Listen!; Bruce Hungerford

the this is albert her track my guest this evening is the australian pianist mr bruce hungerford a gentleman who has just recently come to the attention of american audiences for recitals and a new series of recordings on the vanguard label as is often the case however mr hungerford has been throwing audiences with his interpretations of the music of beethoven brahms schubert schumann all of the romantics in fact for a number of years in nineteen sixty he was invited by the pirate festival master classes to give the first complete presentation of the piano music a recount wagner and to record for the organization his performances were claimed at the time as they have been subsequently throughout the world where every a shared with audiences his unique interpreter give gifts john referred to paraphrase a popular tv commercial what took you so long to reach our shortz whoa actually i've been here in the short much much earlier i came here from australia in nineteen forty five and then i studied for two years the julliard school with a touchdown

and then shortly after the signing day myra hess and i studied with her and she interviewed peter carroll freed of course with the last global brands and i worked with dr frieden from forty eight to his death and fifty five so i i was here in america from forty five to fifty eight when i went to europe i mean given the last nine years in germany and i'm back here in the united states had you been giving concerts all this time in this condition while you were studying i gave a number of concerts he wasn't a regular thing ad played to five concert and you know before i left to go to europe and fifty eight that said well a great deal of headway in the cost quote was only after i mean to europe and they love they're particularly in germany and belgium that and just seemed to sort of come together you know and i was offered this contract by vanguard of july return calls in carnegie hall not to the sixty five months and shortly after that i return again and others can be invited to play the thirty

two regions and others for the records is one of many works of schubert and brahms and mozart was i simply corrected mentioning primarily before five composers whom i did or does your repertoire embrace practically everything podcast and a good deal yes from bach to brahms i must confess that i play very little more music i'm criticized for this of course but i'm one of those people who can't buy anything unless i feel a deep in a conviction about it and so far has not nina great deal among music about which i can feel this connection and i know great many pianists do play a great deal of modern music and i'm very interested in it i try to keep abreast of it that said i do feature very much unlike programs about your cancer yes i've played a lot of chopin i was lucky enough to study was not freedom australia he went to austria after the nazis

dispossessed him in the osprey into real in nineteen forty one and it unfortunately east and he came to australia at that time was spent the last eight years of his life in sydney they died in the end of nineteen forty eight and then i was lucky enough to have two years of study with him then of course this was a wonderful experience he was a giant among pianists tremendous technique completely without limitation and there tune perhaps the most wonderful that i've ever heard and then of course and forty five the end of my study was freedom and then i came to a non state community to assist free market orthodox or patient or what ancient no i wouldn't say so i must confess although i enjoyed my lessons with him very much that i loved more from free love sitting in the front row right on the piano watching him when he played this was a tremendous education i learned a lot suddenly in the lessons but there was something about the tremendous magnetism and force

of personality this man got up when he was playing this really grip you and it was really at the end of the long form was and you don't want to just jump up and sharp jaws are so exciting well i think that he wasn't a pentagon incentive not really although it had a tremendous experience in teaching he was white prep initiative to d's favorite google and dna many years ago and to lift its key had him as his former rival prepares abc to prepare all students who came along and who are not quite ready to give the message it's good they would study with freedom for a while and really got the proper shape and then they would go for some years to michigan it's good that said no i think not he was really the artist before and are still when london last month from the us i had the pleasure of interviewing the pianist george schoener last week and he told me that he when he studied in budapest with by truck the bar turns

teaching consisted of asking you to sit down and play the piece and then he would frequently say yes that's fine it's very nice and then he would play the piece and so by the time that he was finished with it no i don't know the remainder the flames of a fire truck was incapable of giving you an actual details technique or how to assist you in technical problems but rather he was the kind of teacher by example is this in a manner of speaking the street monster well as a grantee yes he was in patients to take the time to go through yes that is true too to try and explain the intricacies of the technical probably didn't want to be bothered with that that that that i do so i think the reason is he always had what you'd call a natural technique although friedman said believe me i sweated blood to be able to get my technique and i mean the things that heap played i mean the double third study of these six very difficult works the tchaikovsky concerto and differences and the tchaikovsky concerto he would be bored with single runs in the left and

