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“The dandier the sentiment of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge to conquest and the more violent the aroused agitation.” —Alfred Adler Biographical Overview Janice Joplin was born January 19, 1943 in Port Arthur Texas to Seth and Dorothy Joplin. Janice was the introductory born child in a family that would at long last include a sister Laura, who was born 6 years later, and a brother Michael, who was born 10 years later. Janice’s early family life was comparatively normal, and as a child she was particularly curious and bright. Janice often made up stories as a child and begun writing plays while in the introductory grade, and even at a very young age her originative talent seemed to be developing. One early story recounted in Myra Friedman’s (1973) book on Janis, recounts how Seth would take the Janis and at last her siblings down to the post office to look at the pictures of the wanted men as a form of entertainment. Given Janis’s later utter and total disregard for the law and conventionality in her life, one wonders if Janis didn’t create some kind of sympathy for the “outlaw” from these early experiences, as she surely begun to view herself as existent outside of the bounds of normal society. In Janis’s words, “The whole world turned on me” when she entered High School, and these years seemed to have an particularly unfathomed influence on Janis as well as her later work. Port Arthur was in numerous ways a rough and even violent city, and as a port town had a number of bars and houses of prostitution to service the men who came to work there. Janis witnessed extreme racism while growing up in Port Arthur, and her tolerance and acceptance of humans from other races speedily earned her the nickname “nigger lover” which was one of a lot of that she would in the long run acquire in Port Arthur. During this amount of time Janis also gained weight and produced bad skin, and she was often also called a “pig” by the other children in the school. Following High School Janice enrolled at Lamar State College which she found was much like her High School in Port Arthur, as she again experienced a great deal of rejection here and at long last dropped out. With her parent’s blessing, Janis moved to Los Angeles to live with one of her aunts. Janis at last moved out of her aunt’s home into a place of her own in Venice Beach and it was for the duration of this trip that she started out to gravely use drugs including heroin. Having almost passed from physical life for the duration of her experiences in Venice Beach, Janice again returned to Port Arthur, and at long last decisive to return to school, this time at the University of Texas in Austin. It was for the duration of this amount of time of her life where Janis begun performing seriously as a musician. She had came across the blues through listening to records by Odetta and Bessie Smith, and Janis showed an awful capacity to imitate these singers, which was a lifelong talent she had devised even as a young girl. Janis would often play in coffeehouses and other campus spots around Austin, and it was for the duration of these formative years where she was capable to put together her blues, folk, and rock influences into her own integrated and distinguishable sound. Janis’s favored place to play was the legendary Threadgill’s where she became close friends with owner Ken Threadgill who was a very positive strength in Janis’s life. Although Austin included a lot of more anti-establishment types than Port Arthur, Janis was still ridiculed and mocked at the University of Texas, and her sense of inferiority as a result of this reached it is pinnacle when she was nominated for the “Ugliest Man on Campus” award while attending school in Austin. This was the final blow to Janis in Texas, and shortly after this even she packed her bags and moved to San Francisco to pursue a career as a singer. Janis moved to Haight Ashbury in 1966 which at the time was the epicenter of the 1960′s. Bands such as the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane were also coming up at this time, and the music and freedom made the Haight in the 1960′s for numerous a magical time and place to be. Janis found an unbelievable sense of belonging with Big Brother for the duration of this time, and their early work as a band represented the raw energy and improvisational nature of rock and Roll that people were beginning to take observe of. Janice soon started out to outshine Big Brother however, and altho they were a highly energetic live band, their improvisational style did not translate well in recording sessions. Janice on the other hand took a outstanding interest in the recording sessions, and was committed to recording an album that demonstrated Big Brother’s and more significantly her own distinctive style. With Albert’s encouragement, Janice at last left Big Brother, and this act was seen by some in the band, as well as a lot of of Janice’s personal friends, as an act of selfish betrayal. Janice next formed the Kosmic Blues Band, which she spelled with a K in honor of Franz Kafka, who was one of the a heap of novelists that Janice loved to