (1935-1951) ‘….we did not play the Brahms concertos in Russia. Tambourin and at the All-Union Competition for One of the greatest Russian pianists of the twentieth recordings were made in 1935 and the arrangement of And even with Neuhaus we played very little Brahms, Performing Musicians in 1933 he played a group of century, Emil Gilels was born in Odessa in 1916. the Gigue by Jean-Baptiste Loeillet, which comes from Schubert or Mozart… He also liked Debussy very pieces. The 1951 recording of two of them heard here Although his parents were not professional musicians, Leopold Godowsky’s Renaisssance Suite written much…’ It would appear that the first recording Gilels shows stylistic performing influences from Godowsky his father was an amateur musician and all the children between 1906 and 1909, immediately shows the made of a Mozart piano sonata was the Sonata in C and the great pianists of Gilels’s youth, yet these are played instruments. At the age of six Emil was taken by immense power the young Gilels had at the keyboard. minor K. 457 heard here. It is muscular and incisive in perfectly valid performances, both poetic and musically his half-sister to begin piano lessons with Yakov Tkach, He had performed this work at the time of the National the outer movements and full-toned in the slow suited to the piano. a pupil of Raoul Pugno. In 1929 Bertha Reingbald, a Competition of the Ukraine in Kharkov in 1931 and he movement. At this time he also programmed the Piano Gilels was a pianist in the mould of the Russian teacher from the Institute of Music and Drama in also played Godowsky’s arrangement of the Fugue and Sonata in B flat K. 570 at his concerts. great players that stemmed from Anton Rubinstein. His Odessa, heard the twelve-year old Gilels’s début and Presto from the Violin Sonata in G minor by Bach Gilels had played Mendelssohn’s Scherzo in E playing, especially in his youth, was fiery, volatile and was greatly impressed with the young boy. She became during the 1930s. Also from the 1935 sessions come the minor Op. 16 No. 2 at his first public concert in June exciting, and even late in his career still retained the his teacher and, although he was too young to enter the recordings of Schumann’s Der Kontrabandiste 1929 in Odessa at the age of twelve. The 1940 recording grandeur and sweep of a great master in the Russian National Competition of the Ukraine in Kharkov, arranged by Carl Tausig (once a popular work, it was made when he was 24 has a scintillating clarity. The tradition. Gilels died in Moscow in 1985. Gilels’s playing at the time of that competition resulted also recorded by Josef Lhevinne in 1921, Naxos Polkas by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana did not in a scholarship in 1931 from the Ukrainian 8.110681) and the Toccata Op. 7 in which Gilels feature on Gilels’s programmes before 1950 and these Thanks to Judith Raynor government. Reingbald then prepared Gilels for the All- displays an already secure and solid technique: he works possibly entered his repertoire as a result of his Union Competition for Performing Musicians which he played it at his final graduation examination concert in first tour of Czechoslovakia in 1948. © 2008 Jonathan Summers won in 1933 at the age of sixteen and immediately took Odessa in November 1935. Gilels played some of the keyboard works of on many concert engagements for which he was not The next recording sessions took place in 1937 adequately prepared, as he had not had time to develop when Gilels recorded more Schumann – a feather-light his repertoire. He returned to Odessa and Reingbald Traumes Wirren from Fantasiestücke Op. 12, and some staying with her until the summer of 1935. It can be said French music including Fêtes (from the orchestral work that Tkach provided a purely technical training whilst Nocturnes) by Debussy in an arrangement for solo Reingbald instilled the musical attributes; Gilels said of piano by English pianist Leonard Borwick (1868-1925) her, ‘At that time, in fact, she was my musical mother’. who also made a transcription of