Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Some fun, maybe :) WHO is this playing the Grande Polonaise?

And a chapter should be devoted to her (since you've already given it away)students,since it includes one of the most impressive rosters of pianists imaginable.

Not a guess and honestly I really didn't listen to the recording after a few seconds because of the irritating recording quality, but given the link, I found her in a few seconds anyway. So?

I received this link on Fb from someone I do not know--but the recording was on the radio and reproduced. Naturally, the sound quality is not up to par, but the central c minor section has some beautiful phrasing, etc. The pianism is of a by-gone era.

Yes, several! And they're keeping their mouths shut for now.


In case it might be helpful, here are some of the NY Times articles that I saw. I'll give dates, together with links (although as noted, you might need to do some kind of subscription to pull up the articles):

NY Debut -- article on 2/26/1929

Great review of Town Hall recital -- 3/20/1937

Short article about canceled recital -- 10/13/1945

Review with some shortcomings noted -- 1/26/1949

Ditto, and a bit more so -- 2/19/1955


I know that many people feel that way, but to me that's absolutely not an issue at all. If anything, it's a positive (really!), because:

-- I associate it with a time when the styles of playing were more what I love

-- I associate it with real representations of the playing, as opposed to edited recordings.

Hey Mark, would it be a silly thing to ask for you to quote those articles mentioned here? It's easy to do copy/paste, if you're up for it - a few quotes at least could be interesting

She must have been a considerable force in piano pedagogy, given the list of her students who went on to international careers as concert pianists.

Regards,

She stopped formal performing and devoted her life to teaching. Byron Janis was her student, and then she started to crank out artists left and right. I believe John Browning and Van Cliburn went to her before big competitions, but it had to be hush hush!! She had a way of opening her students' ears and minds to how they produce sound based on the composers' indications. She hated poor rhythm, ugly sound, poor pedaling, and insensitivity to harmonic structure, or tempi too fast or too slow. She sang when she taught, almost 100% of the time. She showed her students how to get the sound they wanted, how close or far to be from the keys,curved or flat fingers, wrist flexibility, etc etc. I went to her when she was already 70, so she had less patience for anything less than the standards she had been accustomed to. Many could not withstand the tutelage, many could. I had my ups and downs tooBut I learned so much about sound and interpretation which stays with me as I make my own decisions now.

Jeffrey: Great to have you on here. Your observations are very interesting and revealing, including because of how her teaching emphasized qualities that she herself had in abundance in her performing. I might add that if we want to engage in fantasy and amateur armchair psychoanalysis (and BTW IMO even a psychiatrist or psychologist is just an amateur when it comes to analyzing things from afar!), we could easily make up some things about how aspects of her approach toward students had effects from her possible disappointments and frustrations. Well, I guess I just did ....but it's nothing more than amateur stuff, really no better than your average high school or college student trying to analyze the characters in a novel.


I would have if I could have. The articles open in "Preview" for me. For reasons beyond my IT understanding, sometimes things that open for me in Preview are copy/pastable and sometimes they aren't; the Times articles aren't. Unless you or someone can tell me something to try other than the usual ways of copy/pasting....

There's the possibility to do a screenshot I guess, but really, no need to bother going through that hassle of uploading jpg files here.