1941 Arthur LOESSER Beryl Rubinstein PIANO Duo Saint Saens SCHERZO for Two PNO78

$

30

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Great Recording by Arthur LOESSER the supreme American pianist and brother to the composer Frank Loesser

 

One of America’s most brilliant and multi-faceted musicians. Music connoisseurs perhaps know Arthur Loesser (1894-1969) as the author of Men, Women, and Pianos: A Social History, a wonderful book that covers much more than its title suggests. During the 78 era Loesser recorded with violinists such as Maud Powell and Toscha Seidel, accompanying the latter in sonatas by Brahms and Grieg. He taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music, serving as head of the piano department from 1953 until his death in 1969, and also wrote witty, provocative music criticism. And, as these long-unavailable performances reveal, Loesser was an extraordinary soloist, a natural pianist who imbued everything he touched with winged grace, spontaneity, and proportion. He phrased the way great singers breathe. His sense of rhythm was firm yet flexible, with no dead spots, protruding accents, or gaucheries, ever. All music benefited from his generous artistry, and it’s safe to say that Loesser never met a piano piece he didn’t like.

 with Beryl Rubinstein PIANO Duo

in this amazing recording of Saint Saens SCHERZO for Two Pianos

with the atonal first half. This is wild music

 

pre war gold label 12" 78 rpm record.

 

Condition: Excellent close to pristine  plays very quiet, faint ticks on 1

A multitalented musician,  Beryl Rubinstein Georgia native Beryl Rubinstein achieved success as a piano virtuoso, music educator, and composer. He taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1921 until his death, serving as director of the school for the last two decades of his life. Beryl Rubinstein was born in Athens on October 26, 1898, to Matilda Abrahams and Isaac Rubinstein, who was rabbi of the Congregation of the Children of Israel. When Beryl was six, his father discovered his extraordinary musical talent. From 1905 to 1911 Rubinstein toured the United States as a child prodigy. On December 31, 1911, the thirteen-year-old made his New York debut at an evening concert at the Metropolitan Opera House. For the next several years, Rubinstein studied in Berlin, Germany. Upon his return to the United States, the young artist gave his "second debut" in the form of a recital at New York's Aeolian Hall on October 13, 1916. For the next several years Rubinstein continued to develop as an artist, receiving mostly positive reviews. He developed into a seasoned performer not only by giving recitals but also by touring for a time as an assistant pianist for the Duncan Dancers, a troupe headed by the legendary Isadora Duncan. In 1921 Rubinstein joined the piano faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM), which had been founded the previous year. In 1925 he became head of the piano department, in 1929 he was chosen to be dean of faculty, and in 1932 he became director of CIM, a post he would hold until his death two decades later. In 1925 Rubinstein married a Cleveland native, Elsa Landesman. The couple had a daughter, Ellen, and a son, Beryl David. Despite his administrative and teaching duties at CIM, Rubinstein was an active performing musician and composer. With Arthur Loesser he formed a highly regarded piano duo that presented concerts widely. His career as a soloist prospered as well, and he performed throughout the United States and Europe. Although most of his works as a composer were for solo piano, he also tackled larger forms, creating works for piano and orchestra, as well as an opera. A number of his solo piano works have remained in the repertory, including the suites A Day in the Country, Four Fantastic Sketches, and Musical Fancies for the Piano, as well as a sonatina in C-sharp minor, and a sonata for flute and piano. Rubinstein's piano set of transcriptions from George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess also remains in the repertory. His large-scale works, including a scherzo for orchestra (1927) and concerto for piano and orchestra in C major (1936), are largely forgotten, as is his only opera, The Sleeping Beauty. Written to a libretto by John Erskine, The Sleeping Beauty received its premiere at New York's Juilliard School of Music in January 1938. Rubinstein's brilliant piano performances were preserved for posterity on only a few rare occasions. He recorded Ernest Bloch's Sonata for Violin and Piano ("Poeme Mystique") with Joseph Gingold for RCA Victor in the 1930s on Album M-698, which is now a rare collector's item. Several other recordings of Rubinstein's performances exist, including one in which he and Arthur Loesser perform Bela Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, and another, made at a Library of Congress recital in December 1937, in which he plays the keyboard part of Ernest Chausson's Concert in D Major for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet. Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, which precipitated the United States' entry into World War II (1941-45), Rubinstein joined the U.S. Army with the rank of captain. As a member of the army's Fifth Service Command, he had the responsibility of coordinating that unit's wartime musical activities. From 1942 to 1944 he traveled 20,000 miles and participated in seventy-five concerts for servicemen in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. After the war Rubinstein returned to Cleveland to resume the directorship of CIM, which expanded greatly over the next decade. In May 1952 Rubinstein visited his home state, performing in Athens and Atlanta. In Athens he was present for the founding of a new organization, Georgia Composers, formed by Hugh Hodgson, who was head of the University of Georgia music department. In a recital at the university, Rubinstein performed a selection of his own piano compositions as well as Frederic Chopin etudes and Joseph Haydn sonatas. He died in Cleveland only a few months later, on December 29, 1952. In its obituary, the Cleveland Press lamented the loss that Rubinstein's death represented to the musical life of that city, praising the late musician for "his artistic idealism and perfectionism." A scholarship fund was created in his honor, and a noted CIM alumnus, Hale Smith, composed In Memoriam: Beryl Rubinstein, a work for mixed chorus with chamber orchestra (or piano). In 1964 Smith's work was recorded by the Kulas Choir and Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Robert Shaw.