the same composer’s In 1935 after graduating in Odessa, Gilels moved to Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Gilels played this Moscow to study with Heinrich Neuhaus at the Moscow solo version of Fêtes at a concert in Moscow in Conservatory. December 1938, and in 1940 played the arrangement In 1936 Gilels came second to Yakov Flier in the for two pianos by Ravel with Jacob Zak in Leningrad. International Piano Competition in Vienna, and two When speaking of French music in Russia in the 1930s years later won the prestigious Ysaÿe Competition in Gilels said, ‘At that time the Impressionists in Odessa Brussels. The outbreak of World War II prevented his were very modern, almost the last word in music. In American début in 1939, and the first time he played addition to this the music was difficult to obtain. I was outside the Soviet Union after the War was in only able to borrow the music of Ravel’s Toccata for a Czechoslovakia in 1948, then in Poland, and he first single night. My sister and my father spent that whole played in the West in 1951 in Italy. night copying it out, and from this copy I learned The recordings on this compact disc were made in Ravel’s Toccata; it was with this piece that I won the the USSR and all come from the first stage of Gilels’s first prize in Moscow in 1933.’ Gilels recorded three career. It should be noted that it is difficult to date movements from Ravel’s suite Le Tombeau de recordings made in the USSR from this period with any Couperin in 1950 including the Toccata, and they can accuracy as access to recording session logs and be heard here along with Debussy’s Clair de lune from discographical material is limited. Gilels’s first 1946. 8.111350 2 3 8.111350 111350 bk Gilels EU 14/8/08 13:22 Page 2

Great Pianists: Emil Gilels (1916-1985) Gilels played very little of Mozart’s music in his Rameau throughout his career. At his first examination early career. He explained that when he was young, concert in 1924 at eight years of age he played Early Recordings • 1 (1935-1951) ‘….we did not play the Brahms concertos in Russia. Tambourin and at the All-Union Competition for One of the greatest Russian pianists of the twentieth recordings were made in 1935 and the arrangement of And even with Neuhaus we played very little Brahms, Performing Musicians in 1933 he played a group of century, Emil Gilels was born in Odessa in 1916. the Gigue by Jean-Baptiste Loeillet, which comes from Schubert or Mozart… He also liked Debussy very pieces. The 1951 recording of two of them heard here Although his parents were not professional musicians, Leopold Godowsky’s Renaisssance Suite written much…’ It would appear that the first recording Gilels shows stylistic performing influences from Godowsky his father was an amateur musician and all the children between 1906 and 1909, immediately shows the made of a Mozart piano sonata was the Sonata in C and the great pianists of Gilels’s youth, yet these are played instruments. At the age of six Emil was taken by immense power the young Gilels had at the keyboard. minor K. 457 heard here. It is muscular and incisive in perfectly valid performances, both poetic and musically his half-sister to begin piano lessons with Yakov Tkach, He had performed this work at the time of the National the outer movements and full-toned in the slow suited to the piano. a pupil of Raoul Pugno. In 1929 Bertha Reingbald, a Competition of the Ukraine in Kharkov in 1931 and he movement. At this time he also programmed the Piano Gilels was a pianist in the mould of the Russian teacher from the Institute of Music and Drama in also played Godowsky’s arrangement of the Fugue and Sonata in B flat K. 570 at his concerts. great players that stemmed from Anton Rubinstein. His Odessa, heard the twelve-year old Gilels’s début and Presto from the Violin Sonata in G minor by Bach Gilels had played Mendelssohn’s Scherzo in E playing, especially in his youth, was fiery, volatile and was greatly impressed with the young boy. She became during the 1930s. Also from the 1935 sessions come the minor Op. 