LEOPOLD GODOWSAY [J S LOOO

plano Recital |

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NO DORIS PINES, PIA

Produced by Robert Commagere

STEREO GS 1000

Piano Music of Leopold Godowsky

SIDE ONE

1. RAMEAU-GODOWSKY: Renaissance

Tambourin (3:12)—Carl Fischer, Inc.

_ GODOWSKY: Wienerisch (2:46)—Carl Fischer, Inc. NO

DORIS PINES, piano

SIDE TWO

32. GODOWSKY: Miniatures for Piano, Four Hands, Humoresque

with Linda Friedman (1:48)—Carl Fischer, Inc. 2. GODOWSKY: Java Suite

4. CHOPIN-GODOWSKY: Etude, Op. 10, No. 6 for the Left

Hand Alone (4:11)—Robert Lienau Musikverlag

5. CHOPIN-GODOWSKY: Badinage (1:37)—Robert Lienau Musikverlag 3. GODOWSKY: Java Suite

6. STRAUSS-GODOWSKY: Die Fledermaus (9:50)—

Robert Lienau Musikverlag

1. GODOWSKY: Sonata in E Minor

First Movement—Allegro (15:34)

Robert Lienau Musikverlag

Gamelan (2:56)—Carl Fischer, Inc.

Chattering Monkeys (2:00)—

Carl Fischer, Inc.

RELEASED TO HONOR THE CENTENARY OF A GREAT MUSICIAN

O lapidary ever practiced his craft with more finesse

than did Leopold Godowsky the art of music. With

ik ls fastidious precision Godowsky set to paper a great

Als 4 ‘I rq series of original works, transcriptions and paraphrases.

penn fA To look at them is to be hypnotized by their

: complex perfection; to hear them is to experience

romantic pianism at its outer limits. These works abound in linear writing of a sort equalled, perhaps,

only by Busoni or Sorabji. One looks back to Mozart and still

further to Bach for lines so consistently directed and voices so

carefully balanced. This music is real music—without any filler, any

excess. All its parts, so finely detailed, belong to the whole as

threads to a masterpiece of tapestry. Omit just one and an integral

part of the design is lost. Yet, despite the contrapuntal celebration

of Godowsky’s music, the piano never loses its identity. The tone

and mood of every Godowsky piece are grounded in an ambience of pianistic timbre, governed by a marriage of touch and pedal to a

degree almost loftily idealistic, and colored by a prismatic harmonic

imagination so sophisticated as to have escaped notice by all save

the most musically discerning. Because of their Olympian demands upon performers, Godowsky’s

works seldom appear in public recitals. The composer himself had

reservations about performing them before concert audiences though,

when he did, the results were sensational. His technique—finished,

polished as no other—encompassed every diabolical polyphonic

trap and with consummate ease made sparkle every jewel-like facet.

But Godowsky played even better at home before small groups of

colleagues and admirers. There he transcended himself, emerging

legendarily (in Harold Schonberg’s words) as “‘the ultimate phenome-

non. To James Huneker he was ‘‘the superman of piano playing.”

And Josef Hofmann told Abram Chasins, after an extraordinary

evening at Godowsky’s, ‘Never forget what you heard tonight;

never lose the memory of that sound. There’s nothing like it in this world .. .”’ Ferruccio Busoni, Rudolph Ganz, Mark Hambourg,

Vladimir de Pachmann and Moriz Rosenthal numbered among those

professionals who regarded Godowsky with respect bordering on

awe. But Godowsky did not compose as he did merely to astound.

His purposes were far more serious. Godowsky believed in the piano. He had faith that its expressive

and technical boundaries might be explored and extended beyond the horizons known to his 19th century forebears. Around the turn

of the century he unveiled his then-new transformations of the

Chopin Etudes—to the amazed delight of many and to the sheer horror of a few who clung to Chopin’s originals as to the Holy

Grail itself. These latter missed the point; highly creative composi-

tions can be built quite justifiably on other composers’ works,

themes or ideas if to do so adds to our perception of the originals

and if additional possibilities and implications are revealed. Godowsky turned to Chopin’s Etudes because they were “universally ac-

knowledged to be the highest attainment in the realm of beautiful

Noll ORT

pianoforte music combined with indispensible mechanical and technical usefulness” and because he needed “their solid and invulnerable foundation, for the purpose of furthering the art of pianoforte playing.”” Thus Godowsky did for Chopin what Busoni

did for Bach—during almost the same period—and the legacy of the piano grew still richer.

This record is a tribute to Godowsky’s fascinating output of

works both large and small. Its opening selection, Tambourin, comes from a set of “Free Transcriptions of Old Masterpieces” published collectively in 1906 as Renaissance. Rameau’s sturdy

little piece with its heavily emphasized downbeats emerges here

rather jauntily and in altogether more lightweight rhythmic garb.

