For the 16th anniversary of my Facebook page The Piano Files with Mark Ainley on July 9 this year, I thought I would create a post with some of what I’ve shared over the course of the past year.

I’ve recounted on several occasions that when I started the page in the early years of the social media platform, there was no sense that it would turn into as wide-reaching a hub for historical piano recording-related material as it has become.

I came up with the name The Piano Files several years earlier as a play on words for ‘pianophiles’ – people who love the piano – when I pitched a program with that name to the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). I had suggested to the national broadcaster that a program devoted to the piano – the one instrument most people had childhood memories of – would have broad appeal. The response from a longtime producer for the network was that it was the best proposal he’d seen in many years but that the network was going through some changes and my emphasis on historical recordings might be ‘too advanced’ for the general population; as it turns out, the CBC soon went through a significant downturn in their programming. But I kept the name in mind and it was perfect for my Facebook page.

That page now has over 18,800 followers, with 19,300 over at my YouTube channel, but unfortunately the algorithms pervasive in social media limits the reach of my posts to most. I have a paid subscription page on Patreon that enables subscribers to receive emails with each post, as well as previews of new uploads and other materials.

This last year has been slower due to some issues I did not publicize: I had knee-replacement surgery in February, and the period before and after this required me to conserve my energy in a way that limited my creative output. I am now in much better shape and my passion for online sharing has rekindled, along with a new tech setup that will enable me to produce more videos as well as podcasts, and some new ideas for more significant uploads, programs, and articles on my YouTube and website, plus previews and some new upcoming behind-the-scenes and expanded posts on Patreon for those who contribute to my cause.

To celebrate the 16th year of the Facebook page, here are 16 of my YouTube uploads from the last year – plus a bonus one, in which was a guest on another host’s program.

First off:

To coincide with the publication of my Historical Perspectives column about Ilona Eibenschütz in the Autumn 2024 issue of International Piano magazine (available here), I shared an incredible private recording made ca.1950 of the long-retired pianist playing an excerpt of the third movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No.30 Op.109.

Eibenschütz made no commercial recordings after her 1903 sessions for the Gramophone & Typewriter (G&T) company but she lived until 1967. While most of her later private recordings were thought to have been made at her home, a number were in fact apparently made with HMV – therefore at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios – yet never intended for release. None of these performances can therefore be considered her final ‘say’ of these works, nor examples of her playing at her prime – she had long been retired and was in her 70s, 80s, and 90s when producing these private discs in the 1950s and 60s; however, they do reveal some rather striking music-making and perspectives that differ from present-day norms, all the more remarkable given her tutelage with Clara Schumann and her playing having been greatly admired by Brahms.

This Beethoven performance was in fact published once, in a long-ago-deleted set on the Pearl label, and to my knowledge it has not been available since. It recently made its way to me and I was struck by the uncanny simplicity and disarming directness of her approach. Great music can be played in so many ways, and Eibenschütz was known for her brisk tempi and unfussy readings; while Beethoven’s late Sonatas are often played with a reverence that can absolutely bring out the magic in this sublime music, Eibenschütz’s direct, down-to-earth playing allows the music’s exquisite beauty to reveal itself. Her soaring tone is remarkable, as is the combination of a full-bodied sonority and transparent textures.

Although the first hour or so of Gina Bachauer‘s recordings for HMV were reissued on the APR label, the bulk of her decade worth of recordings for the prestigious label have not been reissued on CD – a great shame, as her significant output of concertos and solo works for the label invariably find her in very fine form. I decided it was important to share her June 7, 1956 recording of Scriabin’s 24 Preludes Op.11, released on HMV CLP 1173 in Europe and on Capitol in North America. I also posted in another upload her superb Brahms Waltzes that was on the other side of the LP (click here to listen).

A wonderful recording came to me that had a fascinating back story: an obscure 1954 recording by Brazilian pianist Carmen Vitis Adnet Graf of Chopin’s F Minor Concerto, with Vienna Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Hans Swarowsky. The young pianist made this sole recording and finally after decades the family obtained a clean transfer (the artist herself had received only a single copy of the LP), and it is a wonderful performance. The full story is in the text below the player window on YouTube and it’s quite a read – and a lovely interpretation.

