Search - Novaes, Bach, Mozart :: Piano Masters: Guiomar Novaes

The supreme colorist female pianist!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 03/25/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Latin America may be proud due his most beloved daughters in this order: Teresa Carreño, Rosita Renard, Guiomar Novaes and Martha Argerich . I mean, Venezuela, Chile, Brazil and Argentine.



I had the golden opportunity to chat during fifteen minutes through an unforgettable common friend (who is not among us, pitifully) who introduced me to Claudio Arrau after a Recital in Caracas in those distant seventies. Since I knew the available time was too short I asked to C.A. about the ten greatest pianists he had listened and watched in his life: After thinking briefly, he answered me with absolute security ten names in less than a minute in this rigorous order from one to tenth' s place: Teresa Careño, Ferrucio Busoni, Wilhelm Bachaus, Wilhelm Kempff, Artur Schnabel, Dinu Lipatti, Edwin Fisher, William Kapell Benedetti Michelangeli and Rudolf Serkin.



But the slender expression of his face when I asked about Rosita Renard and Novaes was simply unforgettable. His tearful face literally depicted me the art of both players: Renard was the intellectual but Novaes was more sensitive: her pianissimos: Oh My God!



So any other adjective I can add about the art of this gifted pianist would be redundant. Perhaps to remark she had in little finger much more technique than many pianists with their both hands together.



Many achievements in her brilliant are meritorious to consider: Her Songs without words are nonesuch: you won't believe the transparency and fluency of Gondola Venetian song and the Spinning song Op. 62 No. 6. After Kapell's performance her Nights in Spain gardens are non parallel, his Schumann is extremely effective and her Grieg Piano Concerto still remain among the giants versions.



Novaes died on March 7, 1979 in Sao Paulo. But this sensitive statement written by Harold Schoenberg, have no waste: "The sheer beauty of her playing ,managed to transcend any other considerations; it was its own reward. There may have been more monumental pianists, more intellectual pianists, but it is hard to think of a pianist whose playing gave as much sheer pleasure as that of Guiomar Novaes"

"

NO TWEETERS OR WOOFERS

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 10/02/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The first thing that needs saying is what a 5-star rating signifies in this context. I am not attempting to assess this disc as if it were a modern issue. The earliest performances here are from acoustic Victor recordings dating as far back as 1919 or thereabouts; the more recent are 78rpm recordings on acetate done by Columbia in the 1940's. The sound, partly I'm sure through the skill of Jonathan Beardsley, is better than one might expect, but inevitably it's antiquated. A 5-star rating for this disc is a matter of rating a priceless antique, a rare and unexpected find that in other artistic fields would price the item out of consideration for most of us.



Luckily this is music and other considerations apply. Mr Beardsley tells us that the Victor recordings were hard to find, something that does not surprise me. They preserve the work of a young Brazilian genius, already in her mid-to-late 20's, who had at the age of 14 attracted the notice of Faure, Debussy and Moszkowski. The sound is generally light in the bass, but the level of background hiss is perfectly tolerable to me. What does seem to come through quite well is the quality of the player's touch, especially if one has some knowledge of that from her later work. What Novaes has is individuality, the quality I prize above all and which Horowitz and Michelangeli found to be lacking in their own successors. For her time Novaes could be described as a 'modern' player, in something like the way that term would have been applied to Serkin, 8 years her junior. This playing does not in the least resemble, say, Hoffman or Cherkassky or Petri. Rubato is rationed for one thing, the rhythmic sense is precise, and the fingerwork and part-playing are crisp. The best of her later output was distinguished for me by a strong 'profile' in the melodic line and an individual and most beautiful tone, particularly in the left hand. In such elderly sound as this my imagination is having to contribute something of its own, but one doesn't have to be imagining anything to hear a quite extraordinary Chopin A flat ballade here. This was the very work that her august adjudicators in Paris asked her, in a departure from convention, to repeat for them, and small wonder if it was played anything like it is here. The start is slowish and relaxed, the tempo increases subtly after a while, but the sequence that builds towards the fortissimo return of the opening theme is like nothing I ever heard before and is perfectly wonderful.



Only one other item of the 15 offerings is a masterpiece as I understand the term, Mozart's great A minor rondo. This is marked 'andante', Novaes understands that as a more flowing tempo than Serkin takes, and I'm not sure I don't prefer the way she does it already. The rest of the pieces are ready-made concert encores of one kind and another, some delicate but most virtuoso in style. You will hear some really terrific fleet fingerwork in these. In Liszt's Gnomenreigen Novaes doesn't storm barns in the way Cziffra does, but that would doubtless be unladylike and her performance is nimble by any normal standards. The final number on the disc is a fantasia by Gottschalk on the Brazilian national anthem. This is the sort of thing that Cziffra and Horowitz occasionally wowed their audiences with (do you know The Stars and Stripes from Horowitz?), and I now have a performance of a similar effort than can stand up in their company. Other Brazilian flavouring in the selection comes via Villa-Lobos and Levy. One week in Rio de Janeiro during the 2006 World Cup has not made me any expert assessor of Brazilian musical idiom, but my faith in Novaes is strong enough for me to believe that I now have a yardstick for judging future performances that may come my way.



I have not acquired any Beethoven sonatas for quite a while now, and my interest as an amateur musician and collector is more easily aroused these days by issues of this kind. It is the second issue from Pearl that I own, and two winners out of two is a good enough statistic for me to send for the Pearl catalogue rightaway. I could of course be a latecomer to this, but I'm beginning to sense that I may be on to something of exceptional interest."