Eugen d’Albert (1864-1932) was a Scottish-born pianist and composer. He was one of
Liszt’s most celebrated pupils and made discs and rolls of compositions by Beethoven,
Chopin, Liszt and Brahms and of his own compositions. His playing was fast, full of
wayward rhythms, rubato, arpeggiata and melody delaying. His roll of Beethoven’s
‘Waldstein’ Sonata showed him arpeggiating all the chords of the second subject of the
first movement. At times his recorded playing was slapdash, but it could also be
impressive as in his roll of the Liszt Second Polonaise. His roll of the Liszt Sonata seems
to play back at too fast a speed as the slow movement is also very fast.
Conrad Ansorge (1862-1940) was a pianist and composer. He was born in Silesia and
studied at the Leipzig Conservatory and with Liszt at Weimar in 1885-86. He toured
Russia and Europe, and made his United States début in 1887. He settled in Berlin,
where he enjoyed a reputation as an interpreter of Beethoven and Liszt, and taught at the
Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatorium from 1895 to 1903. He taught at the German
Academy of Music in Prague in the 1920s but ill-health forced him to retire. He was a
recognised interpreter of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Liszt. He put technique in
the background and emphasised textual accuracy in performance. Claudio Arrau
described him as ‘a wonderful musician’. While studying piano in Berlin, Charles
Griffes wrote that he wanted to ‘go to someone else like Ansorge for interpretation’.
Ansorge taught with colourful analogues and demonstrated at the keyboard. He often
said ‘Heiter ist das Leben, Ernst ist die Kunst’ (Life is happy, art is serious). He
composed a piano concerto, chamber music, three piano sonatas, other piano pieces and
songs. His pupils included Dorothea Braus, Joseph Challupper, Ernesto Drangosch,
Eduard Erdmann, Sverre Jordan, Selim Palmgren and James Simon. Ansorge made a
Liszt disc and a number of Liszt rolls including one of Hungarian Rhapsody no. 14.
Claudio Arrau (1903-1991) Chilean born, naturalised American pianist, studied as a
child prodigy with Liszt pupil Martin Krause. Like Arthur Rubinstein, Arrau had a very
wide repertoire, had an exceptionally long and celebrated career as both a concert and
recording artist, and was an important link between the old and the modern schools,
although it seems neither ever practised melody delaying or arpeggiata. He became
principally known for his interpretations of the piano concertos and piano music of
Beethoven and Brahms although he performed and recorded Chopin, Schumann and Liszt.
Wilhelm Bachaus (1884-1969) was a German pianist. He made the first complete
recording of the opus 10 and opus 25 Etudes of Chopin which many still regard as the
definitive recording. He played them in a fluent, poetical manner and with an absence of
mannerisms. He was the first ‘name’ pianist to record a sizeable number of discs,
starting in 1909, and the first to record a portion of a concerto, the first movement of the
Grieg, cut down to fit on two single-faced twelve inch discs. His recorded repertoire was
wide in stylistic variety, from Bach and Beethoven, through to Grieg and Rachmaninoff.
Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist.
His style is a synthesis of folk music, classicism and modernism. He was fond of the
asymmetrical dance rhythms and pungent harmonies found in Bulgarian dance music.
His piano concerto no. 2 in G major is one of his more accessible works from the point of