Nadia Reisenberg: A Chopin Treasury
Classical music has always produced superstar performers who thrill the public and claim widespread attention. But there have also always been dedicated artists with lower profiles who influence the field from within and enjoy productive and important careers. The pianist Nadia Reisenberg is a good example.
When Reisenberg died at 78 in 1983, she was best known as a respected teacher at the Juilliard School, the Mannes College of Music (now Mannes College the New School for Music) and other institutions, who nurtured students like the pianist Richard Goode and the conductors Myung-Whun Chung and Andrew Litton. But in her prime Reisenberg had a busy concert career as well, winning acclaim for her musically sensitive and technically effortless artistry.
For a while she was a familiar name to music lovers in America, especially during the 1939-40 concert season, when she played the 27 Mozart piano concertos in a series of weekly radio broadcasts with the WOR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alfred Wallenstein, an impressive feat. During that period she was a regular soloist with the New York Philharmonic, though conductors generally turned to her for contemporary fare ignored by big-name pianists on the touring circuit: works like Vincent dIndys Symphony on a French Mountain Air, a charming piece that remains a rarity; the concertos of Kabalevsky and Rimsky-Korsakov; and Prokofievs daunting Third Piano Concerto, a piece seldom heard in the 1940s but a staple today.
Thanks to a remarkable new four-CD set from the Bridge label, Nadia Reisenberg: A Chopin Treasury, Reisenberg may come to the attention of a generation of listeners who have heard little if anything about her. This reissue of recordings made by Westminster Records in the mid-1950s includes Chopins complete nocturnes and mazurkas, the Barcarolle, the Berceuse and the Allegro de Concert. It also offers a live recording of Chopins Piano Sonata No. 3, taken from a 1947 recital at Carnegie Hall and issued here for the first time.
In all these Chopin works Reisenbergs playing is exceptionally beautiful, distinguished by warm tone, impressive clarity, unostentatious virtuosity and unerring musical insight. The set contains charmingly personal liner notes by Robert Sherman, the radio announcer and producer of classical music programs. Mr. Sherman is something of a Reisenberg expert; she was his mother.
Mr. Shermans essay gives an overview of Reisenbergs life and career. Born in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1904, she studied piano at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in Russia and toured Eastern Europe and Germany before coming to New York in 1922. She made her American debut playing Paderewskis Fantasie Polonaise with the New York City Symphony Orchestra, with Paderewski in attendance.
At first she developed a reputation as a contemporary-music specialist, giving first American performances of works by Schoenberg and Stravinsky. When for a New York Philharmonic concert the conductor John Barbirolli asked her to play the premiere of a difficult concerto by Mischa Portnoff, a composer who also worked in Hollywood, Reisenberg readily accepted the challenge.
She played chamber music, her first love, with the Budapest String Quartet, the principal players of the Philharmonic and other leading musicians, including Benny Goodman, with whom she made her first LP recording: Brahmss E flat Clarinet Sonata.
Though she never considered herself a Chopin specialist, her performances here are masterly. There is an affecting directness to her playing. She conveys the jerky rhythmic tugs and pulls of the mazurkas, Chopins boldly inventive evocations of the Polish dance form. Yet for all the rhythmic freedom of the playing, there is an utterly natural lilt and flow.
Classical music has always produced superstar performers who thrill the public and claim widespread attention. But there have also always been dedicated artists with lower profiles who influence the field from within and enjoy productive and important careers. The pianist Nadia Reisenberg is a good example.
When Reisenberg died at 78 in 1983, she was best known as a respected teacher at the Juilliard School, the Mannes College of Music (now Mannes College the New School for Music) and other institutions, who nurtured students like the pianist Richard Goode and the conductors Myung-Whun Chung and Andrew Litton. But in her prime Reisenberg had a busy concert career as well, winning acclaim for her musically sensitive and technically effortless artistry.
For a while she was a familiar name to music lovers in America, especially during the 1939-40 concert season, when she played the 27 Mozart piano concertos in a series of weekly radio broadcasts with the WOR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alfred Wallenstein, an impressive feat. During that period she was a regular soloist with the New York Philharmonic, though conductors generally turned to her for contemporary fare ignored by big-name pianists on the touring circuit: works like Vincent dIndys Symphony on a French Mountain Air, a charming piece that remains a rarity; the concertos of Kabalevsky and Rimsky-Korsakov; and Prokofievs daunting Third Piano Concerto, a piece seldom heard in the 1940s but a staple today.
Thanks to a remarkable new four-CD set from the Bridge label, Nadia Reisenberg: A Chopin Treasury, Reisenberg may come to the attention of a generation of listeners who have heard little if anything about her. This reissue of recordings made by Westminster Records in the mid-1950s includes Chopins complete nocturnes and mazurkas, the Barcarolle, the Berceuse and the Allegro de Concert. It also offers a live recording of Chopins Piano Sonata No. 3, taken from a 1947 recital at Carnegie Hall and issued here for the first time.
In all these Chopin works Reisenbergs playing is exceptionally beautiful, distinguished by warm tone, impressive clarity, unostentatious virtuosity and unerring musical insight. The set contains charmingly personal liner notes by Robert Sherman, the radio announcer and producer of classical music programs. Mr. Sherman is something of a Reisenberg expert; she was his mother.
Mr. Shermans essay gives an overview of Reisenbergs life and career. Born in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1904, she studied piano at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in Russia and toured Eastern Europe and Germany before coming to New York in 1922. She made her American debut playing Paderewskis Fantasie Polonaise with the New York City Symphony Orchestra, with Paderewski in attendance.
At first she developed a reputation as a contemporary-music specialist, giving first American performances of works by Schoenberg and Stravinsky. When for a New York Philharmonic concert the conductor John Barbirolli asked her to play the premiere of a difficult concerto by Mischa Portnoff, a composer who also worked in Hollywood, Reisenberg readily accepted the challenge.
She played chamber music, her first love, with the Budapest String Quartet, the principal players of the Philharmonic and other leading musicians, including Benny Goodman, with whom she made her first LP recording: Brahmss E flat Clarinet Sonata.
Though she never considered herself a Chopin specialist, her performances here are masterly. There is an affecting directness to her playing. She conveys the jerky rhythmic tugs and pulls of the mazurkas, Chopins boldly inventive evocations of the Polish dance form. Yet for all the rhythmic freedom of the playing, there is an utterly natural lilt and flow.
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