he would double up and thirties at a tremendous speed and you just watch these things flabbergasted that he was he was very loose and his plane had a great said a great abandon he labored to carol itself although at times he added too much and of course when you start adding things particularly in mozart and beethoven become stylistically pretty bad and i think a lot of the old boys did that years ago as i've heard even about so great and others to use only that i have several friends of mine who are very old people not only heard brazilian they see in the in the emperor concerto for instant to be a single notes copying the year it triggered theme in the first movement he would double and opened up his world in the left hand as rather incredible is a sonnet times and was being the year a secure palestinian on the other hand you see his transcriptions of baja very free throw it freely transcribed speaking of transcriptions mr freedman did several not perhaps diverse seconds but two in particular that i know he did his own recommendations of the paganini list

company and also of the wagner list a concert overture and the latter is an extraordinary fair in which he really out lists lists if you wrote these down or were there i wasn't aware of this i've heard him play the longest tunnel isn't aware that he added to that i don't know and i don't think he published under campanella i understood that he did the diesel engine which i don't like as much as the region with gold critics read are putting me list will sony frequent must be the cry was an awareness it must be a relief remarkable progress forged on its potential and as a matter of fact in the steinway collection in the steinway hall in new york there is a painting by chambers on free band playing the tempo is original and is a very beautiful representation of the monks the procession of my pilgrims' coming to the background it's a predawn so he must've been about time very celebrated for this particular work i don't think anyone plays an animal it's very difficult and share a very difficult

skill or indeed with his repertoire all embracing be playrooms all compose yes well he didn't play an even more music i think the most recent i heard was music by debussy i don't think he went beyond that no i don't think so he hardly played any box except the show condom use only arrangement very little mozart beethoven some beethoven sonatas here's your opinion of the performances of these works well he played them in a very free way i mean he was so freedom i was essentially a romantic interest in the most wonderful sense of the word and day he played everything he played in a romantic man it was always at all times very exciting blame but there are like most train creep across with his shop and liszt very exciting having some spanish music he played is mendelssohn was wonderful is their recordings of the same routes you forty minus cuts only a sharp mind as good so it's beautiful and there

as lee's old recordings made in england by columbia or in the nineteen late nineteen twenties in the uk the middle of nineteen thirty five thirty six often made and dare i have these and if they're played on a good high flying machine and he says filtered out they sold perfectly wonderful roger friedman style or personality or whatever comes to use or how much is reflected in your play haydn no insurance very difficult to say i'm not paying a great deal of trouble and now and i'm praying they need a tune schubert and of course these weren't freedoms high points so it's really difficult to say i think may be or very learned moved from was the tune he had the most luscious beautiful tonight and there not only very beautiful but also and with tremendous variety of reasons for them to have the old record he made of the invitation to the waltz of a bus

i don't know any record any performance and you live by a pianist where one hears such an incredible variety of tuna at the beginning you hear a school challenges and then when they are so when the lady on says accepting the invitation to the us is like a flute and it goes right through the whole thing to hear an orchestra on his record and most beautiful thing i put i have taken off on the tape and so i don't have to be violent turn the record over anymore that it says it's the most wonderful thing to listen to this record even now considering the record we've made ninety three i think now you then became in the later part of your development while you were still studying or improving your urine good says mr steinberg said to the public is steady with it last a pupil of a brown scarf report yesterday was a funeral a friend of romney's record sometimes yes the last eight years of his life and how did that experience bring to high levels of a wonderful experience and the yo ma has brought me to in

winter here in new york and i'd always wanted to play beethoven sure works and i never really got to a teacher who couldn't help me with these particular problems and you know these are to compose you have to grow into you can't play them very well but with much conviction when you're very young and it was until i was about thirty five that i start to play beethoven with any real feeling even a conviction and coffee but hopefully in this he would say you know for hours not only playing that we would discuss music and discuss the way to clean these and of course he heard every great pianist from time runs on and he and i had this tremendous information to draw on than to happen once a great comparisons to make shortly was that he'd heard and if i was ever in doubt about the interpretation of a particular caught he would sit down on an instant he would

anticipate the whole thing and are the things thrown wide open to light this was a very great experience stoning of coffee that certainly is the most moving that either the head of ordnance you say the thing about seven years or eight years from various seventies a quarter drive forty to fifty five kinds of time of fifty five how was his own ability as appears to be remaining owners see as i heard him play the beef a brahms concerto in toledo ohio in his seventies eighties here you are seventy nine an astonishing performance and i took out my tape recorder the students grew up and i took my tape recorder and i recorded and i still have this tape it's a wonderful thing to hear technically very good thing that was particularly wonderful about coffee that was his legato he was very very concerned with her daughter as a vital part of piano playing he used to get in the great arguments with