16 No. 2 at his first public concert in June exciting, and even late in his career still retained the his teacher and, although he was too young to enter the recordings of Schumann’s Der Kontrabandiste 1929 in Odessa at the age of twelve. The 1940 recording grandeur and sweep of a great master in the Russian National Competition of the Ukraine in Kharkov, arranged by Carl Tausig (once a popular work, it was made when he was 24 has a scintillating clarity. The tradition. Gilels died in Moscow in 1985. Gilels’s playing at the time of that competition resulted also recorded by Josef Lhevinne in 1921, Naxos Polkas by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana did not in a scholarship in 1931 from the Ukrainian 8.110681) and the Toccata Op. 7 in which Gilels feature on Gilels’s programmes before 1950 and these Thanks to Judith Raynor government. Reingbald then prepared Gilels for the All- displays an already secure and solid technique: he works possibly entered his repertoire as a result of his Union Competition for Performing Musicians which he played it at his final graduation examination concert in first tour of Czechoslovakia in 1948. © 2008 Jonathan Summers won in 1933 at the age of sixteen and immediately took Odessa in November 1935. Gilels played some of the keyboard works of on many concert engagements for which he was not The next recording sessions took place in 1937 adequately prepared, as he had not had time to develop when Gilels recorded more Schumann – a feather-light his repertoire. He returned to Odessa and Reingbald Traumes Wirren from Fantasiestücke Op. 12, and some staying with her until the summer of 1935. It can be said French music including Fêtes (from the orchestral work that Tkach provided a purely technical training whilst Nocturnes) by Debussy in an arrangement for solo Reingbald instilled the musical attributes; Gilels said of piano by English pianist Leonard Borwick (1868-1925) her, ‘At that time, in fact, she was my musical mother’. who also made a transcription of the same composer’s In 1935 after graduating in Odessa, Gilels moved to Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Gilels played this Moscow to study with Heinrich Neuhaus at the Moscow solo version of Fêtes at a concert in Moscow in Conservatory. December 1938, and in 1940 played the arrangement In 1936 Gilels came second to Yakov Flier in the for two pianos by Ravel with Jacob Zak in Leningrad. International Piano Competition in Vienna, and two When speaking of French music in Russia in the 1930s years later won the prestigious Ysaÿe Competition in Gilels said, ‘At that time the Impressionists in Odessa Brussels. The outbreak of World War II prevented his were very modern, almost the last word in music. In American début in 1939, and the first time he played addition to this the music was difficult to obtain. I was outside the Soviet Union after the War was in only able to borrow the music of Ravel’s Toccata for a Czechoslovakia in 1948, then in Poland, and he first single night. My sister and my father spent that whole played in the West in 1951 in Italy. night copying it out, and from this copy I learned The recordings on this compact disc were made in Ravel’s Toccata; it was with this piece that I won the the USSR and all come from the first stage of Gilels’s first prize in Moscow in 1933.’ Gilels recorded three career. It should be noted that it is difficult to date movements from Ravel’s suite Le Tombeau de recordings made in the USSR from this period with any Couperin in 1950 including the Toccata, and they can accuracy as access to recording session logs and be heard here along with Debussy’s Clair de lune from discographical material is limited. Gilels’s first 1946. 8.111350 2 3 8.111350 111350 bk Gilels EU 14/8/08 13:22 Page 4