One of the pianists I first came across in my years of running my page is Agnelle Bundervoët, and from a rare out-of-print CD I shared a January 17, 1964 broadcast recording of her playing the Khatchaturian Piano Concerto with the Orchestre national de la RTF conducted by Janos Komives. By the time of this performance, Bundervoët had retired from regular public appearances due to rheumatoid arthritis, but she did give radio studio broadcasts in addition to her primary activity as a teacher. This broadcast recording reveals none of the challenges that she seems to have faced: she plays with wonderful dexterity and power, always with beautiful tone at all dynamic levels, rhythmic vitality, and exquisite nuancing.

Adolph Hallis is a largely forgotten artist who studied with the great Tobias Matthay (who famously taught Myra Hess and a number of other legendary pianists). The South African pianist made the world premiere recording of the Debussy Etudes (also shared on my YouTube) but seems to have recorded nothing else. After a performing career while based London that also included producing film music used by Alfred Hitchcock, Hallis moved back to his native South Africa at the outbreak of WW2, where he became a beloved teacher.

He appears not to have fully given up on concert performance, as revealed by this live recording of Schumann’s Piano Concerto from around the 1960s. This was only ever issued on a South African CD and is extremely rare, yet very much worth hearing as an example of the artist’s superb pianism. In particular this modern recording allows us to appreciate Hallis’s gorgeous tonal colours, refined dynamic palette, and wonderful lyrical phrasing.

November 9 last year marked the 90th birthday of French pianist Thierry de Brunhoff, who 50 years previously (in 1974) chose to become a Benedictine Monk. To recognize his birthday, I uploaded recording of French pianist Thierry de Brunhoff playing Fauré’s Berceuse from Dolly Suite (probably the arrangement for solo piano by his teacher Alfred Cortot). This was part of a record of a range of solo works for Angel released around 1964 which was recently republished by St Laurent Studios (here). In this performance we hear Brunhoff playing with a gorgeous bell-like sonority, transparent textures, and lyrical phrasing

November 2024 also marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of French pianist and pedagogue Marguerite Long. I prepared a detailed tribute on my website (available here) and made a few uploads of transfers of original 78s effected by Tom Jardine (to whom, as always, boundless thanks). Here is Long’s July 10, 1930 recording of Debussy’s two Arabesques. It is surprising that despite having known the composer, Long only recorded four short solo works by Debussy, including these two. In all of these she demonstrates the epitome of French jeu perlé, with a light touch, evenness of articulation, and great clarity.

A fascinating rarity that I was delighted to share was a May 1954 concert recording of Mexican pianist Angelica Morales von Sauer playing the Brahms Piano Concerto No.2 in B-Flat Major Op.83 with Clemens Krauss conducting the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México. Mexican pianist Angelica Morales von Sauer is yet another sorely underrated artist of whom not nearly enough recordings exist. She studied with Busoni’s disciple Egon Petri and made her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic at the age of 13, additionally studying with Josef Hofmann, Josef Lhévinne, and Emil von Sauer, whom she later married (hence her last name). After his death, she returned to Mexico for a few years before emigrating to the US, joining the faculty of the University of Kansas in 1955.

This concert was apparently the second and last time that the pianist played this work – she made a comment to a friend that both times something tragic had occurred. I am unclear of what happened the first time, but on this occasion, conductor Clemens Krauss had a heart attack after the concert and died soon after, on May 16, 1954.

A more amusing anecdote about the performance is that at the end of the first piano solo there is a part that Angélica used to play crossing her left hand over her right (whereas most prefer to change hands to avoid crossing over), and at a certain moment she deliberately tore a flower off of her dress to do it more comfortably.

A recording that is quite important to me is Vladimir Horowitz‘s May 6, 1934 HMV recording of Beethoven’s 32 Variations in C Minor, heard here in a tranfer from an original set of 78rpm discs by Tom Jardine (to whom all thanks) using records from his personal collection – in fact, it may be the existence of this recording that is the reason you are reading this page.