cruz early years ago was busily maintained that you could never played a couple of ideas when she was struck a note it immediately begins to go away what is true we all know that and physical science of course reiterate sisson pounds of home or force that they can muster but there is something else i don't know what it is but if there is a tremendous degree of concentration applied something you might almost say its metaphysical take place and that stone continues on to the next cell kyle fiedler have made a record for the zodiac record company not long before he died in the last two years and if you listen to that record you can hear this wonderful legato meyer has had a wonderful about or so but i think maybe the closest to where mr freberg was tremendous serve the concentrated power trouble he was able to project and the beethoven slow movements for instance where he would take very

skilled tempe this thought carried right through the line was never welcomed from the first note of the sonata right to the end and was it is unbroken golden thread that is tremendously important if you break the thought as carla freedman used to say again and again you're lost in that sort of music you know the romantic music because the mood is changing all the time in the curia way you see that i'm manic music i think is the most part was supposed to be a cry this copy in his mood changes but not beethoven and mozart and schubert has to be a tremendous intellectual as icy line going through it and this is achieved through a concentration and even though the notes maybe aren't connected like they would be on a stringed instrument like a cello or a violent nevertheless with this concentration you can hear this powerfully low paying and it was trouble solar eclipse you listen to the idf for of the opus one hundred and eleven days at a very slow tempo that thing

that you'll never lose those notes in between history with it for some concentration goes into this antonio and with the playing of his music i have thought that the slow movements of the shovel beethoven sonatas are truly great glory a wonderful tips and very moving in you're to avoid and you might say of the study of the music of beethoven and shubert into your later years yes this was part of this you just one word you hadn't come to you know i didn't have the conclusion about if i loved it and it never came the way i wanted it and i came to myra hess and forty eight with this and she said well what do you want to play i said i want to play more than anything else beethoven and schubert schumann i had got it to admit that it wasn't just was coming or it as a beethoven i don't know what it is but i'm afraid to play much in

public i just don't feel i interject and she said well you can do you've got to get beethoven down the mac like a dog gets a bone and chew or so after that i really did so i did and i started chewing on and i look to groups warn more with him and then i began to see that this is the business of getting to grips is part of the secret of playing beethoven you can't play beethoven like you play any romantic musical martin music fest with a great sense of rhythm or a great sense of touch it and good technique and everything that's not enough as gritty innocent beethoven ended baum wrote a very interesting article on this once in england and he created a very interesting example regarding for instance the field of the opus one hundred and six the mccarthy a sonata you know this is a very difficult thing to play it a free voice

to a subject ten bars long running and cynically that all time but he's almost impossibly probably the instance of felix find out other things beethoven's got of course was a great conductor of the time at the wall and that felix find out to have the notion that perhaps if he orchestrated this sonata with the same orchestration the beethoven used in the ninth symphony that the meaning of this work particularly this backbreaking few would become apparent and he did this and it's a fantastic thing to listen to but the the amazing thing about it is they did this listing to this performance does nothing of the kind and explaining the music because the field is plagued with can somebody is by the london symphony orchestra and buying up as a record and there's none of this witness this coming to

grips with making it an intense effort it's not then the whole thing falls to me because that's it becomes to you there has to be this this this mood of intense application and still plays your concentration and effort to see involved and without that it's nothing i just gave a concert recently carnegie hall mr hungerford what are your plans and from this point forward when i'm going to germany in three weeks i have that i have free concerts always knows it happens in berlin and dressed in a lot of ways and then i come back here and two to make some more recordings of the vanguard to continue with the recording of the beethoven sonatas and somewhat by sure what that will be done in april when these records i imagine will be released the timber october have you plans to do on recordings with orchestra terry goddard country this we haven't discussed it obviously i just made the first three recordings last year with these are similar

to the beginning of the thirty two beethoven i presume will be subject to recording of the presently it was going because the saddle i guess this evening is the industrial and cast mr bruce hungerford was just completed a series of recordings of beethoven and shubert piano works for the vanguard label thank you very much for being with us mr hunter for thank you very much as to better enjoy it this is albert a track for listening fb