read. The band was supposed to mark a return to Janice’s blues roots, but her original gig in Memphis, a city rich in the blues tradition, was a disaster as the new band received a very lukewarm response from the Memphis crowd. During her time with Kosmic Blues, Janice, already a regular heavy drug user became more enamored of Heroin. Janice’s Heroin use continued to increase all around her time with the Kosmic Blues band, and by the time it came to play at Woodstock in the summer of 1969 she was most likely addicted to the drug. In one specially disgusting story, Janice’s friend and lover Peggy Caserta (who would later go on to write “Going down with Janis” recounts how Janis snuck into the portable toilets to shoot Heroin prior to her performance at Woodstock. In any case Janice’s performance at Woodstock was not thought to be one of her best, and it was at this juncture of her career where her Heroin abuse and continued heavy drinking seemed to adversely get started affecting her music. Realizing that the Kosmic Blues band was not working, Janice also left this band, and in the last year of her life formed her final band that was known as Full Tilt Boogie. It was likewise for the duration of this amount of time that Janice formed a friendship with Kris Kristopherson who would ultimately become her lover, and who also wrote Janis’s seminal hit Me and Bobby McGee which is the song she is most known for today. During this last phase of her life, Janice started out referring to herself as “Pearl” which to her represented the tough- talking highly sexed festive side of her nature. One substantial event that occurred at the end of her life was Janice’s ten year High-School reunion. Janis declared her plans to attend the reunion on the Dick Cavett show while also telling the host Dick Cavett that for the duration of her time at Port Arthur that her classmates “laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state, man”. Janis wanted to return to Port Arthur to show those that had picked on her and ostracized her that she had made it after all, while likewise still craving acceptance from the town that she thought her fame would fetch her. Janis was drunk most of the time for the duration of the reunion, and because she had made assorted negative remarks with regards to the town in the national press, her visit did not achieve what she had hoped, and once again she left Port Arthur sentiment rejected and unloved. Upon returning to San Francisco Janice’s Heroin usage had increased significantly, and it was likewise for the duration of this time that she met and quickly became engaged to a man named Seth Morgan who was from a wealthy east coast family. By all accounts Seth was a dishonorable man, and his stormy kinship with Janis did not appear to be based on any kind of fidelity from either party. During Janis’s last months in San Francisco she likewise reconnected with Peggy Caserta whose appetite for Heroin closely matched Janis’s. Peggy and a good deal of others of Janice’s friends continued to use Heroin with her in her last month, but Janice was using the drug alone in a seedy hotel when she at long last passed from physical life from an overdose on October 4th 1970. Janis’s death deeply saddened her friends as well as her fans, but many, including Janice herself, did not suppose her to live a specially long life. Her rampant alcohol and Heroin use had set her on a collision course with death that seemed inevitable, and with this in mind, a heap of humans considered the idea that Janice Joplin’s death was not in fact an accident but rather a suicide. While a coroner’s report showed that the Heroin Janice had applied that night was in particular pure, one may surely speculate that Janis Joplin contributed principally to her own demise. Despite the fact her death was in the end ruled an accident, it is clear that Janis Joplin’s sad and unhappy life ended as a direct result of her own actions. Analysis Gender Role Preparation sensed through Gender Guiding Lines and Role Models One of the ways a child makes his or her way in the world begins with an acceptance or a rejection of their gender guiding lines. In this regard, Janis Joplin’s kinship with her mother becomes arousing and attention holding to analyze, as Janice and her mother’s interactions were often characterized by a battle of wills and a great deal of turbulence. Janis’s mother, who was a Sunday school teacher, expected Janis to conform to the rules, wear dresses like the other little girls, while likewise making the family proud with her accomplishments. In this regard Mrs. Joplin had high expected values for her daughter concerning both conformity and accomplishment, and this seemed to send a mixed message to Janis that affected her future ambitions and desires. Despite Janis’s rejection of the maternal guiding line, she did distinguish strongly with her father who was an intellectual man who enjoyed reading and was much more accepting and permissive of Janis than her mother. Janis seems to have strongly identified with her father rather of her mother, and this speaks directly to her eventual hug of galore more traditionally masculine calibers in her life. Janis in the end