Frédéric Chopin [1810-1849]
1. Mazurka in F minor, Op. 68-4
2. Nocturne in G major, Op. 37-2
3. Mazurka in C-sharp minor, Op.15-3
4. Etude in C-sharp minor, Op. 25-7
Byron Janis, piano
1996
Footage: gettyimages
__________________________________________________________________________
BYRON JANIS
Janis made his recital debut at the age of nine in Pittsburgh and the following year, through the help of Samuel Chotzinoff, played on radio’s Magic Key Hour. Chotzinoff was music critic of the New York Post, music consultant for NBC Radio, and founder of the Chatham Square Music School where Marcus was a teacher. Janis made his orchestral debut with the NBC Symphony Orchestra playing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor Op. 18 when he was fifteen. When he returned to Pittsburgh to give his orchestral debut it was with the same work and a fourteen-year-old Lorin Maazel as conductor. Vladimir Horowitz was in the audience and invited Janis to play for him in New York. At the age of seventeen Janis became Horowitz’s first pupil, taking lessons every week for three years. The fee for these lessons, and the cost of his studies with Adele Marcus, was paid for by philanthropist William Rosenwald. Horowitz would not allow Janis to study with any other pianist, nor copy his own style. In order to have regular lessons, Janis would go on tour with Horowitz and his wife. During his time with Horowitz, Janis gave about fifty concerts including a successful tour of Brazil. After this, he decided to make his Carnegie Hall debut.
When Janis was twenty Horowitz stopped giving him lessons and he began the life of the touring virtuoso, playing with the greatest orchestras and conductors of the time including the Concertgebouw with Eduard van Beinum and the London Symphony Orchestra with Antal Dorati. At his London debut he played Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor Op. 18 with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Norman del Mar. When he returned to London and played the same concerto in 1961 a critic wrote that it was ‘…played with all the ardour, fire, and sympathy it calls for and so rarely gets by Mr Byron Janis, an enormously gifted pianist from America’. However, in November of the same year in a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor Op. 37 Janis was described as ‘…the urgently forward-driving but often hard-hitting soloist’. In the same month he played Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor Op. 23 with Jascha Horenstein and the London Symphony Orchestra. Janis was described as an ‘exceedingly tense and vivid’ pianist. ‘At times his inability to give less than his all led him to adopt tempi too fast even for his phenomenal technique.’
In 1973 Janis began to suffer from arthritis in his hands. However, he continued to practise five or six hours a day and continued his concert schedule. In 1975 he was still playing Chopin études in concert without the audience knowing his suffering. However by 1984, when all the remedies he had tried had failed, he was now taking large doses of drugs. This state of affairs, combined with the thought of being unable to play the piano, understandably led to mental depression. ‘It was a life-and-death struggle for me every day for years.’ Not until 1985 did he first speak publicly about his condition, and quickly became Ambassador for the Arts for the Arthritis Foundation.
Jonathan Summers - NAXOS historical
by berlinzerberus
27 авг 2024
