Ignaz Friedman (1882-1948) The Pianist and Composer

By Georg Predota, Interlude

Ignaz Friedman is considered one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century. Performing around the globe, Friedman lived in Berlin, Copenhagen, Italy, and from 1940 onwards, in Sydney, Australia. Friedman performed well over 3,000 concerts during his career, and his reputation as a performer was legendary. Rachmaninoff was greatly impressed by Friedman’s playing and considered him “a great virtuoso in a style more romantic than his own.”

Ignaz Friedman

Not to be outdone, Vladimir Horowitz described him as his technical superior and added “Ignaz Friedman was a great artist. He had wonderful fingers and a very personal, individual way of playing, even if some of his ideas were very strange to me.” It is less well-known that Friedman was an astute editor. He issued the complete works of Chopin, earning high praise from Claude Debussy. Friedman also edited a number of works by Schumann and Liszt alongside Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias and produced a large number of transcriptions and arrangements. His genius as a pianist, however, has greatly overshadowed his work as a composer. The vast majority of his roughly 90 works are essentially unknown today. I believe it’s high time to meet Ignaz Friedman the composer. So let’s get started with Friedman’s set of variations on a very popular theme by Paganini.

Transcription by Ignaz Friedman

Friedman was a child prodigy with incredible pianistic potential, and he also appears to have started composing at an early age. The earliest mention of an original composition, played by Friedman in a concert on 11 March 1898 makes mention of a piano trio. The critic writes, “Friedman’s trio for piano, violin, and cello shows talent but elements of the composer’s talent should be kept aside until he’s mature to produce something artistically valid.” That particular composition did not survive, and it may well have been destroyed after Friedman read the review. We do know that he studied composition privately with Hugo Riemann in Leipzig. In fact, Riemann presented a reference letter to Friedman. “Herr Ignaz Friedman was my student in piano and composition from the autumn of 1900 until the autumn of 1901. I gladly attest to the fact that he has a very strong talent for the profession of musician… Also in original composition, he has shown talent and considerable promise.” Friedman would soon include his original compositions in his recital programs, such as the four piano pieces Op. 27, which “possess the melodic invention of the character pieces of Schumann, Grieg, and Brahms with the lush harmonic inventiveness of Chopin, Scriabin and Rachmaninoff mingling with some Polish folkloric inspiration.” 

While salon pieces for domestic consumption presently don’t rank particularly high, they were once the foundation of an entire musical culture. It is worth remembering that outstanding composers and performers wrote salon pieces that contained musical allusions, jokes, and even brief moments of contemplation. After all, they addressed highly educated and artistically inclined audiences. It was left to the technical skill of the professional performer to “bring out the modulations, diversify the sound, introduce subtle shades of articulation, and highlight the changing moods.” They are not merely museum pieces, but a significant part of Western musical heritage. Yet their reception history has been less than kind from the very beginning. Karol Szymanowski complained about Friedman’s works being printed on the verso of his score. He writes, “It always irks me to see on the final page of my Sonata and Variations the list of hundreds of Friedman’s horrible ditties; I admit it is childish of me, but I gladly admit it. Friedman’s five charming waltzes for piano four hands date from 1912, and these “ditties” are saturated with pianistic gestures best left to the professionals.” 

For Harold C. Schonberg, a renowned and long-time critic of the New York Times, music “begins with Bach, Handel, and Gluck.” As he once wrote, “I do not want a modern approach to Bach, I want Bach’s approach to Bach.” Schoenberg greatly admired Friedman the pianist, and probably also Friedman’s Passacaglia in F minor, Op. 44, dedicated to his fellow pianist Josef Hofman. The work begins in the style of Bach with a statement of the passacaglia theme in the base. However, the chromatic nature of Friedman’s theme provides some indication of the bold developments to come. Initially, the theme is kept in the bass but soon transfers to the right hand with an increasingly fast accompaniment. Not entirely unexpected, Friedman presents an inverted version of the theme almost entirely obscured by dense chromatic harmonies. It takes a power tremolando for the main theme to return to the bass register. Some additional counterpoints and deceptive cadences bring the work to a simple close in F major. A commentator wrote, “With a final suggestion of the theme landing on an E flat, could it have possibly been a tribute to the end of Chopin’s F Major Prelude?” 

