What an original artist. He is totally his own music-maker - meaning, one does not get the impression Sirota is influenced by others' interpretations. That must explain why there is such freshness to his performances. One feels the closest attention to the composers' intentions. The Schubert is golden. I love the time and the freedom he takes in the Liszt. Totally captivating. What a rare piece of uploading. Our deep thanks to "Helen and Herman in Lawrence" . Bravo!
Oh my GOSH i never heard the full tape - DELIGHTED to have access to this at last!!!! I posted a long feature about Sirota on my website - I'll be adding this to it. Wonderful to hear him preluding at the beginning!
I'm glad you enjoy this! The original tape has been substantially transformed, with many of the inherent problems vanquished by one with that ability. I enjoy his preliminary noodling too. A friend wrote, commenting on the absorbing recital and saying he 'loved the gobs of devil-may-care wrong notes so earnestly tossed off.' I'm in complete accord, entirely captivated by the Beethoven particularly. Thank you! I'll find your Sirota feature and share it with others.
When researching Jorge Bolet's appearances in Japan, I've come across quite a bit about Leo Sirota. I first heard of him when reading Junichiro Tanizaki, the Japanese author, in his famous novel "The Makioka Sisters": the sisters in the novel hope to hear Sirota in recital. (The novel follows the lives of the wealthy Makioka family of Osaka from the autumn of 1936 to April 1941) Sirota (1885-1965) and his family had settled in Japan in 1929, staying there for 16 years, teaching and giving recitals. Following a trip to Japan in 1928, Sirota had been offered the directorship of the Ueno Imperial Academy in Tokyo. During this period Sirota made recordings for Japanese Columbia, including the first complete recording of Stravinsky's "Three Scenes from Petrushka". During World War II, he and his wife were interned in Karuizawa, Nagano, while his daughter was safe in the United States. After the Second World War he moved to America and taught in St. Louis; his rendition of Moriz Rosenthal's arrangement of Chopin's Minute Waltz with the right hand playing in thirds was said to have astounded Arthur Rubinstein. In her memoir "The Only Woman In The Room:"(Kodansha, 1997), the pianist's daughter Beate Sirota Gordon (distinguished in her own right, having worked under Douglas MacArthur to write the Constitution of Japan after World War II) writes: 'We had originally expected to stay in Japan for six months, but those months passed quickly . . . [and] we had taken root. Kosaku Yamada [prominent Japanese composer], our family’s sponsor. had lent us his support from the beginning, but we had also been befriended by Hidemaro Konoe, the co-founder with Yamada of the New Symphony Orchestra. It was not long before members of other aristocratic families - the Tokugawas, Mitsuis and Azabukis - started visiting us. Many of them had become fans of my father after hearing him perform.' 'He was the first to play a Yamaha piano in public. The Japanese, being very brand conscious even then, only played a Bechstein or a Steinway in concert. It took my father, a Westerner, to make a Japanese piano popular. The Yamaha Company was so grateful that they sent a piano wherever my father needed one. One summer, we had two in our house in Tokyo, one in our summer house in Hayama, and one in the mountains where my parents had gone for a three-week vacation! 'Besides concertizing in Japan, China, Korea, and Manchuria during the sixteen years of my father’s sojourn in Japan, he taught at the Imperial Academy in Tokyo and gave private lessons at home. Students from Korea and Manchuria came to Tokyo to study with him. In addition to Japanese private students, there were many foreigners in Tokyo who also took lessons- Americans, Russians, Czechs and British. This attracted the attention of the secret police (kempeitai) who kept an eye on foreign residents. A secret police agent would come almost every day to check with our servants about the visitors to our house, suspicious about so many nationalities being represented by the license plates of the cars outside. Since our servants didn’t speak English, they were not of much use to the police, but our cook came up with a clever idea. Every time my mother gave a dinner party, she collected the guests’ place-cards and gave them to the police! She did not see anything wrong with that - she was just being cooperative.' A biography of Sirota is available: "Leo Sirota: The Pianist Who Loved Japan" by Takashi Yamamoto, 2004/ 2019 (in English)
By good fortune it was on my wall, one of many hundred tapes from my late friend. By still further good fortune, a profesional restorer, now retired, offered to work on this. Good fortune every which way! I hope you're enjoying Acapulco.
