تويت
Last year I'd posted on this date for the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ilona Eibenschütz, only to find out that online sources have been inaccurate with her birth year and that her passport indicates she was in fact born on May 8, 1873 - so today is indeed the day to celebrate this great artist's 150th.
Eibenschütz was a Hungarian pianist who trained with Clara Schumann and became one of Brahms's favourite pianists. She had a brief but extremely successful career before retiring from public performance after marrying around 1903 (she played a few private concerts from time to time), but she only died in 1967 at the age of 95.
Her official discography consists only of recordings made in December 1903 for the G&T label (Gramophone and Typewriter, not Gin and Tonic), but she also made some private discs decades later, some of which have been made available, as well as incredible spoken reminiscences for the BBC in which she recounts her meetings with Brahms.
Five years ago I prepared this page dedicated to the artist, which includes her complete 1903 discs plus a selection of later recordings, which I've updated to include a filmed interview that I held with one of her grandsons in 2021:
https://www.thepianofiles.com/an-app...a-eibenschutz/
Among the recordings on that page is the one I'm sharing on this post: that priceless 1952 BBC talk in which Eibenschütz shares some of her experiences with Brahms, including when he privately premiered his Opp.118 and 119 for her, works that she later premiered for the public. Although her account is scripted (she had written and published it in the 1920s, and one can hear her turn pages and occasionally misread a word), the vitality of her presentation of these encounters is an absolute delight. It boggles the mind that we can hear the voice of someone who knew the legendary Brahms sharing such stories that could have so easily disappeared into the ethers without being preserved.
The playing in brief samples in this talk is extraordinary as well, a far cry from how we hear Brahms performed today: aged 80, Ilona still played with great facility (as Dinu Lipatti reported in a letter a few years earlier after he spent an evening at her home) and with tempi that would today be seen as far too fast (she plays an excerpt of the Ballade Op.10 No.4 at double the speed one generally hears).
The insight we can gain from hearing someone who knew the composer is truly invaluable: for her this was NEW music, as opposed to (as Lipatti would later write on this topic) a tradition that ends up being distorted by exaggerated and displaced reverence, removing that essential quality of present-time aliveness.
Truly invaluable insights and vivacious pianism by a remarkable musician!