Ignaz Friedman’s Mazurka score

For Schonberg, “Friedman’s style was completely his own, and it was marked by a combination of incredible technique, musical freedom (some called it eccentricity), a tone that simply soared, and a naturally big approach, with dynamic extremes that tended to make a Chopin mazurka sound like an epic. He handled a melodic line inimitably, deftly outlining it against the bass, never allowing it to sag, always providing interest with a unique stress or accent. As he thought big, he played big. Friedman was a force, a powerful, unusual, original pianist, sometimes erratic but always fascinating, and always full of imagination and daring.” Friedman’s native affinity with the Mazurka is heard not only in his rousing recordings of Chopin mazurkas but also in a series of his own mazurka compositions, which combine pianistic and compositional refinement with idiosyncratic, rustic charm. The originality and beauty of the Friedman mazurkas confirms that he was a master of the character piece. Although harmonically complex yet always tonal, Friedman lets the beauty and poignancy of the melody shine through, while rhythm becomes a signpost to the genre. As a performer writes, “Pianistically accessible, Friedman’s works demand technical and musical perfection.”

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For Friedman, Poland evoked poverty and anti-Semitism, yet it also provided his cultural base. As a pianist, he represented the musical culture of Vienna and Berlin, “and to a lesser extent, Poland, the land of his origins, which had “imposed upon him the dual status of Pole and Jew.” Friedman spoke Polish elegantly, “infused with archaisms inspired by romantic poets.” He was an ardent supporter of Polish autonomy, but he never considered returning to live in Poland after it had gained independence. Situated between self-destructive Russia and militarist Prussia, Poland had been partitioned. Foreign occupation led to “the air in Poland always being oppressive; one breathes in elements of melancholy there that constrict the heart, and one always has the feeling that life is not completely real.” Friedman and his generation remained undisturbed by Modernism. “His sympathy was with the rural culture of Poland, first shaped while dancing with peasants in their villages… He felt very much Polish, down to earth, not intellectually, but really felt the power of the earth.” 

Friedman’s compositions possess great melodic beauty and harmonic inventiveness, clothed in the character of the late Romanticism. Composed in 1918, Stimmungen (Moods) presents nine instrumental poems dedicated to Sergei Rachmaninoff. Friedman enjoyed a cordial relationship with Rachmaninoff, who tried to invite him for a visit to his house in New York in 1927. Rachmaninoff writes, “Evidently, to receive you as a guest is as difficult as buying asparagus at Christmas. I propose the following. It is possible to come for dinner on 30 December? I promise to release you at ten so you can go and play cards.” Rachmaninoff’s musical and technical influence is clearly audible in this set, as is Friedman’s love for the pensive and passionate music of Grieg, and the city of Vienna. The German title “Stimmung” implies harmony between the instrument and an internal spiritual condition. Friedman projects a number of moods connected to Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Grieg, and Scriabin. “The mysterious and soulful final piece is a small set of variations in Russian style with lush harmonic wanderings that bring the set to a somber close.”

Commentators and critics tended to focus on Friedman’s technical prowess. Joseph Marx writes, “Weightlessly, his hands glide on the keys, his fingers move only as much as necessary, every small movement is controlled. Everything seems so effortless that pianistic problems disappear like snow in the sun. One can hardly follow him as his hands run over the keys so quickly. Nevertheless, everything remains so clear, as though a light veil covered the playing and removed the brilliance, a certain shiny tone that salon players sometimes have. But I don’t say to myself that it is a mistake, on the contrary. The shadings in the pianissimi are astonishing as the scale goes from p to pppp, as rich as his poco forte to fff.” And the leading Hungarian critic Aladar Toth added, “Compared to mechanical technique, Friedman’s technique is a true recreation in its poetic, unconstrained, and impulsive free variety… The sensuous magic of the piano sounds could almost daze or even fool the listener for minutes. But the old mixer of tone colors doesn’t give up and spreads out the silks and velvets and expensive furs to an ever-dwindling public. However, Friedman’s most infamous charlatanisms have more in common with art and poetry than those young bravura player who, with their factory-made techniques, earn millions of dollars in America.” 