almost altogether and altogether rejected her mother’s wishes that she be like the other girls, and consequently rejected the female guiding line in the family which also seemed to have an effect on her sexuality. Although Janis talked a few times of achieving married life with a “white picket fence” she found belonging by wearing pants and acting like one of the boys, and for Janis this included sleeping with by her own account “a couple of hundred” women all around her life, including one in her High School years. Much has been made of Janis’s sexuality, and one feminist writer attributed Janis’s drug use and lifelong pain as resulting from being unable to to the full or entire extent come out and experience life as her lesbian self. In essence she made Janis a martyr for lesbian causes, and this idea is provocative and interesting to consider with regard to Janis. It surely will have to have been difficult for Janis to reject the effeminate guiding line in the family without it having a great deal of affect on her sexuality, and accordingly it seems highly plausible that Janis may have been predominantly attracted to other women. On the other hand Janis did also sleep with a great a great deal of more men than women in her life, but her disability to sustain lasting relationships with these men may speak directly to Janis’s confused and even tormented sexual feelings. Although she often times bragged in regards to her conquests with men, one could see this as a dramatic overcompensation for her lesbian feelings, as well as a compensation for her rejection by the boys of Port Arthur when she was young. As a star Janice spoke many times regarding her increased access to “pretty young boys” and one wonders if her often untrue bravado when speaking when it comes to men may have merely been attempts to deal with sensations of childhood rejection and inferiority. When children reject their parental guiding lines, they may oftentimes turn to role models to guide them. In Janis’s case because such a role model was not available in Port Arthur, she found this guidance through emulating and studying the music of Bessie Smith, who had passed away various years before Janis was born. Bessie Smith was and is one of the most influential Blues singers in American history and Janis felt a kinship with the blues where she was drawn not just to the music but also to the sadness and pathos that devised the music. Janis remarked many times allround her career that singing the blues required suffering, and Janis employed this faith to warrant and rationalize her Heroin abuse. Janice did draw strength from visualizing the blues singers that had come before her however, and the anguish and pain in her voice while she was singing appeared to be a unfeigned representation of Janis’s ofttimes tortured life. Much like the Blues singers she was emulating, Janis did use music to make sense of painful feelings, and the power and influence of Blues singers like Bessie Smith provided for Janis a roadmap of how to procedure these feelings. Bessie Smith was in fact such a powerful influence on her, that Janis contributed half the cash for Bessie Smith’s memorial so she could be in the right manner honored and remembered. Interpersonal Style sensed through Experience of Family Atmosphere One thing that Janice seems to have inherited from her mother was a sense of frugality which Dorothy had developed from her experiences seeing her family farm lost to the depression. Janice was not particularly generous with cash over the course of her career, and in spite of her blatant disregard for the rules, friends who went through Janice’s possessions (Friedman 1973) following her death found various “meticulously organized checkbooks, all balanced to the penny.” Janice likewise always scoured for the most inexpensive item when she was grocery shopping, and would spend extra time comparing divergences in price on items altho cash was in truth no object in this instance. Considering Janice’s other than as supposed or expected highly disruptive life, this seems almost miraculous, and surely speaks to the fact that Janice valued at least some of her family’s established values. Another instance where Janice seems to have rejected her mother’s guidance was in the area of spirituality, where Dorothy who was a Sunday school teacher, tried to instill in her children ideas consistent with established morality. Janice wildly rejected this idea, and adopted an exceedingly hedonistic attitude where if something felt good to her she was quick to do it. Janice oftentimes conveyed this doctrine of the prompt allround her life, and this ran directly opposed to the family’s religious convictions that there was a life after this one where we received our final rewards. The family’s experiences with music are also necessary to consider with regard to Janis’s interpersonal style. At one time Dorothy was such a gifted singer that she received a full scholarship for her musical abilities to Texas Christian University. Dorothy continued to sing in the church choir when Janis was little, and the family had a piano to celebrate Dorothy’s love of music. When Janis was young Dorothy had one of her vocal