Search - Leopold Godowsky :: Complete UK Columbia Recordings 1928-1930

Forget All You've Read...

John A. Atherton | 05/14/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"... about Leopold Godowsky and please just listen to the recordings. We have been told ad nauseam by colleagues and critics alike that Popsy played at his incomparable best only in his own living room. Godowsky himself later underscored the written plea, "Do not judge me by my recordings," and he described - along with Busoni, Schnabel and so many others - the torture it was in those early days to document his art on discs.

But consider: While friends like Josef Hofmann and Abram Chasins said Godowsky dried up, not just in the studio but also on stage, Godowsky insisted that he played his best at concerts and recitals, though few people understood his approach. Chasins in his book Speaking of Pianists relates how Godowsky once criticized Hofmann for underlining portions of a score, and that Hofmann in turn accused Godowsky of undue reticence. Both Chasins and Hofmann then "caught" Godowsky italicizing part of a piece for them - and they praised him for it - but Godowsky explained that he was merely pointing out something novel in one of his own, newly written works, and that such an approach was not appropriate for the classics.

As for Godowsky's assessment of his records, that notorious statement was made after the great pianist suffered a debilitating stroke, which he blamed on the arduous process of recording. He had also recently lost his wife and youngest son. Godowsky at the end of his life was a bitter man. But would a musician who disdained recordings have made as many takes of individual 78 sides - as many as Rachmaninoff did, which is to say sometimes dozens! - if he was not more or less content at the time with the ultimate results?

And what are those results? I don't know how Popsy played at home for everyone from his postman to Albert Einstein. But the records are mostly magnificent. Different to be sure from those of even the "transitional" figures of his time, like (each in his own way) Rachmaninoff, Hofmann and Horowitz - not to mention arch-romantics such as de Pachmann or Rosenthal. Godowsky's art is of course sovereign in technique (for all the occasional smudges) but more important, patrician as regards tempo, touch and especially the refined taste of an aristocrat. Like Chopin, Godowsky never insists. He never pounds. Just as his studies on Chopin's etudes eschew all obvious flamboyance, Godowsky conveys the essence of nearly every piece simply yet with infinite subtlety. And I'm not just talking about the records that everyone lauds: the Grieg Ballade, the Schubert-Godowsky transcriptions and the Chopin Fourth Ballade. These may be supreme. But listen also to Les adieux, the Funeral March sonata, even such hackneyed pieces as the third Liebestraum and tell me who's played them with more elegance and nobility now or during the Golden Age.

As for transfers: Philips gives you all the later recordings (considered the best) in what seem to be faithful and surprisingly noisy dubbings; I like non-intervention, so this is good. APR certainly is to be commended for its more comprehensive survey, not to mention its publishing of the Jeremy Nicholas biography (by the way, even Nicholas is too hard on most of Popsy's recordings) but the APR transfers seem to me too processed and recessed. My suggestion: get both the Philips and the APR set of the American (not these London) recordings (which also includes some private material). But if you have to choose just one, stick with Philips and, please, just listen

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