Friedman’s Vienna debut on 22 November 1904 created a sensation after he played three virtuoso piano concerti, Brahms D minor, Tchaikovsky B-flat minor, and Liszt E-flat major. The teenage Friedman had come to Vienna to study with the famed Theodore Leschetizky, himself a student of Carl Czerny. Initially, Leschetizky told him “that he would be better off to play tuba,” and sent him to his assistant Malwine Brée. Essentially, Brée helped students solve mechanical problems, and she “offered a pragmatic and musical wrist exercise to develop an even touch.” Friedman later said that “it all began with a definite technical scheme, but that only went so far as great piano playing is concerned. It was only the beginning, which every pianist should have. Then the greatness of Leschetizky came in.” Eventually, Friedman became Leschetiziky’s favorite student, and he appointed him as an assistant. Leschetizky later said that Friedman “possessed the three prerequisites needed to make a great musician: Slavic origins, Jewish heritage, and child prodigy.” During his Vienna years, Friedman performed a number of transcriptions by Schulz-Evler and Godowsky, and he set to work on a number of themes sung by Viennese court opera baritone Eduard Gärtner.

Ignaz Friedman: 6 Wiener Tänze nach Motiven von Eduard Gärtner (Joseph Banowetz, piano) 

Friedman’s Piano Quintet score

Among the surviving Friedman compositions, his Piano Quintet in C minor is regarded as his finest piece. Composed in 1918, the circumstances surrounding the compositions are still vague, but it “has been suggested that it may have been inspired by the death of the composer’s father and that the theme of the third movement, derived from Polish folk music, maybe a tribute to him.” We do know, however, that the work is dedicated to Maria Christina, Archduchess of Austria and Queen Regent of Spain. The somber mood of the opening movement might well have been inspired by the horror of World War I, “while the melancholy ending might be a musical glance at a world that had gone forever.” That melancholy is most prominently heard in a waltz-like section that might have come straight from Strauss’ Rosenkavalier. The expressive second movement features an expansive set of themes and variations. The theme is basically a succession of three short motifs, and every successive variation sounds like an independent miniature. The concluding finale is titled “Epilogue,” and features a Polish folk tune that undergoes a number of transformations. Naxos Music has issued the complete recordings of Ignaz Friedman between 1923 and 1941, and a number of performers have taken on his compositions. Together, we are finally getting a more complete picture of one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century.

Why Learning to Play the Piano or Any Musical Instrument Saves Lives

by Janet Horvath, Interlude

“Once you’ve sung in a choir, or played in a band or orchestra, or played in any music ensemble, you’re never the same again. Your ears, your eyes, and your heart are opened up in ways not possible by any other means. Music feeds us, it nourishes us, and it brings us great joy.” Vaughn Fleischfresser, music educator, music education advocate, speaker, Edinburgh, Scotland.

The music room is a haven, a place of friendship and belonging. Music teachers teach us much more than simply how to play an instrument. They instill the importance of hard work, to believe in oneself, and the joys of working together for a common goal. I can remember how often my high school classmates and friends would congregate in the music room before school and after school, during lunch period, and even when they were supposed to be somewhere else. It was the one class we truly looked forward to. Making music made us want to go to school. That was my experience in junior high and high school—the music classroom was my home base and refuge. The concerts and performances sometimes of hit musicals such as Bye Bye Birdie, which we did in my day, or Amahl and The Night Visitors—a Holiday favorite—and musicals such as Gypsy, My Fair Lady, and Mamma Mia are occasions for the teamwork, collaboration, preparation, and cooperation for weeks or months.

The results are often astonishing, achieving levels that impress not only parents and teachers in attendance, but also the kids themselves who see what interaction and working consistently can achieve. And look what can happen! A high school student composer Lang Chen, has the opportunity to collaborate with his bandmates. 

Music making is transformative encouraging unity and stirring self-confidence. For those young people who do not fit it otherwise, who don’t excel in sports, who might be shy, or who speak another language, or who have learning challenges, it is inclusive, affirming, and lifesaving.

Later in life, the benefits of being able to play continue. Let us set aside the huge contribution of the music industry to the economy of a country for a moment. Ensemble playing teaches us the power of shared experience, shared feelings, and shared goals. The unification of many artists working together to produce beauty ultimately is what makes an orchestra, choir, or band potentially the greatest musical instrument. And what other activity is there that brings people together of all ages, of different communities and backgrounds, of varied cultures and abilities, no matter their station in life, who come together oftentimes weekly to connect, and to make music. For many, it’s the highlight of their week. The inclusivity makes an impact. For example, listen to this inspiring collaboration—amateurs and professionals here work together in this performance of Amahl and the Night Visitors presented by On Site Opera at the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen sung by an amateur chorus who have been impacted by homelessness.