cords severed in an accident for the duration of a surgery, and Dorothy could no longer sing as a result of this experience. Seth then sold the piano and this seemed to convey an strange message to Janis regarding music, and may have a kinship to Janis’s fear, repeated oftentimes all around her career, that she would loose her voice and consequently her career. Janice’s eventual hug of music could be interpreted a couple of dissimilar ways. First, that she carried on the family torch passed down from Dorothy, or second, that she took to music because it was something her mother could no longer do. Considering how stormy the kinship was amidst Janis and her mother, and the fact that Seth sold the piano because it was too painful to have around for Dorothy, it seems possible to speculate that Janis’s music was in a lot of ways a reaction versus her mother. The kind of music Janis did go on to invent was surely far dissimilar than the music Dorothy studied in school and perchance Janice’s hug of music could be interpreted as both an ode to, as well as a reaction against, Dorothy’s love of music. Perspective on the World sensed through Experience of Psychological Birth Order Janis was the introductory born child in a family of three, and this likewise influenced her perspective on the world. First born children are often times the responsible and conservative children in the family, and may become in a great deal of ways like second parents to the other children. In Janis’s firstborn 6 years of life she behaved much like you would suppose an oldest child to behave, as her mother reports she learned to sit and cut her feed and eat and talk like an adult at a very early age with amused and astonished Dorothy. Janice was also very well-behaved and had magnificent manners, and her mother reports that her conduct was almost beyond correction in these early years. Things changed when Laura was born when Janice was six, as not only was Janis now dethroned as the only child, but Laura had health complicatednesses which took up even more of her mother’s attention. Interestingly Janis did not at this time become a jealous and overbearing sibling, but rather became very attentive to Laura and cared for as a kind of surrogate parent. A arousing and attention holding switch in the psychological birth order perspective did take place later however, when Janis begun to get jealous that Laura appeared to do things that met her mother’s high expected values whereas Janis systematically let her down. Children often times find belonging in families by engaging in behavings that are dissimilar than their siblings. In the case of the Joplin’s this happened much later when Janis was in High School, where Janis was now finding belonging as the misbehaving child where Laura assumed the role of the responsible one. Normally this dynamic is incisively reversed, but in the Joplin’s case Laura now assumed the vantage point of the initial born child and Janis as the reckless and wild second born. This pattern continued all around the rest of their lives, as for the duration of her periods of conservative conduct Janis would oftentimes ask for Laura’s assistance picking out the proper clothes and seek her counsel on style and other matters. Although Laura was six years younger, she seemed to ultimately surpass Janis with regard to emotions as well, and her story is very much intertwined with Janis’s even today. Laura ultimately earned a PHD in education and became a motivational speaker. She likewise wrote a book called Love, Janis which provided letters Janis had written home to the family all around her career, and this book, which was later made into a Broadway production, helped a lot of persons reach a dandier understanding of Janis Joplin’s inner world. Self Assessment sensed through Genetic Possibilities It is out of the question to talk with regards to Janis Joplin without talking with regards to her physical appearance, as this was at the root of a great deal of Janis’s inferiority and perhaps even a partial comprehensible statement for her uttermost talent. Although Janis was by all accounts an intermediate looking girl growing up, she went through a peculiarly awkward stage in High School where she gained weight and also invented skin problems. In Texas in the 1950′s this will have to have been peculiarly difficult, as beauty was surely a cherished value for women in this time and place, and a person’s self-worth could without apparent effort become tied to their aspect which seems to have happened to Janice. Rather than undertake to play a game she felt she could not succeed at, Janice rather chose to respond in the precise opposite manner, and she made her personal aspect a very low priority. This is classic safeguarding conduct where a person brings about a sense of rejection themselves before others have a probability to reject them. In Janis’s case she would put on a brave front when others would call her a “pig” in High School, but then go home and cry regarding this rejection. It ought to have particularly painful for Janis to be nominated for “Ugliest Man on Campus” while at the University of Texas, as this was a place where she had in the long run found