It was my having bought a modern recording – which I didn’t like! – of these 32 Variations, which I was learning back in 1984, that led my teacher to show me her 78s in an attempt to find her own copy of this particular Horowitz recording. It was in this process that we found the set of 78s with Rachmaninoff playing his own second concerto, which then launched my interest in and exploration of historical recordings!

We didn’t end up locating her own records of this Horowitz recording, but when we soon discovered a record lending library in downtown Montreal, they had a copy on a Great Recordings of the Century LP, so I finally got to hear it. My teacher had raved about it so much that in a sense I was disappointed when I first heard it – the dangers of an active imagination! – but having now heard it many times over the last 40 years, I find it to be a wonderful performance. Horowitz was for me in his peak period prior to 1936 and in this particularly fine transfer by Tom Jardine (as is always the case), I find that one can appreciate more of the refinement in Horowitz’s playing: what gorgeous tone, mindful use of articulation, transparent voicing, rhythmic vitality, and wonderful dynamic shadings – his phenomenal technique fully at the service of the music.

December last year marked another important date: the 150th anniversary of the birth of Russian pianist Josef Lhévinne. I created a tribute page on my website (here) and included a few transfers by Tom Jardine, including this upload I made of the Schumann-Liszt Frühlingsnacht which was included on his legendary 78rpm disc of the Schumann Toccata, recorded at RCA Studios in New York on June 7, 1935.

This performance is astounding in so many ways: the incredible evenness and voicing of repeated figurations, the wonderful combination of dynamic variation and timing at the ends of phrases, and the beautiful tone throughout … all are exquisite. Two and a half minutes of magic, in this glorious new transfer.

I thought it important to share in a single upload the five works that the legendary Polish pianist Josef Hofmann recorded in London on November 29, 1935 as tests for the HMV label.

Hofmann produced his last commercially issued recordings for the Brunswick label in 1923, for some reason not making more discs when the improved technology of the microphone came into general use in 1925. However, in 1935 he agreed to make some test recordings for both the RCA label in the US and the HMV label in the UK, recording five works for each. The RCA records were set down on April 19, May 2, and May 6 1935 while the HMVs were produced in a single session on November 29, 1935. For whatever reason, none of these were released during the pianist’s lifetime, despite his overall satisfaction, particularly with the HMV set: in a November 4, 1955 letter to Steinway executive “Sasha” Greiner, Hofmann wrote:

“The only ones that seem to me to be flawless are the 5 English recordings that I made in London at the end of November 1935. However, I made them in a studio, completely undisturbed and unagitated, which could not be said of my Jubilee Concert at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1937.”

In the letter he authorizes copies of these recordings being sent to Emil Gilels, who appears to have requested a signed photo and recordings of the master.

While the RCA sets is also magnificent – and includes the longest work he recorded in the studio during ‘electrical’ recording era, the first movement of Chopin’s Third Sonata (they can all be heard here) – the HMVs are worthy of particular attention given Hofmann’s approval of them in the aforementioned letter. The transfers here were effected by Ward Marston in his exceptional Hofmann series on his label (click here for this particular volume).

It’s always a delight to listen to the playing of Ignaz Friedman and for his birthday this past February (not a big anniversary) I shared his superb recording of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.2, produced for the Columbia label on December 16, 1931 at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London. This unprocessed, unfiltered transfer comes from Volume 1 of the series devoted to Friedman on the St Laurent Studios label, which aims to maintain the full-frequency sound profile of the original discs. Their Friedman series can be found here, available as both CDs and downloads.

Friedman was an exceptionally individual artist whose pianism was characterized by a full-bodied sonority, rhythmic freedom, soaring phrasing, and imaginative voicing. He produced about five hours of recordings, his recordings of a dozen Chopin Mazurkas and nine of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words being particularly notable, and all of his preserved performances are worth exploring. The present performance is a case in point, with a magnificent array of tonal colours, phenomenal voicing, and impeccable timing that highlights the folkloric roots of the work.

This year is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ricardo Viñes, whose playing I first encountered in the late 1980s, around the time that I learned about Marcelle Meyer – who happened to be one of his pupils. He was a remarkable artist who premiered many works by Ravel and Debussy (several were also dedicated to him) but he died penniless in obscurity, and his handful of recordings is well worth exploring, even though they probably don’t capture him at his best (he didn’t like the recording process, as was often the case with such artists).

