Marston has taken over (from VAI) the complete Hofmann
series, here reaching volume five. His last commercial recordings were
made for Brunswick in 1924 and despite numerous invitations from companies
no further discs appeared in his lifetime. He did though record tests
for RCA Victor and HMV in 1935 and for Columbia in 1940 so he wasn’t
implacably opposed to recording per se and indeed – most unusually
for a musician of his generation – went so far as making a large number
of home recorded acetates of his own playing, of which one example,
the Gluck-Sgambati Melodie from Orfeo, is presented here.
So Volume Five is necessarily a disparate collection
comprising live recital material, test records, live radio broadcasts
and that solitary home-recorded piece. Many of the works are repeated
– Hofmann would play the same things at each of his tests – and a number
are abruptly cut short and so its appeal is clearly going to be limited
to those with a particular interest in Hofmann. Those with a more general
enthusiasm should be directed to the published acoustic sides but specialists
and collectors alike will need this two CD set for the rich rewards
afforded, in particular by the earlier performances. These contrast,
sometimes forcefully, with the performances made during the pianist’s
period of decline – prompted by his wife’s illness, the problems he
experienced at the Curtis Institute of which he had been a Founding
member, head of the Piano faculty and finally Director (he resigned
in 1938) and also compounded by his alcoholism.
Hofmann was a romantic virtuoso almost nonpareil. The
earliest recordings here, from 1935 and 1938, show his astonishing array
of gifts – architectural surety, astounding finger technique, textual
depth, the limpidity and sheer beauty of tone, the infectious nature
of his playing and the naturalness of its application – which embodies
a quasi-improvisatory aspect. Some of these were inevitably compromised
during his later years but much here is simply imperishable. The discs
start with Hofmann’s own Berceuse, one for solo piano and the other
in his own arrangement for violin, here played by Curtis associate Efrem
Zimbalist. The solo version from circa 1935 is very beautiful with a
characteristic Hofmannesque limpidity and delicacy of touch, full of
finesse. With Zimbalist little is added. It’s always interesting to
hear him, and I’m an admirer of long standing but his nobility of utterance
can’t really compensate for an endemically slow vibrato. With the 1935
RCA Victor tests we come to some scintillating music making. The Chopin
A Flat Waltz has some beautifully rounded left hand, and is colourful
and life enhancing; it starts quite slowly but builds to a magnificent
climax. In the D Flat Nocturne there is perfect articulation in the
left hand whilst the right engages in some legato-staccato descending
runs; the tone is steady. The first movement of the Chopin Sonata shows
very sparing use of the pedal with a comparable ease of execution and
direction, Hofmann making some slight rubati along the way.
One would expect little else but the playful and infectious
command he evinces in the Military Polonaise with its perfectly
"placed" bass, pedal under control and never over indulged.
Whilst he may lighten and inflect the line one always feels with him
here a sense of almost classical responsibility. The A Flat Waltz performance
of April 1935 is especially majestic with its admixture of playfulness
and wit and a wizardly control as he accelerates; one has ample opportunity
to consider Hofmann’s approach to the Waltz because there are five different
takes of the A Flat as well as a minute’s torso from a Columbia test
of 1940. Of all of them the 19 April (matrix CS 88962-1) strikes me
as the greatest. In the Scherzo from Beethoven’s E Flat Sonata Op 31/3
he generates galvanic momentum treasurable to hear especially in the
light of the rather ambiguous reception afforded his Beethoven playing
over the years. The Philadelphia Golden Jubilee Concert from April 1938
is a momentous event and there is much that is remarkable about the
Andante Spianato e Grande Polonaise but here and elsewhere he can snatch
at phrases a little which can be disruptive. The Columbia tests of 1940
are a very disparate affair. Only Liadov’s little Musical Snuff Box
is played complete – the other items break down at around the minute
mark and the Ford Sunday Evening Hour is variably recorded. Still the
E Flat Nocturne from that broadcast is splendid, with momentum and weight
of tone held in perfect accord. He seems to lose his way in Liebestraum
from that broadcast and the Bell Telephone Hour items in truth don’t
really show him at his best. To recall those great qualities that made
him so wonderful a musician we end with the home-recorded Gluck Melodie
– a wistful end, with captivating tone, to a miscellaneous but profoundly
important set.
Hofmann had made a recording as early as 1887, Thomas
Edison having famously invited the ten year old prodigy to the studios
where he recorded some cylinders (now lost). We can’t go back that far
and nor can we quite recapture Hofmann at his legendary best but these
discs, so finely presented and transferred, so aptly documented, manage
even now to conjure up the still vital spirit of the man that even Rachmaninov
admired and whose advice he sought. And in the annals of pianism that’s
the highest kind of praise.
Jonathan Woolf
Josef Hofmann, piano 