Brahms

Harold Bauer, Wilhelm Backhaus, Edwin Fischer, Carl Friedberg, Myra Hess, Artur Rubinstein

by David Dubal









Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), the great master from Hamburg, was deeply grounded in piano technique by Eduard Marxsen, Hamburg's leading teacher and a formidable pianist. Brahms made his debut as a pianist at the age of fourteen, and continued to play periodically in public. In his earlier years he performed a massive literature, including the Beethoven Eroica and Diabelli Variations, Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, Schumann's Fantasy and Sonatas (giving the premiere of Schumann's F minor Sonata, Op. 14 in 1863). He also gave the world premieres of his own D minor and B flat major Piano Concerti.

Throughout his life Brahms had a fascination with piano technique, and in the Variations on a Theme by Paganini, Op. 35, he produced one of the most subtly and fiendishly difficult works in the literature. At the time of its composition he sought advice for them from Carl Tausig, Liszt's favourite pupil. Tausig and Brahms went through each Variation microscopically, with the result that in James Huneker's words, "these diabolical variations, the last word in the technical literature of the piano, are also vast spiritual problems. To play them requires fingers of steel, a heart of burning lava, and the courage of a lion." Brahms well understood that with the Paganini Variations he had opened a new chapter in the realm of piano technique. Discussing with Tausig Liszt's opera paraphrases, he called them the "classicism of piano technique." For the first performance of the Paganini Variations, Brahms decided that Tausig was better suited to the work's peculiar technical hardships. In later years, Brahms composed a volume of technical studies, which are not for performance but are immensely valuable as a key to his unusual pianism.

All of Brahms' piano music makes considerable demands on the player. Very little of it can be called conventionally 'easy' to play, most of it is extremely difficult, and the pianism is awkward and often jolting, not because of lack of pianistic skill, but because of his dense musical demands and unusual hand placement. Brahms is ever the contrapuntist and his cross-rhythms and endlessly inventive positioning of arpeggio figurations deep into bass territory make his music difficult to memorise.

This disc presents Brahms throughout his career from the Sonata in F minor, composed when he was 20, to the samples of his late music which he called "the cradle songs of my old age." Sending them one by one to his beloved Clara Schumann, he told her that "an audience of even one is too many."

Artur Rubinstein (1887-1982) was certainly one of the most famous pianists in history. His performing career was one of the longest chapters in the annals of piano playing, and he left an enormous legacy of recordings. Universally loved as a Chopin player, he championed a strong, virile Chopin - quite different from the often sugar-watered Chopin that was extremely fashionable when he was growing up. Rubinstein, born in Lodz, Poland, studied in Berlin with Heinrich Barth, one of the leading piano teachers of that city. He soon came under the guidance of Joseph Joachim, the great violinist, and a close friend of Brahms.

Rubinstein was introduced to Brahms' music shortly after the master's death by the pianist Lotte Hahn playing the piano part in the C minor and A major Piano Quartets. For the eleven-year-old boy it was a revelation and a life-long bonding with Brahms took place.

"From that day on," Rubinstein wrote, "Brahms became my obsession. I had to know everything he had written... I would read with ecstasy anything of Brahms which fell into my hands. I would buy his music on credit; I would have stolen money to get it! When anybody wanted to give me a present, it had to be some arrangement for two hands of a symphony, or a volume of songs, or some chamber music by the beloved master... I shall never forget Professor Barth's astonishment when I told him I wanted to learn the D minor Piano Concerto of Brahms, Op. 15. 'What, what?' he exclaimed. 'You are mad, my boy - that is a formidable work, much too difficult for you!' Well, I discovered that real love knows no obstacles. A week later I played the Concerto, to Barth's amazed satisfaction... The music of Brahms has been close to me even longer than that of my great countryman, Chopin."

Rhapsody in B minor, Op. 79, No. 1 is an astonishing work, filled with conflict and passion. Although the composer calls the score a Rhapsody, it is highly formal in construction, in fact a stylised rondo-sonata form.

Capriccio in B minor, Op. 76, No. 2. This work is a very tricky staccato study with a magical modulation. The late pianist Bruce Hungerford wrote, "The piece is one of the shortest rondo-sonata movements in all music." Brahms, no matter how fanciful, is always the master of Classic form.

Born in London, Harold Bauer (1873-1951) began his musical life as a violinist, but the urge to be a pianist proved irresistible. Although he had mastered and publicly performed a great deal of violin literature he had virtually no formal training on the piano.

