WILHELM BACKHAUS plays Chopin, Liszt, Schumann & encore pieces HMV recordings 192 5–1937

WILHELM BACKHAUS

plays Chopin, Liszt, Schumann

& encores and transcriptions

HMV RECORDINGS 1925–1937

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COMPACT DISC 1 (79.25) CHOPIN 12 Études Op 10 1. No 1 in C major ...... (1.57) 7. No 7 in C major ...... (1.21) 2. No 2 in A minor ...... (1.15) 8. No 8 in F major ...... (2.18) 3. No 3 in E major ...... (4.26) 9. No 9 in F minor ...... (1.51) 4. No 4 in C sharp minor ...... (1.52) 10. No 10 in A flat major ...... (2.18) 5. No 5 in G flat major ...... (1.26) 11. No 11 in E flat major ...... (1.36) 6. No 6 in E flat minor ...... (3.09) 12. No 12 in C minor ...... (2.33) Recorded on 4–5 January 1928; matrices Cc 12199-1 (1, 2, 7), 12403-1 (3), 12404-1 (4, 8), 12405-1 (5, 6), 12406-1 (9, 10) & 12407-2 (11, 12) (DB 1132/4) CHOPIN 12 Études Op 25 13. No 1 in A flat major ...... (2.05) 19. No 7 in C sharp minor ...... (4.36) 14. No 2 in F minor ...... (1.15) 20. No 8 in D flat major ...... (1.02) 15. No 3 in F major ...... (1.38) 21. No 9 in G flat major ...... (0.51) 16. No 4 in A minor ...... (1.37) 22. No 10 in B minor ...... (3.36) 17. No 5 in E minor ...... (2.33) 23. No 11 in A minor ...... (3.02) 18. No 6 in G sharp minor ...... (1.50) 24. No 12 in C minor ...... (2.19) Recorded on 4 January 1928; matrices Cc 12192-2 (1, 12), 12193-1 (2, 11), 12194-2 (3, 4, 8), 12197-1 (5, 6), 12195-5 (7) & 12198-1 (9, 10) (DB 1178/80)

25. CHOPIN Prélude in C major Op 28 No 1 ...... (0.52) Recorded on 30 October 1933; matrix 2B 5392-4 [part] (DB 2059)

26. CHOPIN Berceuse in D flat major Op 57 ...... (4.00) Recorded on 15 October 1928; matrix Cc 12191-4 (DB 1131)

27. CHOPIN Waltz in E flat major Op 18 ...... (4.27) Recorded on 4 January 1928; matrix Cc 12196-2 (DB 1131)

28. CHOPIN Waltz in D flat major Op 64 No 1 ...... (1.38) Recorded on 2 November 1925; matrix Cc 7150-1 [part] (DB 929)

29. CHOPIN Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor Op 66 ...... (4.34) Recorded on 30 October 1933; matrix 2B 5391-2 (DB 2059)

30. MENDELSSOHN/HUTCHESON Scherzo from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ ...... (4.29) Recorded on 28 January 1927; matrix CR 956-1A (DB 1195)

31. SMETANA Polka No 3 in F major from Czech Dances, Book 1 ...... (2.54) Recorded on 5 January 1928; matrix Cc 12410-1 (DB 1130)

32. DELIBES/DOHNÁNYI Waltz from ‘Naïla’ (abridged) ...... (4.07) Recorded on 2 November 1925; matrix Cc 7153-2 (DB 926) 3

COMPACT DISC 2 (80.44)

1. MOZART/BACKHAUS Serenade from ‘Don Giovanni’ ...... (2.30) Recorded on 5 January 1928; matrix Bb 12409-1 (DA 944)

2. SCHUBERT/BACKHAUS Marche militaire in E flat major D733 No 3 ...... (4.35) Recorded on 5 January 1928; matrix Cc 12200-2 (DB 1125)

3. SCHUBERT/LISZT Soirée de Vienne No 6 in A major S427 No 6 ...... (4.41) Recorded on 27 January 1936; matrix 2EA 3025-2 (DB 2809)

4. LISZT Waldesrauschen No 1 of Zwei Konzertetüden, S145 ...... (3.22) Recorded on 2 November 1925; matrix Cc 7149-1 (DB 929)

5. LISZT Liebesträume No 3 S541 No 3 ...... (3.54) Recorded on 2 November 1925; matrix Cc 7154-1 (DB 926)

6. LISZT Hungarian Rhapsody No 2 in C sharp minor S244 No 2 ...... (7.57) Recorded on 28 January 1927; matrices CR 952-1A & 953-1 (DB 1013)