Studies have shown that playing a musical instrument is a workout for both sides of the brain. It increases brain matter since it involves reading (the visual), listening (the auditory), memory, and emotion; it improves dexterity, fine motor skills, and, in fact, every major part of the nervous system. Studying note-reading has been compared to the benefits of learning a different language (because it is!)

And it’s never too late. Results from a study of individuals who started to play piano between the ages of 60 and 85 noted that “after six months, those who had received piano lessons showed more robust gains in memory, verbal fluency, the speed at which they processed information, planning ability, and other cognitive functions as compared with those who had not received lessons.” (Penn Medicine News, by Sally Sapeega 2017.)

Music ensembles in schools, in youth and community orchestras and bands, in church and synagogue choirs, and in chamber music reading sessions help us connect. There are several organizations that do just that. The Chamber Music Connection in Ohio, Debra Price Barrett artistic director, a long-time organization for youth musicians, has had astounding success and an enviable history and mission:

The mission of Chamber Music Connection (CMC) is to teach and perform chamber music at the highest level, benefiting students of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities. Our vision is to use chamber music to promote personal and musical growth and development while building our sense of community and interconnectedness in the lives of our students. By fostering both leadership and collaboration, CMC strives to build skills not only for music but for life.

Here is a concert featuring cellist Jaden Tugaoen in the Elgar Cello Concerto accompanied by some of their young musicians. Their enthusiasm during the ovation says it all! 

Another program is the award-winning Young Chamber Musicians (YCM) in San Francisco with its 16-year history, which offers advanced chamber music instruction and exciting performance opportunities to string players and pianists ages 14-19. 

Music education should never be cut from school curriculums. Music learning not only enhances all learning, but it can also contribute to bettering our fractured world.

Scriabin’s Color Symbolism in Music

by Ursula Rehn Wolfram, Interlude

In my last article I discussed Čiurlionis’ genius, single-handedly introducing Symbolism to his native Lithuania. Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) in contrast, lived and worked within well-established artistic traditions in Russia, in which the various avant-garde movements in music and art from Western Europe had flourished. By 1893, the works of Verlaine, Mallarmé, Maeterlinck, Poe, Ibsen, Strindberg had been translated into Russian as had Schopenhauer’s work ‘Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung’ (The World as Will and Presentation). Kant and Nietzsche were also widely read in Russia at that time.

Alexander Scriabin

Initially a literary-philosophical movement, Russian Symbolism grew from these western European roots, and took different forms in the musical circles of St. Petersburg and Moscow. St. Petersburg, always more directed to and open towards the west — Czar Peter the Great had founded the city as a ‘Window to the West’ — produced many great operatic composers, such as Glinka, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, whose opera ‘The Golden Cockerel’ can be considered to follow the Symbolist tradition. The Moscow School, more oriented towards ‘Old Russia’ and its mystical past, primarily focused on instrumental music with composers such as Scriabin, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. Scriabin wrote mainly for the piano, with — among his oeuvre — ten sonatas, 83 preludes, 101 piano pieces; five symphonies, one piano concerto. He frequented the Symbolist literary circle in Moscow, whose greatest theoretician was Andrej Belyi.

Title Page For Scriabin’s – Symphonie Prométhée

In 1904 Scriabin participated in the Fourth Philosophical Congress in Geneva, whose main topics were the works of Fichte and Bergson. In his annotated notes of the various lectures, Scriabin focused on the ideas of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, in particular on Nietzsche’s ‘Zarathustra’ and the concept of the ‘Űbermensch’ – Nietzsche’s ‘Superman’. In his later years, he would see himself as a ‘Superman’, who would lead like a prophet, evoking Baudelaire’s concept of the role of the poet, and would liberate humanity through the ‘mystery of music, color, dance, and scents’ – through the experience of true ‘synesthesia’. Artistic creation for him became a state of ‘mystical ecstasy’ similar to a divine revelation. His symphonies from then on carry titles such as ‘poèmes/poems’ e.g. ‘Le divin poème/The divine poem’, Symphony No. 3; ‘Le poème de l’Extase/Poem of Ecstasy’ op. 54’, Symphony No.4, 1908; ‘Prométée/Prometheus’, ‘Le poème du feu/Poem of Fire’, Symphonie No. 5, 1911 for piano, choir and color piano. 