However, Bauer was not one to flinch from his goals. He wrote, "Because our ancestors were brought up to study the piano in a certain way... along... rigid lines does not mean there are no better, broader, and less limited ways of reaching the goal we seek. The only technical study of any kind I have ever done has been that technique which has had an immediate relation to the musical message of the piece I have been studying."

In an interview from 1915, the iconoclastic Bauer told Harriett Brower, "There are a great many methods of teaching the piano, but to my mind they are apt to be long, laborious, and do not reach the vital points... much time will be wasted in useless labour. I came to Paris years ago as a violinist, but there seemed no opportunity for me then in that direction. There was opportunity, however, for ensemble work with a good violinist and 'cellist. So I set to work to acquire facility on the piano as quickly as possible. I consulted all the pianists I knew - and I knew quite a number - as to what to do. They told me I must spend many months on technique alone before I could hope to play respectably, but I told them I had no time for that. So I went to work to study out the effects I needed. It didn't matter to me how my hand looked upon the keyboard, whether my fingers were curved, flat, or stood on end. I was soon able to get the effects I wanted..."

"I study a work in the first place from the musical side. I see what may be the meaning of the music, what ideas it seeks to convey, what was in the composer's mind when he wrote it. I get a good general idea of the composition as a whole; when I have this I can begin to work out the details." Bauer's performances of Brahms were highlights of his recitals and it was with the D minor Concerto that he made his American debut.

Intermezzo in E flat major, Op. 117, No. 1. This is a lullaby of unsurpassed simplicity, with a folk-like quality.

Intermezzo in E minor, Op. 119, No. 2 is a work of extreme loveliness. Huneker says, "its poco agitato is the rustling of the leaves in the warm west wind, but they are flecked with the sunshine. A tremulous sensibility informs the andantino, and its bars are stamped with genius."

When Myra Hess (1890-1965) was born, London's musical life was thriving as never before. Just before her birth, the indomitable Clara Schumann had made annual tours in Britain where she was idolised. It was a great age of pianists. Liszt himself had died only four years before her birth, and Anton Rubinstein died only four years after. Hess was of the generation of Artur Schnabel, Ignaz Friedman, Edwin Fischer, Artur Rubinstein, Egon Petri, Wilhelm Backhaus and many others who would achieve high distinction in the pianistic world.

In 1902, at the age of twelve, she won a medal and a scholarship to the Guildhall School. However, she was not a typical prodigy and unlike many gifted children, she was spared any exploitation. Years later she said, "I was a very slow worker. I'm glad I didn't have to begin the life of an artist when I was a child. That is tragic. At twenty they are saying she is not such a good artist as she was at ten."

Myra Hess was thirteen when she met Irene Scharrer, three years older and a talented pianist who at the time had made her debut with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Scharrer encouraged Hess to audition for her own teacher, the venerable Tobias Matthay at the Royal Academy of Music. It was immediately apparent to Matthay that a rare talent was given to him to develop. Hess adored him, and of those early lessons she wrote, "I had a startling awakening to all the beauties of the music of which I had not even dreamed... Till then, I had just played, now I began to think." Even after his death forty years later, Hess remarked, "He is always beside me when I play." Much later in the 1920s, with Hess's increasing fame, due to her indefatigable American concertising, there began an American migration of students travelling to London to receive Matthay's wisdom. The prestige of a single student often swells the ranks of the teacher's studio.

Hess made her official debut on November 14, 1907 at the Queen's Hall. For the concert, she raised the money not only to rent the hall, but to hire the New Symphony Orchestra under its young conductor Thomas Beecham, who was also making his first appearance at the Queen's Hall. Hess performed the Saint-Saëns Fourth Concerto and the Beethoven Fourth Concerto. The reviews were mixed, one critic declaring, "Miss Hess plays as a poet writes." Two months later she made a solo debut at London's Aeolian Hall; on the programme, she played selections from Brahms's Opp. 117 and 119. One critic condemned her hard-edged tone, which "hurt more in the Intermezzi of Brahms, for in them she was rather inclined to exaggerate every feature both of tone and tempo." And thus notice was first taken of a composer she would continue to champion and cherish throughout her career.

She had long been an exponent of the Brahms D minor Concerto, but had avoided the B flat Concerto, fearing that her small hands would not do justice to its massive chordal requirements. She wrote to Adrian Boult, saying, "I think the time has come for us to do the Brahms B flat, and if we don't do it soon, I shall be too old." Boult acknowledged her need and together in October of 1938 she played her 'first' Brahms B flat. Many feel that the 'live' recorded performance she made with Bruno Walter in 1951 is one of the greatest presentations of this work.

