REVIVING THE IGNAZ FRIEDMAN LEGACY

Ignaz Friedman (1882-1948), legendary pupil of a legendary teacher, Theodor Leschetitzky, made all his recordings during the 1920s and ‘30s and few of them have been available since the end of World War II. During their absence, the Polish-born Friedman has gained the reputation of being the personification of late-Romantic eccentricity.

That such a judgment is wide of the mark is evidenced in a six-record set which returns to circulation, in handsomely restored sound, the entire Friedman legacy (Danacord 141-6, distributed by Qualiton Imports).

This collection consists of lots of Chopin--preludes, etudes, mazurkas and ballades--Beethoven sonatas, Mendelssohn “Songs Without Words,” a bit of Mozart and Liszt, Grieg’s Concerto and some fluff. Included as well is the only known documentation of his celebrated partnership with violinist Bronislaw Hubermann, in Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata.

Friedman could, as he shows in the “Kreutzer” or Chopin’s “Revolutionary” Etude, play like a demon, with dazzling speed and monumental, gut-stirring power. Or he could play like a somewhat willful angel, with an exquisitely refined coloristic sense joined to a distinctly subjective attitude toward the rhythmic, dynamic and textual letter of the score.

Thus we find in his “Moonlight” Sonata and A-flat Polonaise extravagant Luftpausen and rubatos; chords turned into arpeggios; and, occasionally, an explosiveness of attack that forces a secondary voice or phrase to stand out in unwarranted bold relief. But ultimately Friedman was no more guilty of being himself, as opposed to being a “humble handmaiden” (as Artur Schnabel called himself) of his chosen composers, than most of his contemporaries.

Friedman’s playing here is never precious or rhythmically limp, and rarely bombastic. He observed and communicated the spirit of the music, particularly when that music was by Chopin, in which he proves to be a big pianist who could play small, as in, a memorable example, the E-flat Nocturne, Opus 55, No. 2, ever so sweetly sung, with astonishing (in the best sense) dynamic gradation.

As dissimilar to Friedman’s as Glenn Gould’s aesthetic may have been, one can’t avoid the thought in listening to the latest installment in CBS’s documentation of the late Canadian pianist’s career (M3-39036, three records) that Gould was even more of an individualist, and no less eccentric an interpreter of Classical and Romantic repertory, than any of those “Golden Age” pianists he reviled.

Gould’s approach is characterized by that uniquely unresonant, wooden tone, reminiscent at best of a fortepiano, at worst--when coupled to the pianist’s obsession with detached-note phrasing--conjuring up the clacking of giant fingernails on formica; fast, sometimes illogical, tempos, as in the opening movement of Beethoven’s Opus 111; and sewing-machine regularity of rhythm.

One can marvel at the clarity and control of Gould’s playing while asking why anyone would want to turn the major solo works included here--the last three Beethoven sonatas, Haydn’s E-flat Sonata of 1790, and Mozart’s K. 330--into bloodless contrapuntal studies.

Also included, however, are two substantial items that go far beyond being displays of dexterity and wacko musical logic: hugely compelling performances of Beethoven’s First and Second Concertos, the former in the familiar version with Vladimir Golschmann conducting the Columbia Symphony, the latter a previously unreleased 1957 in-concert recording from Leningrad with Ladislav Slovak presiding over a rough-toned Soviet orchestra.

In the B-flat Concerto, he projects the easygoing wit and emotional expansiveness more commonly associated with Gould the private man than with Gould the pianist. And, for once, he fully exploits the modern piano’s resources of tone, color and strength.

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli is still with us--or as much so as he’s ever been. This rarest of performing birds surfaces every half-dozen years for, as the saying goes, a limited number of cancellations.

The universal reputation of the brilliant, notoriously wilful and reclusive Italian pianist is in large part based on one of his few commercial recordings, a 1958 coupling of the Ravel G-major and Rachmaninoff Fourth concertos with Ettore Gracis conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra. As recently issued in digitally remastered form for Angel/EMI’s budget Eminence line (AE-34459), it is more than ever a basic ingredient of any serious collection of piano recordings.

Michelangeli’s Ravel remains a marvel of rhapsodic soulfulness, rhythmic acuity and plangent beauty of tone, with a virtuosic use of the sustaining pedal that reminds one of Ignaz Friedman’s similar ability to be at the same time a brilliant colorist and a clarifier of part-writing.