Godowsky has shifted the recurrent low Es to beat two, inter-

mingled the tune and accompaniment patterns and connected every-

thing by a thin web of chromatic passing tones. Wienerisch is the 22nd of ‘‘24 Tone-fantasies in Three-quarter

Time” called Walzermasken (published in 1912, with a dedication to Dr. Wilhelm Stekel!) Here one finds all the charm of late romantic

salon music: whimsical up-and-down phrases, lavendar chord progres-

sions, supple figurations and the faint fragrance of sachet.

The little Humoresque belongs to a six-volume set of 46 Miniatures for piano four-hands which Godowsky composed in

1917 and revised in 1934. The upper part spans only five notes and was meant for a beginner to play; the lower, for the teacher, accompanies the simple melody with hushed chordal eighths and

sixteenths. Godowsky wrote that the beginner should be able “‘to start the art of piano playing with music as good and inspirational,

as aesthetic and character-building, as the music we hear at serious

public concerts” and that his aim was “‘to interest while I instruct; to educate while I entertain.”

The two Etudes, among the most marvelous and clever of Godowsky’s pieces, are found in the tremendous five-volume collec-

tion of 53 Studies on the Etudes of Chopin (published as a unit in 1914). The Etude in e-flat minor, op. 10, no. 6 sings forth to new

advantage in its guise for left hand alone. Godowsky has lavished

great care in creating a particularly beautiful garland of swirling thirty-second notes to bedeck Chopin’s doleful melody —with ravish- ing effect. Godowsky’s famous combination of the “Black Key”

and ‘Butterfly’ Etudes (op. 10 no. 5 and op. 25 no. 9 respectively) “was not intended,” he wrote, “‘as a virtuoso trick: the idea came...

as a musical ‘Espieglerie,’ as a polyphonic ‘Badinage’.”’ In his search for clarity he added, ‘“‘the whole study must sound light, graceful

and waggish!”’ The Fledermaus-Paraphrase, which dates from 1912, joins com-

pany with Godowsky’s other fantastic waltz transmutations (Wein,

Weib und Gesang, Kunsterleben and Schatzwalzer) under the awe- some genus ‘Symphonic Metamorphoses.” There a vast concept of the keyboard is exploited ingeniously, sumptuously, heartily —while

the listener is left gasping. In the realm of keyboard settings of

dance music these pieces have no peer.

Cover photos of Miss Pines by Robert Commagere/Genesis Records, Inc./225 Santa Monica Blvd./Santa Monica, California 90401

The first movement from the vast five-emovement Sonata in e

minor (1911) shows Godowsky’s masterful handling of a large traditional form. Broadly paced and rather tranquil, the movement

seems deeply felt (it bears the dedication, “to my dear wife’) and

almost a private matter of emotions and feelings. Its counterpoint

and polyrhythms serve the musical ideas with great subtlety, never

obtruding, ever aiding the unremitting forward flow. The Java Suite, twelve pieces arranged as four groups of three,

is part of a large project titled Phonoramas, subtitled “Tonal

Journeys for the Pianoforte.” It saw publication in 1925 and won widespread notoriety at once for its unabashed exoticism. Gamelan

evokes the sound and atmosphere of Java’s indigenous percussion orchestra—‘‘weird, spectral, bewitching.”’ The music begins languidly, becomes more agitated, rises to a clangorous climax and drifts away on the scented air. Chattering Monkeys on the Sacred Lake of Wendit is a scene of musical humor and animation. Godowsky

described it, ““On every side are jabbering monkeys. . . jumping from tree to tree, running up and down the trunks and branches, while

others, nearer the ground, are springing on and off the roofs of the

small hotel and the bath houses, snatching bananas from the visitors.” —FRANK COOPER

Professor of Piano, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana

MEBRGORIS PINES, who is a New Yorker, studied at the ® Julliard School with Ernest Hutcheson, After Hutche-

son’s death, she continued her studies with Clarence

Adler who wasa life-long friend of Leopold Godowsky. ™@ Miss Pines has played many recitals in the eastern

United States and Canada and won a standing ovation at her Vienna recital in the Brahmsaal where her program included

the Chopin B Flat Minor Sonata, the Schumann Carnaval and Pro-

kofiev’s Seventh Sonata. On Long Island, Miss Pines played the Liszt

E Flat Concerto with the Great Neck Symphony and, three years ago,

the Benjamin Britten Concerto with the Chautauqua Symphony.

Miss Pines is also a composer, and Leopold Stokowski and the NBC

Symphony performed her early work, The Wind, written when she

was nine. She later studied composition under Vittorio Giannini and Frederick Jacoby, and her works include fugues for piano, string quartets and orchestral works. Of her all-Godowsky recital, given in

honor of Clarence Adler, Robert Sherman of the New York Times writes ‘‘All of this music is tremendously complex, with overlays of voices and dovetailing contrapuntal figurations. Miss Pines sailed

through it in the best possible way: making it sound easy. Her

playing had dash and assurance, not to mention remarkable accuracy;

she produced a firm, fluid tone; she kept the thematic lines clear and the rhythms flexible.”

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