7. SCHUMANN/LISZT Widmung S566 ...... (3.17) Recorded on 5 January 1928; matrix Bb 12408-1 (DA 944)

8. SCHUMANN Aufschwung No 2 from Fantasiestücke, Op 12 ...... (3.12) Recorded on 15 October 1928; matrix Bb 14642-1 (DA 1018)

9. SCHUMANN Traumes Wirren No 7 from Fantasiestücke, Op 12 ...... (2.38) Recorded on 28 January 1927; matrix CR 958-2A [part] (DB 1033)

10. SCHUMANN Nachtstück in F major Op 23 No 4 ...... (4.32) Recorded on 14 May 1937; matrix 2EA 4929-1 (DB 3224) SCHUMANN Fantasie in C major Op 17 11. Durchaus phantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen ...... (12.25) 12. Mässig: Durchaus energisch ...... (6.32) 13. Langsam getragen: Durchweg leise zu halten ...... (9.25) Recorded on 13 May 1937; matrices 2EA 4914-1, 4915-3, 4916-1, 4917-1, 4918-1, 4913-1 & 4919-3 (DB 3221/4)

14. ALBÉNIZ Triana No 3 from Iberia, Book 2 ...... (4.26) Recorded on 5 January 1928; matrix Cc 12402-1 (DB 1125)

15. ALBÉNIZ/GODOWSKY Tango Op 165 No 2 ...... (2.49) Recorded on 18 June 1928; matrix Bb 13829-2 (DA 1018)

16. MOSZKOWSKI Caprice espagnole Op 37 ...... (4.25) Recorded on 5 January 1928; matrix Cc 12411-1 (DB 1130)

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ROM HIS FIRST MAJOR RECITAL at age fifteen in 1899 until his final public Fconcert just one week before his death on 5July 1969, Wilhelm Backhaus’ career was one of the longest among the twentieth century’s prominent . The son of a businessman, Backhaus was born in that city on 26 March 1884. His first teacher was Alois Reckendorf, a professor at the Leipzig Conservatory, where Backhaus later studied. By the age of twelve Backhaus could instantaneously transpose Bach’s Preludes and Fugues at tempo into any key. The prodigy’s talents did not go unnoticed, and he received a written endorsement from , the famed conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Among Backhaus’ youthful keyboard icons were Ferruccio Busoni, Teresa Carreño, and Eugen D’Albert. The latter had studied with and was renowned for his over- whelming personality and volcanic style of playing. The fifteen-year-old Backhaus summoned up the courage to play for D’Albert, who consented to teach him. Backhaus had about twenty-five sessions with D’Albert, which recital at Queen’s Hall, where Backhaus played were sporadically held, and had less to do with twelve compositions selected by the audience instruction than providing ‘finishing touches’. on the spot. The ’s international breakthrough Indeed, Backhaus enjoyed a fruitful came in 1905 in Paris, when he gained first relationship with the British public, starting prize in the competition over in 1900 with a recital at St James’s runner-up Béla Bartók. (Another contender, Hall in Piccadilly. However, Backhaus regarded eliminated earlier on in the proceedings, was a pair of engagements the following year as Otto Klemperer.) That same year Backhaus part of Sir Henry Wood’s Promenade Concerts performed Richard Strauss’ Burleske in Berlin as his true professional debut. under the composer’s baton, and to his soon became a favourite destination, marked apparent delight. Scores of engagements by regular appearances with the Hallé followed, including one memorable London Orchestra under Hans Richter, and a short-