By World War II Hess was one of the major pianists; by war's end, she became to the public more than a pianist: she was a heroine. From 1939 until 1946, a time when musical life was severely curtailed in London, she helped organise, played in, and was the major force behind the National Gallery afternoon concerts. After the war, her interpretative talent reached its full potential in magisterial readings of Beethoven Sonatas and the Brahms Sonata in F minor. The American pianist Ronald Rogers describes a 1956 performance of the Brahms at the University of Michigan: "She was like a colossus sitting at the keyboard. Her enormous arm weight, learned from Matthay, enforced the powerful wave of sound which rose up from the instrument, engulfing the audience. It was an awesome power, but totally controlled. I shall never forget that opening movement, with its burning passion, its ungainly pianism. The whole monumental work submitted to her will."

Intermezzo in C Major, Op. 119, No. 3. A score of only one-and-a-half minutes, marked giocoso, it is a study in cross-rhythms and the theme is in the middle voice. Its three pages are unrivalled in all of Brahms for rhythmic elasticity and sheer happiness.

Rhapsody in E-flat, Op. 119, No. 4. Here is Brahms the conqueror. It has a massive, Schumann-like quality, and its middle part includes a legato melody with staccato accompaniment. The Rhapsody was to be the last piano piece composed by Brahms.

Wilhelm Backhaus (1884 -1969). Born in Leipzig, his early studies were at the Leipzig Conservatory with Alois Reckendorf. At the age of fifteen Backhaus took some lessons with Eugene d'Albert, and made his official debut in 1900. For the next few years he played throughout England and Europe. In 1905 he won the coveted Rubinstein Prize with Béla Bártok taking second place.

Backhaus was one of the first pianists to record, doing so as early as 1909. Success came easily to him except in the United States, where he played frequently until the 1920's when he gave up trying to establish a solid American career. American audiences had long been conditioned to the stars of Slavic pianism, many of whom had the tendency to place virtuosity and personality before solid and meticulous musicianship. Of his American experience, the pianist bitterly wrote, "a little show of bravura will turn many of the unthinking auditors into a roaring mob. This is of course, very distressing to the sincere artist who strives to establish himself by his real worth." However, if America did not take to Backhaus's sterner art, he nevertheless was successful in England, Europe and in South America, where in 1921 he gave seventeen concerts in Buenos Aires in less than three weeks. As the record-buying public increased, Backhaus was given many of the chief assignments in recording the literature, and his readings of the Schumann Fantasy, works by Brahms, history's first recorded traversal of Chopin's Twenty-Four Etudes, peerless in execution, were musts in any collection. Beethoven was his major musical occupation and he recorded the entire sonata-cycle twice.

Through seventy performing seasons, Backhaus established himself as one of the century's greatest German pianists. In 1954, he returned to Carnegie Hall where he was finally understood to be one of the great musicians of his time. Backhaus in his best playing displayed a wonderfully muscular animality in which a superb life force was at work. His vitality could be breathtaking and he was one of the technical giants of his time; his technique was never showy, but as solid as a rock formation. His finger dexterity was especially marvellous. Even at the age of eighty-five his technical health was impressive, as he continued to diligently work daily at scale practice, which he found indispensable. A true craftsman, Backhaus said, "I have to overhaul my technique once or twice a week, to see that everything is all right - and of course, the scales and arpeggios come in for their share of criticism... An artist owes it to himself and the public to keep himself in perfect condition - for he must never offer the public anything but the best." It is interesting to note that Backhaus was a great admirer of the Brahms technical exercises.

One of Backhaus's specialities was the Brahms Paganini Variations, which on this Duo-Art roll he recorded numbers 1, 3, 7, 12 and 13 from Book One, and numbers 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 14 from Book Two. The practice of choosing samples from both Books was common practice from Paderewski through Michelangeli.

The Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 35 were composed in 1866 and are based on Paganini's Twenty-Fourth Caprice in A minor, Op. 1, itself a set of variations. They remain a legend in the piano world. Pianists speak of them in a reverential tone. To instil them with life, a pianist must have artistry surpassing merely good technique. Many of the variations pose strenuous and dangerous muscular problems which have caused many a case of tendonitis if the player is not particularly careful.

