GHCD 2326 Secure E-shop Broadcast & Review

BENNO MOISEIWITSCH(1890-1963) Delius Concerto for Piano and Orchestra Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA SIR MALCOLM SERGENT Live Recordings Proms 1955 Rachmanivov Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA HUGO RIGNOLD Recorded 1955 FREDERICK DELIUS (1862–1934) Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in C minor SERGEY RACHMANINOV (1873–1943) Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43 SERGEY RACHMANINOV (1873–1943) Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 III. Allegro scherzando

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The great Russian-born pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch was born in Odessa on February 22^nd 1890, the son of David Leon and his wife Esther Miropolsky. As a child, his gifts were soon apparent, and he began his musical education at the Imperial Music Academy in Odessa under Professor Dmitri Dmitrievich Klimov. The boy’s progress was such that at the age of nine he won the Anton Rubinstein Stipendiary Prize. He travelled to London where he applied to study at the Guildhall School of Music but the Principal, Dr William H Cummings, told Moiseiwitsch that there was nothing they could teach him. Undeterred, and anxious to further his musical studies, in 1903 he went to Vienna to study under the legendary piano pedagogue Theodor Leschetitzky, himself a pupil of Czerny. Leschetitzky was more critical of the youth’s pianism, allegedly telling Moiseiwitsch that he could play better with his feet, but accepted him as a pupil. Moiseiwitsch stayed with Leschetitzky for four years.

 His successful debut in England was at Reading Town Hall on October 1^st 1908, when his programme included works by Bach, Schumann and Liszt, and in November 1909 he made his concerto debut at the Queen’s Hall. Within a few years Moiseiwitsch had appeared with the London Symphony Orchestra under Arthur Nikisch, at another LSO concert conducted by Sir Edward Elgar, and with the New Symphony Orchestra under Landon Ronald, as well as with the Scottish Orchestra. He had also made appearances in Germany, at Wiesbaden, and by the outbreak of World War I, in his mid-twenties, he was established as a much admired pianist. In 1913, he listed his recreations as physical culture, wrestling and ‘solving problems of Arnold Schoenberg’ – the last no doubt a reference to Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces Opus 16, which had received its UK premiere in London the year before under Henry Wood, creating something of a furore. 

That Moiseiwitsch was firmly established in Britain by 1915 is shown by a review in The Daily Telegraph: ‘Benno Moiseiwitsch went from success to success, and excited an enthusiasm which was more than justified by performances of remarkable excellence. The technical display was brilliant, and, though he obviously had abundance of power at his command, the pianist exercised due restraint and never produced coarse tone. Mr Moiseiwitsch showed himself a perfect master of the finest grades of touch. His ability to convey every shade of meaning did not fail to make a deep impression upon attentive ears. Never once was the young artist at a loss for the proper method of interpretation, and a more telling and convincing performance of the work it would be difficult to recall.’  This appeared in the wake of three performances of Delius’s Piano Concerto, which Moiseiwitsch gave under Thomas Beecham in London, in February and April 1915 with the London Symphony Orchestra, a work which, in the revised single-movement version Moiseiwitsch always played, had been premiered at Queen’s Hall in October 1907 by the Hungarian Theodor Szanto. 

By the end of the First War, Moiseiwitsch, not yet thirty, had married the Australian violinist Daisy Kennedy, and had made his home in London. Apart from Delius’s Concerto, he championed other British music – for example, Stanford’s Second Concerto in C minor at a Royal Philharmonic Society concert in April 1919 – and had already, by that time, made his mark as an interpreter of Rachmaninoff, whose Second Concerto he had performed at an earlier RPS concert, under Landon Ronald, in January 1918; he played Rachmaninoff’s B minor Prelude at the same programme. In November 1919, Moiseiwitsch made his New York debut, and thereafter toured frequently in the USA and Canada, as well as in Australia and New Zealand, Japan, India and throughout Europe.

Although, as The Times was to claim, Moiseiwitsch’s taste was fairly catholic, he was predominantly a player of the romantic composers. As his career continued he became one of the most frequently-heard of all pianists in a wide range of repertoire. Indeed, his concert career – both in recital and with orchestra – was notably prolific, until his death on April 9^th 1963 aged 73, not long after his final concert, in which he played Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto at the Royal Festival Hall under Sir Malcolm Sargent.

It may be that the frequency, and the very popularity, of Moiseiwitch’s appearances, throughout his career - especially in the UK - led to him becoming somewhat under-valued as an artist, but there is no doubt that those qualities The Daily Telegraph noted in 1915 remained with him, the more so when he was particularly inspired, as we may hear in this performance of Delius’s Concerto, taken from a Promenade Concert in September 1955, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. In August 1946 Moiseiwitsch had recorded the work for HMV with the recently-formed Philharmonia Orchestra under Constant Lambert, a performance that almost immediately was challenged by a second HMV release of the work, by Betty Humby-Beecham with the also recently-formed Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the soloist’s husband, now Sir Thomas. In terms of interpretative qualities, the critics were divided between these rival versions, neither of which was particularly well recorded, but Moiseiwitsch’s 1955 Proms performance reveals just how inspired – and inspiring – he could be ‘live’, the more so with such an admirable accompanist as Sargent on the podium. In short, the live performance here captured is demonstrably superior to the HMV studio account, and the BBC broadcast quality is also better.

Following those three performances of Delius’s Concerto in 1915, Moiseiwitsch and Beecham were not to appear together again until forty years later – and then in Houston, Texas, where they performed Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto. As we have noted, Moiseiwitsch had championed his compatriot’s music from his earliest years, and was to give many performances of the Second Concerto – which Moiseiwitsch, like Rachmaninoff, recorded twice (in addition to another Moiseiwitsch HMV recording, of the first movement only, with the Royal Philharmonic under Sir Eugene Goossens). Moiseiwitsch also made two recordings of the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, a work which appeared in 1934. He also played Rachmaninoff’s First and Third Concertos – but never the Fourth – rather less frequently, although he recorded the First for HMV with Sargent and the Philharmonia and gave a memorable account of No 3 at the Proms in the mid-1930s, unusually – for him – playing from music. Also in the 1930s, Moiseiwitsch took Rachmaninoff to dinner in London at the Savage Club, of which the pianist had been a much-loved member since 1913. He became a naturalised British subject in 1937, and received the CBE in 1946.

The finest tribute Moiseiwitsch paid to Rachmaninoff was in two ‘memorial’ concerts, as it were. The first was in 1943, commemorating the composer’s recent death, in which Moiseiwitsch played the Second and Third Concertos and the Paganini Rhapsody in the same programme (the Third from memory!), the proceeds from which were donated to the Aid to Russia Fund. This programme was repeated (the order of the works being slightly changed) later.

Despite the undoubted merits of Moiseiwitsch’s studio recordings of Rachmaninoff’s works for piano and orchestra, his account of the Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, also taken from a 1955 Prom a five days prior to the Delius Concerto performance, and similarly conducted by Sargent, possesses qualities of its own.

This collection is completed by Moiseiwitsch’s second recording of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No 2 taped by HMV the previous month, August 1955, with the Philharmonia under Hugo Rignold. This is easily the more deeply considered of Moiseiwitsch’s two commercial recordings, the innate character of the work drawing from the pianist undimmed virtuosity and understanding – more than 25 years after his first recording, and the sound quality is greatly superior to the pre-war 78s.                                     Robert Matthew-Walker © 2007

 In compiling these notes, the author should like to acknowledge additional published research by Lyndon Jenkins and Jonathan Summers.

Page revised Monday October 08 2007