GREAT PIANISTS • EMIL GILELS ADD Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764): Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without Words), Great Pianists • Emil Gilels 8.111350 Suite for harpsichord in E minor Book 3, Op. 38 1 X: La villageoise 2:09 ! No. 18 in A flat major, Op. 38, No. 6, ‘Duetto’ 3:13 Recorded in 1951; 78 rpm; CCCP 19533 Recorded in 1947; 78 rpm; CCCP 14574 2 V: Le rappel des oiseaux 2:40 Recorded in 1951; 78 rpm; CCCP 19534 Bedfiich Smetana (1824-1884): Czech Dances, Book 1 EARLY Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938): @ No. 2: Polka in A minor 2:22 Renaissance, Book 2 Recorded in 1950; 78 rpm; CCCP 18784 RECORDINGS • 1 3 XII. Gigue in E major (transcription of the Gigue # No. 3: Polka in F major 2:41 from Harpsichord Suite No. 1 in G minor Recorded in 1950; 78 rpm; CCCP 18785 1935-1951 by Jean-Baptiste Loeillet, 1680-1730) 2:06 Recorded in 1935; 78 rpm; CCCP 524 Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Suite bergamasque Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): $ III: Clair de lune 4:34 Piano Sonata No. 14 in C minor, K. 457 22:26 Recorded in 1946; Melodiya LP D 04046 4 I. Molto allegro 8:17 5 II. Adagio 9:23 Claude Debussy RAMEAU 6 III. Allegro assai 4:46 (arr. Leonard Borwick, 1868-1925) Recorded in 1950; Melodiya LP D 04046/7 Nocturnes MOZART % No. 2: Fêtes 6:08 Robert Schumann (1810-1856): Recorded in 1937; 78 rpm; CCCP 8241/42 7 Toccata in C, Op. 7 4:44 SCHUMANN Recorded in 1935; 78 rpm; CCCP 526/527 Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937): Fantasiestücke, Op. 12 Le Tombeau de Couperin 8 No. 7: Traumes Wirren 2:18 ^ I: Prélude 3:11 SMETANA Recorded in 1937; 78 rpm; CCCP 5077 & III: Forlane 6:52 Spanisches Liederspiel, Op. 74 * VI: Toccata 4:10 DEBUSSY 9 No. 10: Der Kontrabandiste (arr. C. Tausig) 1:49 Recorded in 1950; Melodiya LP D 04046 Recorded in 1935; 78 rpm; CCCP 525 All tracks recorded in the USSR RAVEL Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): 3 Fantaisies ou caprices, Op. 16 Producer: Jonathan Summers 0 No. 2: Scherzo 2:18 Audio Restoration Engineer: Ward Marston Recorded in 1940; 78 rpm; CCCP 10662 Special thanks to Donald Manildi Emil Gilels

8.111350 4 NAXOS Historical GILELS: Early Recordings • 1 8.111350

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TRANSLATIONS RESERVED. UNAUTHORISED PUBLIC PERFORMANCE, PUBLIC UNAUTHORISED RESERVED. TRANSLATIONS ALL RIGHTS IN THIS SOUND RECORDING, ARTWORK, TEXTS AND TEXTS ARTWORK, RECORDING, SOUND THIS IN RIGHTS ALL * & ^ % $ # @ ! 0 9 8 7 4 3 2 1 Special thanks:DonaldManildi Audio RestorationEngineer:Ward Marston Producer: JonathanSummers detailed tracklistcanbefoundinthebooklet. A Cover Photograph:EmilGilelsin1939[Private Collection] www.naxos.com - 6 8.111350 ADD o2 cez 2:18 All tracksrecordedintheUSSR,1935-1951 Toccata VI: Forlane Prélude III: I: Le Tombeau deCouperin Maurice Ravel: No. 2:Fêtes Nocturnes Claude Debussy, arr. Borwick: III :Clairdelune Debussy: Suitebergamasque No. 3:PolkainFmajor minor No. 2:Polkain A Smetana: CzechDances,Book1 flatmajor, Op.38,No.6,‘Duetto’ No. 18in A ohne Worte (Songswithout Words), Book3,Op.38 Lieder No 2:Scherzo Mendelssohn: 3Fantaisiesoucaprices,Op.16 No. 10:DerKontrabandiste(arr. C. Tausig) Spanisches Liederspiel,Op.74 7: TraumesNo. Wirren Fantasiestücke, Op.12 Toccata inC,Op.7 Schumann: Mozart: PianoSonataNo.14inCminor, K.457 Gigue inEmajor, afterLoeillet Godowsky: Renaissance,Book2 V: Lerappeldesoiseaux X: Lavillageoise harpsichordinEminor Rameau: Suitefor MLGILELS(1916-1985) EMIL Early Recordings•1(1935-1951) 22:26 4:10 6:52 6:08 4:34 2:41 2:22 3:13 1:49 2:18 4:44 2:06 2:40 2:09 3:11 tradition. intheRussian great master andsweepofa the grandeur itstillretained late inhiscareer volatile andexciting,even especially inhisyouth,wasfiery, the keyboard.Hisplaying, oldGilelshadat nineteen-year the shows theimmensepower Jean-Baptiste Loeilletimmediately arrangement ofthe 1935. LeopoldGodowsky’s first knownrecordings from andincludehis Gilels’s career come from thefirststageof recordings, madeintheUSSR, on thisfirstdiscofhisearly Odessa in1916. The recordings twentieth century, bornin greatest Russianpianistsofthe Emil Gilelswasoneofthe Playing 73:44 Time Gigue

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GILELS: Early Recordings • 1 • Recordings Early 8.111350 NAXOS Historical NAXOS