I have prepared a brief tribute to the artist that I will expand on (here) and added an upload from the St Laurent Studios collection of his complete studio recordings (the entire set is here). Here is his 1930 account of Debussy’s La soirée dans Grenade – a work which he premiered. This glorious performance features sinewy phrasing and deeply resonant bass sonority, which contribute to the evocative atmosphere.

The Danish pianist Victor Schiøler is another artist whom I first encountered of my years running this page. He was a disciple of the legendary Leschetizky pupils Ignaz Friedman and Artur Schnabel, and himself the teacher of Gunnar Johansen and Victor Borge (who replaced his name Børge Rosenbaum with the name Victor to honour his beloved teacher). He recorded extensively from the 1920s through the 1950s, with appearances on international releases by Columbia, HMV, Mercury, and Capitol, but his name faded from public awareness outside of his native Denmark, where he is still fondly remembered.

To coincide with the publication of my feature about the pianist in International Piano (available here), I uploaded with permission a couple of stunning live performances that were issued on the Danacord label – who brought him back to the public starting with their first set in 1999. This superb account of Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto (available here) comes from a month after Schiøler’s 50th birthday. As always, he plays with a burnished singing tone, attention to dynamic shadings, exquisitely clear textures, and with impeccable timing.

Harold Bauer has been a beloved pianist in my collection since I first read about him in Harold C Schonberg’s book The Great Pianists while in my teens. His January 9, 1942 Victor recording of Liszt’s Un Sospiro was set down at his last ever studio session. The transfer in this upload derives from the third volume devoted to Bauer’s 78s issued on the St Laurent Studio label (available here). This 1942 performance was captured a few months before the pianist’s 69th birthday and finds him in very fine form, with his glorious singing tone, wonderful balance of voices, and exquisite phrasing all impeccably coordinated.

Last month I became aware regrettably late that June 3 this year marked the centenary of the birth of Mindru Katz, a superb pianist who was a pupil of the great Romanian teacher Florica Musicescu (who also taught Dinu Lipatti and Radu Lupu). He made a number of solo and concerto recordings for the Pye label (his debut album will also be found on my channel here) and toured internationally, settling in Israel around the time of this recording in 1959. He died on stage mid-performance in Istanbul on January 30, 1978 after suffering a heart attack while playing Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata – he was 52 years old.

I was long impressed by his account of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with Sir John Barbirolli conducting the Hallé Orchestra, recorded on May 7 – 8, 1959 at Manchester, Free Trade Hall. His pianism is characterized by beauty of tone at all dynamic levels, impeccable phrasing, skillful balance of primary and secondary voicing, and subtle nuancing, all serving intelligent conceptions of the music that he is performing.

And finally, I was delighted to be featured in Ben Laude’s wonderful series The Chopin Podcast, in which he has been exploring each kind of music composed by perhaps the greatest poet of the piano. I was invited to present in the episode devoted to Chopin’s Waltzes due to my work on the legacy of Dinu Lipatti, whose recording of these works continues to be held in the highest esteem.

In this presentation, we end up comparing an earlier recording of one of the waltzes so as to demonstrate just how much Lipatti’s artistry had changed by the time he recorded these works in his final summer – and again a few months later when he played the cycle (all but one) at his final recital. I got fairly emotional at times during the presentation – I was rather surprised, as I have talked a lot about these details – as the space that Ben held really helped me to connect more deeply with the raw emotion of the event and the circumstances around it. He asked if he could keep these pauses in rather than edit them out, and I agreed. Here is the result of Ben’s brilliant editing of our conversation.

Ben and I recorded another video a while back that will be edited and published after the massive Chopin Podcast cycle concludes – and this inspired me to begin producing more of my own (even if just in audio format) … so, stay tuned for more!

Thank you for helping make The Piano Files what it is today. When I first began exploring historical recordings 40 years ago (!), the internet did not exist, so I couldn’t begin to imagine how it would be possible to share so much with people around the world in such an interactive way way, and I’m delighted that technology and the people using it makes this a reality!