Arthur Friedheim (1859-1932): Liszt - Ballade No.2 

Thank you for posting this recording restored by me and played ‘live’ from my Disklavier. You mentioned Friedheim’s performance of the Liszt Sonata: Liszt advised a friend that Friedheim’s playing of that work was just as he (Liszt) had conceived it. Friedheim learned of this nearly 20 years later, not long before he committed this performance to rolls at the Hupfeld studios. Unlike Welte Mignon reproducing rolls of which the recording of the above Ballade was made, where dynamics of the pianist were captured and ‘reproduced’ and a precise playback speed gave a ‘reproduced’ performance closely timed and expressed to match the intention of the pianist, the only edition of the Friedheim Hupfeld rolls of the Sonata available to me, were NOT reproducing rolls, but rolls made for playback on pedal pumping players where levers were manually operated and foot pressures varied to achieve an artistic interpretation by following (or not) an expression line drawn on the roll which indicated the pianist’s preferred dynamics throughout. Even the roll speed indications by Hupfeld are notoriously vague, being expressed as ‘50 to 60’ on the Hupfeld tempo scale. Of course, no pianist performs the same piece precisely the same way and timed to the second, at every performance. Such precision was not of such great concern to the pianists of the time as it is now to the historians wishing to hear an accurate rendition. My edition of the Liszt Sonata, posted at this link soundcloud.com/ian-williamson-42549386/liszt-sonata-in-b-min-by-arthur-friedheim-from-hupfeld-5189051892 attempts to recreate how Friedheim played the work. We are listening to the all the notes as struck by Friedheim and to his use of pedal. Although I think the dynamics expressed and the timing of the original performance which resulted in these rolls are likely, they are NOT able to be verified as performed.

Thank you for uploading this. It's interesting that among Friedheim's few disc recordings, are three pieces that Liszt refused to hear in his masterclasses: The "Moonlight" Sonata, (Ist and third movements) Chopin's Bb minor Scherzo, and the (abridged) Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Friedheim was described by one writer as having "the gravity of a Roman senator", and his recordings may represent a step toward the more "objective" type of interpretation that became law in the last century, and was co-pioneered by such conductors as Muck, Weingartner, and Toscanini, and by pianists that were born largely in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, although there was much overlap with "golden era" pianists. One wonders if there will ever be a refreshing from the avalanche of insipid literalism rampant in classical music interpretation today.

With a performance like this one, from someone who was close to Liszt, it is tempting to imagine that this is how Liszt wanted his Ballade to be performed.

Thank you for sharing this incredible record, a truly piece of history!

какая живая естественная фраза,звук мягкий,особая техника,секрет которой теперь утерян.

🌊 Le Prisonnier de Chillon !! 🌊

Friedheim forse il migliore degli allievi di liszt

Listen to Claudio Arrau the absolute best in this work with Vladimir Horowitz a close 2 nd .Full stop.

These rolls are so misleading. We should go 99% on his acoustic recordings and about 1% by these unreliable novelty inventions of the time. My two cents.