MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

Buy through MusicWeb
for £7 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Sound Samples & Downloads

Arthur Friedheim – Liszt, Rosenthal and Gottschalk
Franz LISZT (1811-1886)
Hungarian Rhapsody No.10 in E [6:31]
Années de pèlerinage, premiere année, Suisse No.4 - Au lac de Wallenstadt [1:56]
Grandes Etudes de Paganini; No.1 Tremolo [4:19]
Grandes Etudes de Paganini, No.3 La Campanella [4:30]
Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 in C sharp minor [8:26]
Légendes; St Francis Preaching to the Birds [8:40]
Légendes; St Francis Walking on the Waves [7:24]
Hungarian Rhapsody No.9 in E flat [11:44]
Moritz ROSENTHAL (1862—1946)
Papillons [2:15]
Louis Moreau GOTTSCHALK (1829-1869)
The Banjo (Fantasie Grotesque) [3:32]
Arthur Friedheim (piano)
rec. piano rolls, 1915-26
NIMBUS GRAND PIANO NI 8815 [59:15]

 

MDT AmazonUK AmazonUS

Arthur Friedheim – The Great Pianists Vol.12; Masters of the Piano Roll series
Fryderyk CHOPIN (1810-1849)
Prelude in F sharp minor Op.28 No.8 [1:46]
Prelude in G, Op.28 No.3 [1:43]
Adolf von HENSELT (1814-1849)
Were I a Bird Op.2 No.6 [1:37]
Louis Moreau GOTTSCHALK (1829-1869)
The Banjo (Fantasie Grotesque) [3:39]
Franz LISZT (1811-1886)
Légendes; St Francis Preaching to the Birds [7:21]
Légendes; St Francis Walking on the Waves [6:45]
Années de pèlerinage, premiere année, Suisse No.4 - Au lac de Wallenstadt [2:03]
Grandes Etudes de Paganini; No.1 Tremolo [4:57]
Grandes Etudes de Paganini, No.3 La Campanella [4:51]
Transcendental Etude No.11 [8:23]
Fountains of Villa d’Este [6:14]
Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 in C sharp minor [8:35]
Hungarian Rhapsody No.10 in E [6:45]
Hungarian Rhapsody No.9 in E flat [9:01]
Arthur Friedheim (piano)
rec. piano rolls, 1915-26
DAL SEGNO DSPRCD052 [73:40]

Experience Classicsonline


 

 
Liszt students enjoy considerable cachet. Liszt students who left behind tangible examples of their playing enjoy a renown that adds to the Liszt debate. Arthur Friedheim was one such, but he had the dual distinction of having also been taught by Anton Rubinstein with whom he studied at the age of fourteen; Friedheim was born of German parents in St Petersburg in 1859. His move to Liszt in Weimar led to a breach with Rubinstein, who called Liszt ‘the devil’. Eventually Friedheim became Liszt’s secretary and indeed his amanuensis, remaining with the composer for eight years until Liszt’s death. Travel and endless concerts followed and also a rather peripatetic life; London, Munich, Toronto and New York, where he died, were also places where he lived for a time. The First War saw him ostracised in America, and working as a pianist in a movie theatre. He died in 1932.
 
Friedheim recorded on disc and roll. But he only made ten sides on 78 discs, a rather paltry return for so eminent a musician. One of his disc recordings coincides with a roll; the second Hungarian Rhapsody, though the disc, which was made for Emerson in 1917, is truncated and essentially halved in length. Nevertheless despite the rather cloudy Emerson sound — not a prestigious label, though it did record some prestigious musicians — we can discern one thing. The statuesque and dull roll performance is worlds away from the passionate ardour and splendour of the disc. The usual prescriptive comments about roll performances must apply. No one could take the Chopin Prelude performances seriously as examples of Friedheim’s playing. The F sharp minor sounds plain weird, and the companion Prelude in G has clearly been edited to such an extent that it’s hard to tell how many voices are teeming there.
 
Some things do survive somewhat intact. Gottschalk’s The Banjo is sprightly, bright, crisp and amusing. Elements of his Lisztian playing can be inferred but they must be considered provisional only. The roll recording of La Campanella can be compared with a 78 he made of the same piece. The roll’s endemic brightness and generic tonal response contrast with the subtle colouration preserved in the grooves of the 1913 Columbia. But there is also a further proviso. Both the Dal Segno and the Nimbus Grand Piano series have transferred some (but not all) of the same rolls. The results, mechanically speaking, vary enormously. The Nimbus version of La Campanella is, in my view, a far more realistic affair than the lumpen and rather bizarre sounding Dal Segno. But there are huge tempo variations in the two transfers of other pieces, as a look at the headings will indicate.
 
So, whatever one wishes to infer from the playing of this important Liszt student, the evidence is improbably preserved by these two discs. It’s best to seek out Friedheim’s disc records — they’re on Symposium 1343, coupled with the recordings of another Liszt student, José Vianna da Motta.
 
Jonathan Woolf
 

 

 

 

 

 



 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.