Sergei RACHMANINOFF
(1873-1943)
Prelude in C sharp minor Op.3 No.2 [3.40]
Franz LISZT
(1811-1886)
Tarantella from Venezia e Napoli – abridged
[4.19]
Etude de Concert No.2 in F minor La Leggierezza
[4.34]
Liebestraum No.3 in A flat - two performances
[4.03] + [4.38]
Gnomenreigen – two performances [3.16]
+ [3.02]
Fryderyk CHOPIN
(1810-1849)
Etude in G flat Op10 No5 Black keys
[1.45]
Etude in G flat Op.25 No.9 Butterfly
[1.07]
Waltz in E flat Op.18 Grande valse brillante
[4.23]
Ballade No.3 in A flat Op.47 – abridged
[4.33]
Polonaise in A flat Op Op.53 – abridged
[4.47]
Nocturne in D flat Op.27 No.2 [4.10]
Waltz in A flat Op.34 No.1 [4.17]
Scherzo No.2 in B flat minor – abridged
[4.42]
Berceuse in D flat Op.57 [4.34]
Polonaise in C sharp minor Op.26 No.1
[4.09]
Etude in A flat Op.25 No.1 Aeolian
Harp [2.10]
Etude in E Op.25 No.3 [1.57]
Waltz in A flat Op.42 [3.57]
Polonaise in A Op.40 No.1 [3.47]
Fantasie-Impromptu in C sharp minor Op.66
[4.11]
Fryderyk CHOPIN
(1810-1849) - Franz
LISZT (1811-1886)
Chant Polonais No.5 Op.74 No.5 My Joys
– two performances [4.24] + [3.18]
Chant Polonais No.1 Op.74 No.1 The
Maiden’s Wish [3.15]
Ernö von DOHNANYI
(1877-1960)
Capriccio in F minor Op28 No.6 [2.35]
Eduard SCHUTT (1856-1933)
A la bien-aimée Op.59 No.2 – abridged
[3.15]
Adolf von HENSELT
(1814-1849)
Wiegenlied in G flat Op.45 [3.14]
Giuseppe VERDI
(1813-1901) - Franz
LISZT (1811-1886)
Rigoletto Paraphrase – abridged [4.25]
Anatole LIADOV (1855-1914)
The Musical Snuff Box Op.32 [2.40]
Christian SINDING
(1856-1941)
Rustle of Spring Op.32 No.3 [2.44]
Enrique GRANADOS
(1867-1916)
Spanish Dance No.5 in E minor Playera
[3.26]
Cecile CHAMINADE
(1857-1944)
The Flatterer Op.50 [3.13]
Felix MENDELSSOHN
(1809-1847)
Song Without Words in A Op.62 No.6 Spring
Song [2.24]
Edward MACDOWELL
(1860-1908)
Witches’ Dance Op.17 No.2 [2.56]
Franz SCHUBERT
(1797-1828) - Carl
TAUSIG (1841-1871)
Marche Militaire No.1 [4.13]
Anton RUBINSTEIN
(1829-1894)
Rêve Angelique Op.10 No.22 [4.44]
Claude DEBUSSY
(1862-1918)
Golliwog’s Cakewalk from Children’s Corner
[2.59]
Minstrels No.12 from preludes Book 1 [2.06]
Clair de lune from Suite Bergamasque [4.30]
Reflets dans l’eau, No.1 from Images Book
1 [4.20]
Camille ZWECKER
In A Boat Op.30 No.1 from Chansons de
la Mer [3.03]
Eastwood LANE (1879-1951)
The Crap Shooters from Five American Dances
[2.39]
The one thing that
even non-specialists may remember about
Godowsky is his famous injunction to
an Australian friend not to judge him
by his records. It’s now over sixty
years since Godowsky uttered those more-than-merely-rueful
words and critical ink has seldom refrained
from pointing out either that remark
or that the fruits of his numerous recording
dates were at best massively uneven.
Volume two in Marston’s
three volume series reaches the 1922-25
Brunswick recordings, which were themselves
the mid period between his earlier American
Columbia sides and his final English
Columbias, some of which feature some
of the most moving and successful sessions
he ever recorded, this shortly before
the calamitous stroke that effectively
ended his career. Marston has retained
the acoustic discs’ crackle – the majority
here were recorded acoustically – but
this has meant that higher frequencies
have been retained and that Godowsky’s
tone emerges fully and freely without
any dampening.
The listener will immediately
notice that Brunswick practised wholesale
abridgements. They were of course hardly
unique in that respect but it is still
impoverishing to hear the truncations
accorded Chopin’s Ballade in A flat
in this October 1922 recording. Similar
criticisms can be applied to the torso
of the B flat minor Scherzo from 1924
and indeed to the Polonaise in A flat.
Throughout these Chopin pieces in particular
the impression is mixed; great imaginative
understanding one minute, then dubious
and peremptory playing in abridged 78
sides the next. The Nocturne in D flat
therefore is rushed to cram it onto
one 78 side. And yet even here things
are uncertain. There are two versions,
a year apart, of the Chopin-Liszt Chant
Polonais No.5 Op.74/5 My Joys
and they could not be more different
in terms of tempo. His Waltz in A flat
is non-committal and in fact rather
uninteresting but when one turns to
Dohnányi’s sparkling Capriccio
we find his fingers in fine digital
form and his mind alert to the craftsmanship
of this recently composed gem. It is
as if, untrammelled by expectations
as to his playing of the canonic repertoire,
Godowsky is freed.
Godowsky was not above
essaying trifles of which there are
a goodly number. His Sinding wasn’t
published at the time but is delightful
in much the same way as the cut Liszt
Tarantella from Venezia e Napoli
is a wholly admirable statement. If
his Chopin Polonaise in A (February
1924) is too careful – it sounds inhibited
as Godowsky all too often could in the
studio and, from critical comments,
in the concert hall as well – one should
listen to such as the Sinding for evidence
of his glittering and majestic control
and to extrapolate why his colleagues
always maintained that he was heard
at his finest in private. Normally this
is platitudinous but not, I think, in
his case. MacDowell’s Witches’ Dance
for example is a superior example of
his public face but of even more worth
is his Debussy, of which there are four
examples here. If one doesn’t especially
associate Godowsky with Debussy so much
the worse for our expectations if his
Reflets dans l’eau is anything
to go by.
It’s undeniably the
case that these Brunswicks lack the
obvious Romantic pile-drivers against
which we could measure Godowsky’s overtly
virtuosic and extroverted credentials.
But he was a master of the subtler canvas
and a master of the polyphonic and of
course very much of his time in textual
emendations. His uneven recordings point
to a personality unsettled by the mechanical
and by contrivance - a sensibility shared
by numerous colleagues not least Hess
and Curzon. It’s in this light that
we should consider the recordings, enhanced
as they are here by extensive notes
and by those well aerated Marston textures.
Jonathan Woolf
Leopold Godowsky (piano) 