With this Prometheus composition, Scriabin enters the realm of the ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, the concept of the ‘total work of art’, where music, colors (the predominant force), word elements and philosophy all work together. The piano in ‘Prometheus’ embodies the Promethean spirit, which shows man defying the gods in bringing fire to the earth, for which Scriabin invented a new tonality, the so-called ‘Promethean or mystic chord’ – a six-note synthetic chord, outside of major and minor chords. Many of his subsequent works include the use of this chord, with derivations emerging from its transpositions.

Many composers of the 20th and 21st centuries also have used this chord in various ways, especially as the use of dissonant sonorities became more prevalent.

Colors then, in the Color Piano are assigned specific roles, i.e., as the tones change, the colors also change. For example: F# is not just a chord assigned the color ‘blue’, but at the same time a mood, voilé, mystérieux/veiled, mysterious; ‘yellow’ not only uses the chords of D, G#, C, F#, B, E, but conveys a happy mood, plus animé, joyeux/more lively, happy. ‘Red’, voluptueux presque avec douleur/voluptuous almost with distress, is the color of ecstasy. Scriabin’s choices of colors were not by happenstance, but followed the color-theory of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), who had based his theories on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s ‘Farbenlehre/Color Theory’, published in 1810.

Scriabin’s Color Piano Keys

Inspired by his Prometheus, Scriabin continued to explore the ideas of a ‘mystery’, linking music, poetry, and dance, leading to the redemption of humanity through a symphony of sound, light, color, and scents which would envelop the listener and bring him to a state of ecstasy. For Scriabin, colors had become the means – color as sound-intoxication and color-intoxication as sound. In the final analysis, he did not become a painter-composer like Čiurlionis, Schoenberg, Satie or Hindemith, or a composer like Mussorgsky with his ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ – but remained a philosopher-composer.

A Recital with A Difference: Yuja Wang’s The Vienna Recital

By Maureen Buja, Interlude

The idea of a recital – a single performer on their own stage, showing the best of themselves – is an old idea. Some Romantic performers, such as Liszt and Paganini, were best known through their recitals. The opportunity to showcase your art, unhampered by any other performer or ensemble, is unparalleled, but also fraught with danger: it’s pure exposure and you have to be up to the task.

Yuja Wang

In her recent recording The Vienna Recital, pianist Yuja Wang turns the original idea of a recital on its head. She does what you expect, with a bit of Beethoven to cover the Classical period, a bit of Brahms for the Romantic period, and a bit of Scriabin for the 20th century but then there’s music by Albéniz, Glass, Scriabin, and Kapustin for some jazz preludes. Delicacy of touch and contrast in styles seem to be the driving force for the assemblage of pieces here and there are some brilliant choices. The juxtaposition of Arturo Márquez’s Danzón No. 2, one of the best-known modern Mexican orchestral pieces, here transcribed for solo piano, with one of Brahms’ Intermezzi, op. 117, seems to move Brahms into the same space where you were just dancing to Márquez’s music.

The selection of the music takes you over a range of centuries – from Gluck to the modern day – and presenting the works in a non-chronological order makes you rethink the details of the works, from harmony to rhythm.

It’s difficult to pick one track that shows how wonderful this album is, but we’ll go with one of the Ligeti Études. Number 13 from Book 2, The Devil’s Staircase, is a toccata of unending movement.

György Ligeti: Book 2, No. 13 – L’escalier du diable

Chinese pianist Yuja Wang (b. 1987) started her studies at age 7 at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing before entering the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia at age 15. Even before her graduation in 2008, she had come to the world’s attention when she replaced Martha Argerich in a series of concerts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2007. Her performing triumphs continued, today making her one of the leading pianists in the world.

If your idea of a recital is something to be endured with a few gems as a reward, then this recording will change your mind completely – it’s both constantly challenging to the pianist and constantly rewarding to the listener.

YuJa Wang: The Vienna Recital
Deutsche Grammophon 00028948645671

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