Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1931-12)

46 The Phonograph Monthly Review fine records by many different pianists and in every case the essential of the individual artist’s performance have been captured and preserved. In fact, through the medium of the gramo- phone we can now offer the public perfor- mances closely similar to those we give on the concert platform. Our records should not disappoint the most critical listener who has heard us in the flesh; to the millions who have no opportunity of doing so, they con- vey just and accurate impression of our work. In addition, what is to me most im- portant of all, recording for the gramophone enables the artist to satisfy himself. For I am by nature a pessimist. It is so seldom that I am sincerely satisfied with my performance, so often that I feel it could have been better. And when making records it is actually possible to achieve something approaching artistic perfection. If once, twice or three times I do not play as well as I can, it is possible to record and re-record, to destroy and remake until, at last, I am content with the result. Can the radio artist, who has no opportuni- ty to hear how his performances come through ever know a similar satisfaction in his work? Myself, I dislike radio music and listen to it very seldom. But from what I have heard I cannot believe that the best broadcast performance imaginable would ever satisfy a sensitive artist. On this account alone, I deplore the present depression in the gramophone industry. It is curious fact that when I began working for a gramophone company ten years ago business was excellent, though only indiffer- ent records were available. Yet today when we have first-class recording business is worse than it has ever been. For this, I can only think that the universal craze for radio is to blame. Not for a moment would I wish to belittle the scientific value of broadcasting, its won- ders, or its benefits to humanity. I can well imagine that if I were exiled in Alaska, for instance, I might be grateful, for even the pale ghost of music the radio would bring me. But to listen-in in great cities like Lon- don and New York when one could actually be present in a concert hall—to me that would seem sacrilege. Radio is a very great invention but not, I think, for art. To compare the ultimate musical value of broadcasting with that of the gramophone is to realize that the gramophone has bestow- ed upon the executive musician one price- less gift—permanence for his art. You listen to a broadcast recital. The next moment it is finished, gone. But a gramophone record can preserve for ever the playing and singing of the world’s most distinguished artists. Think what it would have meant to us today could we possess records made by Liszt, the great- est pianist who has ever lived. Yet we can only dimly imagine what his playing must have been. Future generations will be more fortunate in that the finest modern musicians, through their records, will be something more than names to those who come after them. I can imagine no more striking example of the gramophone’s power to re-create the personality of dead genius than an ex- perience of my own, when in 1918, I first went to America. It was in New York I was given the opportunity of hearing some records made by Count Tolstoi shortly before his death in 1910. Having known Count Tolstoi, whose friendship had greatly helped and influenced me at a very difficult period of my early career, I was naturally keenly interested. The records, made on his estate in Russia, were simply speeches, one in Rus- sian, one in English, explaining his phil- osophy of life. Yet when the machine started and I heard again his voice, perfectly repro- duced down to the curious little husky cough characteristic of his speech, it seemed that Tolstoi himself had come to life. It was a marvellous experience. Seldom have I been so deeply moved. Never, never can I forget the impression the sound of that voice, so long silent, made upon me. But the tragedy of it is this. During the past ten years I have tried continually in America, in Russia, to obtain those records. No one can tell me what had become of them. Unique and irre- placable they have apparently vanished be- yond recall. To return to my own work for the gramo- phone, I have felt most satisfied with those records made during the past three years. These include my own Piano Concerto, Num- ber Two, which I recorded with the Phila- delphia Symphony Orchestra under Stokow- ski, Schumann’s “Carnival” recently issued in America, the Chopin “Funeral March” Sonata, which I believe is not yet published and the Grieg C Minor and Beethoven G. Major Sonatas for piano and violin in part- nership with Fritz Kreisler. Do critics who have praised those Grieg records so highly realize the immense amount of hard work and patience necessary to achieve such results? The six sides of the Grieg set we recorded no fewer than five times each. From these thirty discs we final- ly selected the best, destroying the re- mainder.