numerous belonging and had experienced some success as a singer. Being constantly rejected for her appearance, Janis only felt pretty in her life when she was performing. It was on the stage where her wild sexuality and charisma in the end shined, and this for Janis meant the stage became the only place where she each genuinely felt accepted. Janice expended the rest of her life following High School chasing the “pretty boys” and this seems to be overcompensation for the rejection she felt from the frequent boys both in High School as well as at the University of Texas. She made much of her one night stand with New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath, even announcing their affair over the microphone while doing a New York concert, and also bragged in regards to sleeping with Jim Morrison, Dick Cavett, and a good deal of other men which may have been merely further attempts to prove that she was without doubt wanted by the “popular” crowd. This surely seemed to be a big portion of her motivation to return to her High School reunion where she hoped to show those that had rejected her how she had made it. When Janis was again rejected at her High School reunion it seemed to fetch all of her intense sensations of inferiority back to the surface, and have at least a lot of kinship to her final and fatal Heroin binge. It is also interesting to consider Janis’s engagement to Seth Morgan with regard to the timing of her reunion. Seth, whose east coast pedigree led Janis to believe that he was in fact one of the “popular” boys she had always sought after had likewise assured Janis he did not want any of her money, and even signed an agreement that assured this. For Janis this may have been a last perceive at fitting in and dealing with the sensations of inferiority her reunion stirred up, and a final undertake at finding the belonging that she so desperately craved. Openings for Advancement Perceived through Environmental Opportunities It is out of the question to undertake an understanding of Janis Joplin without likewise understanding the times she came of age in. The 1960′s was a amount of time of outstanding revolution and change, and provided the perfective backdrop for Janis to unharness her raw energy and power through her music. Prior to the 60′s women had no such opportunity, and the classic model of the Rosemary Clooney type lounge singer was a paradigm that Janis helped modify and recreate for a heap of future generations. The fact that Janis came along concurrently at the height of the woman’s motion was likewise significant, as she became for a heap of a symbol for women’s sexual freedom and experimentation that had antecedently been taboo. Had Janis come along in another era, her brazen sexuality would not have been well received, and Janis was a direct benefactor of as well as a contributor to, the women’s movement. Range of Social Interest sensed through Other Particularities In Adlerian psychology, a person’s mental health may be measured by examining a person’s social interest in other humane beings. In Janis Joplin’s case her early inferiority formulated such violent insecurity that she had a very difficult time getting close to others and sustaining intimacy in her personal relationships. Although Janis was oftentimes taken vantage of by others in her life, she relished in thinking of herself as a victim as it confirmed her existent sensations in regards to herself. For Janis the circumstances of her life ought to have contributed mainly to her confusedness with regards to other people’s motivations concerning their sensations for her. Before she was famous she was mocked and ridiculed by almost everyone she came into contact with, excepting a few select friends she made along the way. She felt inferior in her home life and that she wasn’t living up to her mother’s expected values as to what a woman must be. Then when she became famous abruptly the whole world took an intense interest in her, and it is easy to see why she would doubt the motivatings behind this interest given her prior experiences. No where was this more evident than at Janis’s reunion where she wanted to show the persons who had mocked her how indispensable she had become, while also seriously seeking their acceptance. For Janis the Thomas Wolfe axiom that “You can’t go home again” seemed in particular appropriate, and all of these conflicting cognitions and emotions will have to have invented a outstanding deal of psychic turmoil in Janis which she numbed by using Heroin. In this regard, Janis remarked to Myra Friedman (1973) that “her only true friends were the junkies she applied to hang out with” and this is a telling statement that speaks directly to the fact that drug addicts oftentimes gravitate to each other in a kind of shared misery. The fact that Janis made this remark seems to assert her low sentiment of herself, and how this low sentiment affected her interactions with others. Because Janis was so in need of love from others, she surrounded herself with sycophants who would often tell her whatsoever she wanted to hear, which was a fact Janis was well conscious of. Although a heap of singers from this era including Janis’s one