ARTHUR LOESSER

Arthur Loesser received his education at New York’s City College and at Columbia University, where he concentrated on zoology. At the Institute of Musical Art in New York, which was later to become the Juilliard School of Music, Loesser studied piano with Sigismond Stojowski and Percy Goetschius. He graduated from the Institute of Musical Art with the highest honours.

After debuts in Berlin and New York, Loesser toured Australia with violinist Maud Powell between 1914 and 1919, and Japan, China, and the Philippines with violinist Mischa Elman in 1920. He appeared often throughout America, in 1921 touring the States with soprano Ernestine Schumann-Heink. In 1926 Loesser joined the piano faculty of the Cleveland Institute and remained there for the rest of his professional life, later becoming head of the piano department. During World War II Loesser was an intelligence officer in the US Army. He took a six-week course in Japanese at Columbia University and was called to the Pentagon to translate Japanese documents. After the war he was posted to Japan where he was the first American to perform in the country for a Japanese audience. He played Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor Op. 11 with the Nippon Philharmonic Orchestra at Hibiya Hall and lectured in Japanese. Languages were clearly another of his talents as he apparently learnt Portuguese in a month in order to lecture in South America. After returning to America, Loesser continued his career as teacher, performer and lecturer on music, becoming head of the piano department of the Cleveland Institute. He was a modest man who did not seek fame, preferring to play chamber music for friends. Loesser was the half-brother of Broadway composer Frank Loesser and wrote two books, Humor in American Song (1943) and, one of the most well-known books on pianists, Men, Women and Pianos: a Social History (1954).

Loesser first appeared on record as a result of his touring partners. In 1915 he accompanied violinist Maud Powell in some recordings for Victor, and in 1921 accompanied violinist Mischa Elman, also for Victor. His first electrical recordings were made as accompanist to violinist Toscha Seidel. These recordings, of the Violin Sonatas No. 1 in G major Op. 78 and No. 2 in A major Op. 100 by Brahms, and Grieg’s Sonata No. 3 in C minor Op. 45, are extremely fine. Seidel has a wonderful tone and both players seem totally involved in their music-making. Most of this material has appeared on compact disc.

For a very small American label, Friends of Recorded Music, Loesser recorded Brahms’s rarely-heard Piano Sonata No. 2 in F sharp minor Op. 2. In the early 1960s Loesser appeared on one side of an LP recorded for the Composers Recordings Inc. label where he plays piano music by Marcel Dick, Juli Nunlist and Jane Corner Young.

Some of Loesser’s recitals were recorded, one of the most well-known being the one he gave at New York’s Town Hall in October 1967. Entitled Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, it is a programme of rarely-heard piano pieces that were popular in their day but have since fallen into oblivion. Loesser enjoyed finding and playing such works, and in this recital pieces by Dussek, Hummel, Field and Clementi are included with those by Anton Rubinstein, Paderewski, Leopold Godowsky and Ferruccio Busoni which may not be so unusual today. However, those by Jensen, Reger, Casella and Raff really were obscurities then and remain so now. This concert has been issued on LP in the past by the International Piano Archives and more recently on compact disc by the Marston label, along with excerpts from recitals given at the Cleveland Institute in 1967 and in Maryland in 1964. It is interesting to hear Loesser in a variety of music by Bach, Haydn, Mendelssohn and Beethoven, and fascinating to hear him play Prokofiev and Chopin, to each of which he gives an individual voice.

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