Carl Friedberg (1872-1955) was born in Bingen-on-the-Rhine, Germany. Friedberg began piano at the age of four. When he was eleven, the family settled in Frankfurt, where he later studied at the Frankfurt Conservatory, with James Kwast, later to be Percy Grainger's teacher. In 1887 he played for Clara Schumann, the head of the piano faculty of the Conservatory, and Friedberg was accepted as a pupil. It was an association that Friedberg forever valued. Through Clara Schumann, he met Brahms, who encouraged him. In 1890, he took orchestration lessons at the Hoch Conservatory with Humperdinck. On short notice, early in 1891, Friedberg substituted for Eugene d'Albert, giving the first performance in Frankfurt of the Strauss Burleske for Piano and Orchestra. Later in the year, he toured Spain as Pablo de Sarasate's accompanist.

Mahler was the conductor for Friedberg's debut with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1892. For the rest of his life he was a busy concert artist and inspiring teacher. In 1924 he was appointed to the first faculty of the opening of the Institute of Musical Art, later to be called the Juillard School, where he taught for the rest of his life.

He died in Italy on his way to give master classes and to perform, and is buried in Merano. Many of his pupils such as Lonny Epstein, Vivian Rivkin, Malcolm Frager, Bruce Hungerford, and William Masselos went on to have fine careers.

Friedberg was a distinguished Brahms player. Of a performance in 1933 with Bruno Walter of the B flat Concerto, Olin Downes wrote, "It was a performance by a pianist who knew the grand manner, and whose traditions are particular of the period that saw the culmination of Brahms's creative career."

Indeed, Friedberg was fortunate in having Brahms's personal advice. In 1893, the young pianist gave an all-Brahms recital in Vienna, performing the F sharp minor Sonata, Op. 2, the Paganini Variations, four of the Eight Pieces, Op. 76, several Waltzes, the two Rhapsodies, Op. 79, and the Six Pieces, Op. 118.

Friedberg years later related that Brahms took him to dinner, and at three in the morning, stroked his beard and said, "You know, you played very wonderfully young man, but you mustn't do that again. You must not play a whole evening of Brahms. People don't like that; they don't want me. I am not yet popular enough. Play other things and only one work of mine..." Later Brahms went through his entire solo output with Friedberg.

To an interviewer, Friedberg remarked "I believe in making everything musical, in always making the tone beautiful, even in technical exercises and scales. The piano is more than a thing of metal and wood; it can speak, and the true artist will draw from it wonderful tones."

Ballade in B minor, Op. 10, No. 3. Brahms composed the Four Ballades, Op. 10, in 1856, the year Schumann died, and they flow from the well of his inspiration. The Ballade in B minor - called Intermezzo - is a goblin-haunted work of the forest tinged with an eerie quality.

Edwin Fischer (1886-1960) was born in Basel, Switzerland. He studied in Berlin with the Liszt pupil Martin Krause, who later taught Claudio Arrau. From 1905 and for nearly a decade, Fischer, one of the finest teachers of his instrument, taught at Berlin's famed Stern Conservatory. He played chamber music, conducted with great verve, and wrote several books, including one on the Beethoven Sonatas. His master classes were filled with students from all over the world, and in his later years he advised in these classes such outstanding talents as Barenboim, Paul Badura-Skoda, Demus, Brendel and many others. Like his contemporaries, Schnabel and Backhaus, he was serious-minded, and played best the 'mainstream' German classics, from Bach to the Romantics.

Fischer was a monumental pianist, who suffered from nervous tension but who played in an electrifying manner. There was never a dull moment, and his musical brain teemed with ideas. His career as a performer developed slowly, but Fischer's burning Classicism attracted such great conductors as Walter, Mengelberg, and Furtwängler.

His lean but passionate presentations of the great classical repertoire have been highly influential to younger pianists. Paul Badura-Skoda said, "Fischer had all the bearings of genius. Everything he did was creative, different, touched by a different source... And yet his massive gifts did not always come through in public. There were moments of agony in his concert. He was so overly sensitive that he could sabotage his own recitals." In later years he suffered terribly from arthritis, but continued playing even while in pain.

Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5. The Sonata is in five movements and is one of the largest sonatas in the active literature, taking up to forty-five minutes in performance. All that Brahms had attained in the previous two Sonatas is now synthesised. Brahms prefaces the second movement with lines from the poet Sternau:

The twilight glimmers, by moonbeams lighted, Two hearts are here in love united And laced in blest embrace.

Claudio Arrau has said of the slow movement: "For me, it is the most beautiful love music after Tristan."


© 1996 David Dubal

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