time lover Country Joe McDonald became very involved in political causes in the 60′s, Janice’s message seemed to be more regarding freedom through breaking off the shackles that society imposed. Perhaps because the 60′s were such a time of freedom, numerous severe addictions such as Janis’s were overlooked under the guise of free living. The dream of Timothy Leary and others like him that drugs could be a mind expanding tool has not been realized, and a good deal of such as Janis formulated severe and pathological addictions as a result of this idea. This was the paradox of the pairing of drugs and freedom, as, though the drugs were meant to free a person’s mind, they often made them virtual slaves to their addictions as was the case in Janis Joplin’s life. Conclusion Janis Joplin’s life was distinctly very sad, and demonstrates the pathology and sadness that exists in someone who, in spite of achieving significant wealth and fame, never learns to get over sensations of inferiority towards the self. Alfred Adler’s quote “The dandier the sentiment of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge to conquest and the more violent the aroused agitation” seems particularly applicable to Janis’s life. In a good deal of ways Janis in a positive manner channeled and salaried for her sensations of inferiority through her work on the stage, but when the music was over Janis was always left with the same uncomfortable feelings. Several of the books on Janis’s life describe how despondent she would be following a performance, and this may be because the stage was the only place she veritably found the love and acceptance she so desperately craved. Many constituents contributed to Janis’s inferiority, and the stars all aligned in a very distinguishable way to invent the life that was Janis Joplin’s. Her early and continued rejection by the other children, specially in High School devised a lifetime of negative sensations when it comes to her physical appearance, and these sensations were in all likelihood exacerbated through her interactions with her mother who wanted her to be more like the other children. Because Janis was not like the other girls, she assumed a good deal of masculine traits, and someplace along the way her sensations in regards to sexuality became very confused. Although there is substantial proof to demonstrate a genetic link to homosexuality, there are also closely surely environmental components which may bestow to this, and Janis Joplin’s life seemed to be an splendid example. Despite Janis’s sexually ambivalent feelings, she galore times remarked with regards to a mythical “white picket fence” kind of life that she longed for that would fetch her a good deal of consistency and stability. But Janice was likewise terrified of giving up her stardom, as this was likewise the only thing she had to cling to that gave her a sense of accomplishment in life. She had devised the “Pearl” effigy and now she had to systematically live up to it, and this required a pace that no one could perhaps maintain. Janice was also a product of her times, as more than any other decade before or since, the 1960′s were a time of great change, paradigm shifts, and revolution, and Janis helped define these times while likewise being swept away by them. The music of the 60′s reflected a huge break in society where kids were expected to “never trust any person over 30″ that never rather considered what happened when they reached 30. For Janis, her reckless lifestyle, intense sensations of self-loathing, and raging sensations of inferiority finally overwhelmed her, and her death at the age of 27 was veritably tragic giving careful consideration to the further contributions she may have gone on to make.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful. Friedman had a virtuoso, powerhouse technique and a romantic playing style. He played with a great sense of rhythmic freedom and individuality. Notoriously, he did not always follow strictly the notes in the score but improvised and added. His style was controversial then and, more so, today. I recently read a review of a variety of Chopin recordings which criticized Friedman’s rendition of Chopin’s “heroic” polonaise, opus 53, included in this collection, as mostly empty thumping. I listened and listened again to the recording and couldn’t bring myself to agree.
This set includes a great variety of Chopin but none of the complete sets (say complete mazurkas, nocturnes) common in modern recordings. The sound as as good as can be expected given the age of the pressings, but undoubtedly much of Friedman’s beauty of tone fails to come through. The highlight of the collection is the recording of 12 Chopin mazurkas with Friedman’s intensity, rhythmic idiosyncracy, and sense of melancholy which pervades most of these pieces. They are a beautiful introduction to Chopin.
I also enjoyed the selection of 5 Chopin etudes, particularly the devilish “study in thirds”, opus 25 no. 6 which captures Friedman’s masterly technique. The Berceuse, opus 57 with its fluttering thirds, and the two movements presented here of Chopin’s second piano sonata, opus 35 also are fine performances and show Friedman at his best.