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lived professorship at the Royal Manchester mavens largely familiar with Backhaus’ latter- College of Music. Australian audiences, too, day status as an elderly doyen of the central welcomed Backhaus with open arms; his first Austro/German classics might be surprised to tour of the continent in 1923 encompassed at find a good amount of Romantic encore-type least 57 concert dates. fare and short pieces among his acoustic By contrast, it took Backhaus longer to and early electrical discs. No doubt Backhaus make headway in the United States, where he was encouraged to record such ‘lollipops’ first toured in 1912. In his book Speaking of for commercial purposes, yet the younger Pianists, Abram Chasins recalled Backhaus in Backhaus commanded a surprisingly wide and the early 1920s, playing ‘year after year to row eclectic public repertoire. upon row of vacant seats in the modest spaces In 1930, Backhaus and his Brazilian wife of Aeolian Hall. Onstage, Backhaus was a Alma Herzberg moved to , which shy, unaffected, recessive personality whose would become their permanent home base, sensational capacities were so unsensationally although he remained a key player in German projected that lay audiences remained totally cultural life under Nazi rule. He was appointed unconscious of his fabulous accomplishments. by Bernhard Rust (the Prussian Minister for Offstage, this pale, modest, silent man was an Education) in 1933 to serve on a commission unlikely drawing-room lion, especially in the convened to supervise the work of Berlin music early twenties, when anti-German sentiment organizations. According to Fred K Prieberg’s ran high.’ ‘A little show of bravura’, Backhaus Handbuch Deutsche Musiker 1933–1945, wrote, ‘will turn many of the unthinking Backhaus met Hitler as late as May 1933, and auditors into a roaring mob. This is, of course, accompanied him on a flight to Munich, while very distressing to the sincere artist who publishing the following statement in the strives to establish himself by his real worth.’ magazine Die Musikwoche: ‘Nobody loves Unlike his contemporaries Arthur German art and especially German music as Rubinstein and , who resisted glowingly as …’ On the other hand, recording until the late 1920s and early 1930s Nalen Anthoni’s 1997 article about Backhaus respectively, Backhaus embraced the medium’s for International Classical Record Collector potential from an early age, and is considered states that Backhaus was twice imprisoned in something of a gramophone pioneer. He made a labour camp for refusing to accompany his first recordings (for the Gramophone conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Company) in September 1908, and in July 1909 Philharmonic on a tour of occupied Europe. made the premiere recording of a piano In any event, Backhaus resumed concerto, the Grieg A minor, albeit drastically recording for HMV after the War, moving to abridged from its usual half-hour length down Decca in 1950, where he largely would to eight minutes on two sides of a double-faced concentrate on Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, 78 disc: such were antediluvian A&R practices Mozart and Schumann. After a 28-year- during the medium’s formative years. Piano absence Backhaus returned to New York’s

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Carnegie Hall in 1954 with an all-Beethoven recital released by Decca. He continued performing and recording up until his final recital on 28 June 1969 at the Carinthian Summer Festival in Villach, Austria, where he died a week later. Harold Schoenberg outlines German pianism’s characteristics in his landmark book The Great Pianists (Simon and Schuster, 1987). ‘The German school of piano playing’, he writes, ‘is one of scrupulous musicianship, severity, strength rather than charm, solidity rather than sensuality, intellect rather than instinct, sobriety rather than brilliance.’ Yet the extent to which Backhaus’ artistry embodies these traits varies from performance to performance, as the present collection bears out. , for one, found Backhaus to be ‘a wonderful pianist, not really representative of the German style’. Horowitz recalled that Backhaus ‘was far more relaxed than most of them. I once heard him play the Chopin études and it was remarkable. In the first one in C major not a single note fell under the piano. It was fantastic. He heard me play Liszt’s Feux follets and came up to me. “Horowitz,” he said, “I could never do that.” But he was being nice. He could have if he wanted.’ By and large, Backhaus substantiates Horowitz’s recollections throughout his premiere recording of the complete Chopin études cycle. The playing is direct, un- mannered and solid, both technically and tonally. To be sure, his conceptions avoid the sense of fantasy and charged rhetoric of Alfred Cortot’s later traversals, yet Backhaus’

