within each bar and a large amount of arpeggiata in the right hand two-note chords. The
performance sounds very rushed, and indeed is cut short before the end, presumably
owing to the recording time restraints. His discs show the best aspects of the nineteenth
century French piano school, with clarity and control in rapid detached passages, and
limpid pianissimo scales. His pupil Lazare Lévy wrote, ‘The astonishing precision of
[Diémer’s] playing, his legendary trills, the sobriety of his style, made him the excellent
pianist we all admired.’
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) was a French composer and pianist. He made a roll of his
Pavane opus 50, and his performance has a degree of melody-delaying and arpeggiata.
Carl Friedberg 1872-1955 was a German pianist. He studied piano with James Kwast
and with Clara Schumann at the Hoch Conservatory, Frankfurt. He became a teacher
there and later at the Cologne Conservatory. From 1923 until his retirement in 1946, he
was principal piano teacher at the New York Institute of Musical Art, later to become the
Juilliard School of Music. His pupils included Malcolm Frager, Bruce Hungerford,
William Masselos and Elly Ney. Friedberg’s career as a performer spanned over sixty
years in both Europe and America. He made his début in 1900 with the Vienna
Philharmonic Orchestra under Mahler. In 1893 he had given an all-Brahms recital in the
presence of the composer who highly admired his playing and later coached him in
private on the performance of his piano works. Friedberg also acquired a name as a
chamber musician. Although he had a wide repertoire, his name became particularly
associated with the music of Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms. Early on, he issued
several piano rolls. During 1953, two years before his death, Friedberg recorded a
number of piano works which were released on LP. Some further material was issued in
- It is said that his sensitive and acutely detailed recordings of Brahms offers great
insight into the style that Brahms himself approved of.
Arthur Friedheim (1859-1932) was a Russian pianist. He was Liszt’s favourite pupil
and recorded ten of Liszt’s works on roll and also made a number of discs. His
performance of the Liszt Sonata in the presence of the composer met with the composer’s
approval but unfortunately his roll recordingof the Sonata has not turned up and may be
lost. His playing on surviving rolls is fairly free of mannerisms.
Ignaz Friedman (1882-1948) was a Polish pianist and composer, and a pupil of Riemann,
Leschetizky and Busoni. He had been a child prodigy. His style was quiet and effortless
and was imbued with a sense of rhythm and colour. His interpretations of Chopin,
especially the mazurkas, are considered by many to be unsurpassed. Rachmaninoff
placed him alongside Godowsky, Rosenthal, Josef Hofmann and Joseph Lhevinne.
Friedman gave over 2,800 concerts during his career, although he sometimes receive
luke-warm reviews in America in later years as critics came to prefer the modernist style
of piano playing. He left a recorded legacy of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin and
Grieg, composed piano pieces, and edited Chopin, Schumann and Liszt. At the
beginning of the Second World War Friedman undertook a concert tour of Australia. He
settled in Sydney, taught and gave concerts, but had to retire from the concert platform in