The other major highlight of this disc for me was Friedman’s performance of 9 of Mendelsson’s “Songs without Words”. This music is frequently underestimated. Friedman takes these pieces seriously and performs them with thought and individuality, making it difficult to conceive of these pieces as mere parlor-music.
The disc also includes several works that are infrequently heard today. I enjoyed the piano rendition of Weber’s “Invitation to the Dance” which is heard most often nowadays in orchestral transcription. The short pieces by Anton Rubenstein and Hummel were also unfamiliar to me and idiomatically played.
The only large-scale work performed in full on this disc is Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata, opus 27 no. 2. Friedman takes the first movement very slowly and the second movement somewhat ponderously. The third movement is all speed and lightening, with the long prestissimo passages blurred in some cases.
Friedman was a virtuoso performer who played in a romantic style that was greatly influential two or three generations ago but is mostly out of fashion today. But it is still a beautiful way to make music. The listener unfamiliar with this music will be moved by it and by Friedman’s pianism. Listeners who know and love the piano will enjoy this great performer of the past. 9 of 10 people found the following review helpful. 8 of 9 people found the following review helpful. Rosenthal was simply too old when he made his first record ( Pupils of Liszt contains excellent transfer of his); and Horszowski or even Moiseiwitsch are not quite as interesting as the other three. Hofmann’s superb legato touch is stunning ( only Sauer’s Blue Danube was any better): piano in his hands sounds like a small but extremely refined orchestra. Some, including Rachmaninoff, ranked him the No.1 pianist of the century.
Rachmaninoff as a pianist on the other hand lacked Hofmann’s glamour, but he was armed with the depth and insight of a composer, the so-called “a heart of gold”, something which he compared favourably with Hofmann.
But Friedman had got the strong points of both of them. Like Hofmann, he was a child prodigy who was later landed with a Degree from Leizig University in Composition, Philosophy and Esthetics. He soon become a pupil of and later the assistant of Leschetisky.
He had composed over 100 works and had made extensive scholarly editions of music scores! And above all, he was also an enormously successful performer since his early 20′s– with a success much bigger than Horowitz. If one ever finds Schnabel ( his fellow Leschetiskian ) interesting or musically illuminating, do not miss out Friedman: Schnabel’s playing tells you WHAT IS MUSIC, but Friedman’s tells you WHAT MUSIC IS!
What Friedman undertook and succeeded in doing was most challenging: he didn’t just capture life but recreated it in his music. (Cortot did that too but only in a different way.) This involves a lot of originality and imagination. His rhythm is full of life. (Cortot’s was instead full of dreams and adventures!) His Mazurkas well illustrated this point: the beats are organized in accordance with the movements of the dancers, not with the metronome. The balance of both his hands are so subtle and again so full of life. Pedal was so sparingly and carefully used…
Needless to say, other pieces including his own are equally interesting. There is so much drama in his music, more than either Hofmann or Rachmaninoff. The rhythm,the skeleton of music is astoundingly under control and the colour, the so called flesh and blood of music, is amazingly beyond the imagination of Horowitz on whom his influence was quite strong. ( But Horowitz simply lacked one whole dimension! ) He had a technique even more colossal than Rachmaninoff: his repertoire is virtually limitless, and he could play, especially his left hand, as daring as Cziffra plus Rachmaninoff’s depth and above all, with more colours! It’s as if his ten fingers are literally independent, each capble of creating a different timbre, a different rhythm and yet the whole thing is as subtle and breathing as if with life. Yes, you can really feel the breath and pulses of his music: a four-dimensional playing something which so far on record ONLY a few like D’albert, De Greef and Erno Dohnanyi were capble of ( but the colour of the latters are not so well captured ). And he played music more from a performer’s ( like Horowitz ) rather than from a composer’s point of view like Rachmaninoff.
That helps to explain why Friedman’s playing is so fresh and exciting and why Moiseiwitsch ranked him the No.1. |
Romantic Pianism
Worth it for the mazurkas