Arthur Friedheim was a pupil of Liszt from the late 1870s, and acted as Liszt's secretary during the 1880s until Liszt's death in 1886, with daily contact and experience of all that Liszt did in that period: he is our best witness to Liszt's performance and thoughts from that time. Liszt greatly admired Friedheim's playing, declaring that his interpretation of his now famous B minor piano sonata was just as he wanted it to have been.
Friedheim's own playing was aristocratic and elevated. There is a sense of what we now call "classicism" to his interpretations. Control, balance and concentration, though not without excitement when needed. The few recordings he made are fascinating.
I am also putting a few piano roll recordings of Friedheim online to give a better idea of this pianist, as the acoustic recordings stretch to so few minutes.
This work is the long-lost "Dante" sonata piano rolls, recorded over two rolls (Hupfeld HA53778, I'm guessing appearing in the catalogue in the first half of the 1920s, though perhaps recorded quite a while before that, maybe even in the first decade of the century around the same time as other rolls by him, as Friedheim was settled in the New World by 1915, and Hupfeld was based in Leipzig...?) and located and restored/optimised by Ian Williamson from optical roll scans by Julian Dyer. The Hupfeld rolls from Friedheim appear to me to often be far more convincing than the Duo Art and Welte rolls which are much more commonly-heard.
Apologies for an edited re-posting of the same rolls as appeared a few weeks ago: this version has a better graphic quality, but also shows the roll-break clearly in the score at around the 9:32 mark in the recording: I have spliced the two rolls together at that point, but the score shows where the break happens with a red line.
3 окт 2024