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workmanship proves more consistently secure, amazing that Backhaus actually recorded the all the more impressive in an era before Czech master’s delightful F major Polka editing; what Backhaus played was exactly (‘Bohemian Dance’) no less than three times. what you heard. He makes light work of Op 10 Backhaus left far fewer examples of his No 7’s knotty alternating right-hand thirds and Liszt playing to posterity, yet his 1925 fifths, while spelling out No 11’s difficult-to- Waldesrauschen and Liebesträume No 3 lead voice spread chords with the greatest of ease. one to ponder how such headlong, authori- Notice, too, how Backhaus clearly differenti- tatively projected interpretations must have ates the right hand’s subtle textural shifts sounded in a decent-sized concert venue. throughout Op 10 No 10 and Op 25 No 5, as While there’s no doubting Backhaus’ idiomatic well as Op 25 No 12’s inexorable drive. Piano command in the Second Hungarian Rhapsody, connoisseurs take particular delight in he doesn’t let loose or indulge his fancy in the Backhaus’ Op 10 No 2 recording. In this étude, manner of Friedman, Cortot, Moiseiwitsch or the right hand’s weakest fingers must execute Hofmann, let alone go to Mark Hambourg’s a continuous swarm of semiquavers quickly extremes. Given Backhaus’ proclivities, it’s a and evenly. Backhaus accom plishes this with pity that he never recorded a work for which jaw-dropping nonchalance, even to the point of he was widely acclaimed as a youth, Liszt’s cheekiness in regard to his amplifying bass Bminor Sonata. lines with extra notes, and his improvised However, his 1937 recording of another arpeggiated figure at the very end. large-scale Romantic repertoire pillar, That the sessions of 4 and 5 January 1928 Schumann’s great C major Fantasie, Op 17, yielded both the complete études and a number not only stood as the 78 era’s benchmark of no-less-demanding encore-length show- version, but pretty much had the field to itself, pieces is testimony to the young Backhaus’ notwithstanding Walter Rehberg’s earlier unflappable professionalism and stamina. pioneering recordings. Backhaus gives the first Moszkowski’s flashy Caprice espagnole and movement’s fervently thrusting peaks and the colourful Triana from Albéniz’ Iberia lyrical valleys a fluid narrative trajectory with positively snap and sizzle in his supple hands. assiduous transitions, evoking writer Gertrude The pianist’s ambitious transcription of the Stein’s famous 1931 quote: ‘A sentence is not Serenade from Mozart’s Don Giovanni gives emotional a paragraph is.’ While Backhaus’ the impression of a third hand helping out. His basic tempo for the central movement’s Schubert E flat Marche militaire tran scrip - obsessive march is one of the fastest on record, tion manages to deploy the original piano duet it never seems rushed, due to the pianist’s scoring for two hands with minimum strain and sense of ebb and flow and ability to follow maximum effect: easier said than done. And Schumann’s long lines through to their final in an era when Bedrich Smetana’s prolific destinations. keyboard output had few takers (not that the As for the finale, Ates Orga aptly pin- situation is any different today!), it seems pointed Backhaus’ salient virtues: ‘… passages

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like the oscillating left-hand arpeggios are exemplary technical control towards musical giving direction and purpose, while the climaxes ends, making one regret that he did not record are strong-bound, the rounded chordal-graces the entirety of Schumann’s Op 12 Fantasie- short but not snatched.’ Moreover, Backhaus stücke. By contrast, the 1925 Chopin ‘Minute makes expressive points more through colour, Waltz’ is a rare example of Backhaus letting touch and dynamic gradation than through his hair down and showing off, seemingly tempo modification; notice, for example, his determined to set an Olympic speed record for shifts of emphasis between the hands and the outer sections! harmonically oriented accentuations in bars 23 However, the Schumann/Liszt Widmung to 27, while the perfectly placed off-beat chords arguably stands as this collection’s most vivid in bars 28 and 29 effect a magical transition demonstration of Backhaus as virtuoso and into the main theme’s reappearance in A flat poet combined (although some listeners may major (Disc 2, Track 13, 1:46). Such mindful veer toward the Delibes/Dohnányi Naïla sensitivity prevails throughout Backhaus’ Waltz). Here Schumann’s beloved melody reading. The pianist could often be perfunctory proudly rings out against the elaborate in slow movements, but not here. That the accompaniments to three-dimensional effect, American critic B H Haggin dismissed while the sweeping arpeggios scintillate Backhaus’ Schumann Fantasie as ‘shapeless’ without overwhelming the singer, so to speak. boggles the mind. In Aufschwung and By any standard, this is golden age pianism. Traumes Wirren, Backhaus channels his Jed Distler © 2018

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APR6027 WILHELM BACKHAUS The complete pre-War Beethoven recordings Piano Concerto No 4 in G major, Op 58 Piano Concerto No 5 in E flat major ‘Emperor’, Op 73 Piano Sonata in C minor ‘Pathétique’, Op 13 Piano Sonata in C sharp minor ‘Moonlight’, Op 27 No 2 Piano Sonata in E flat major ‘Les adieux’, Op 81a Piano Sonata in C minor, Op 111 BACH Preludes and Fugues Nos 1 & 22 (from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1)

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Executive Producer: Michael Spring Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn Special thanks to Donald Manildi/ International Piano Archives at the University of Maryland (IPAM) 11 12 www.aprrecordings.co.uk