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David Saperton Plays Chopin and Godowsky

CD 1 (66:21) – All selections recorded 1952

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849): Etudes, Op. 10

1. No. 1, C major (2:05)

2. No. 2, A minor (“Chromatic”) (1:12)

3. No. 3, E major (“Grief”) (4:16)

4. No. 4, C-sharp minor (“Torrent”) (1:58)

5. No. 5, G-flat major (“Black Key”) (1:28)

6. No. 6, E-flat minor (2:54)

7. No. 7, C major (“Toccata”) (1:23)

8. No. 8, F major (2:11)

9. No. 9, F minor (2:30)

10. No. 10, A-flat major (2:34)

11. No. 11, E-flat major (“Arpeggio”) (2:42)

12. No. 12, C minor (“Revolutionary”) (2:28)

Chopin: Etudes, Op. 25

13. No. 1, A-flat major (“Aeolian Harp”) (2:19)

14. No. 2, F minor (“Balm”) (1:28)

15. No. 3, F major (1:53)

16. No. 4, A minor (1:33)

17. No. 5, E minor (3:52)

18. No. 6, G-sharp minor (“Thirds”) (1:39)

19. No. 7, C-sharp minor (“Cello”) (4:54)

20. No. 8, D-flat major (“Sixths”) (1:07)

21. No. 9, G-flat major (“Butterfly”) (:56)

22. No. 10, B minor (“Octaves”) (4:25)

23. No. 11, A minor (“Winter Wind”) (3:23)

24. No. 12, C minor (“Ocean”) (2:40)

Chopin: Trois Nouvelle Etudes

25. No. 1, F minor (1:58)

26. No. 2, A-flat major (1:57)

27. No 3, D-flat major (1:45)

CD 2 (72:33)

Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938): Studies on the Chopin Etudes

1. No. 4, A minor (“Ignis Fatuus”), on Op. 10, No. 2 (1:50)

2. No. 13, E-flat minor, on Op. 10, No. 6 (3:21)

3. No. 14, C major, on Op. 10, No. 7 (1:41)

4. No. 15, G-flat major, on Op. 10, No. 7 (3:35)

5. No. 25, A-flat major, on Op. 25, No. 1 (2:33)

6. No. 26, F minor, on Op. 25, No. 2 (1:29)

7. No. 33, E minor, on Op. 25, No. 5 (4:23)

8. No. 36, G-sharp minor, on Op. 25, No. 6 (2:06)

9. No. 47, G-flat major (“Badinage”), on Op. 10, No. 5 and Op. 25, No. 9 (1:22)

10. No. 48, F major, on Op. 10, No. 11, and Op. 25, No. 3 (3:16)

11. No. 45, E major, on Trois Nouvelles Etudes, No. 2 (4:25)

Godowsky: Triakontameron, Thirty Moods and Scenes in Triple Measure

12. No. 8, A Watteau Paysage (1:52)

13. No. 11, Alt Wien (2:02)

14. No. 14, Whitecaps (:36)

15. no. 15, the Temptress (2:03)

16. No. 21, Salon (2:10)

Godowsky: Java Suite. Phonoramas, Tonal Journeys for the Pianoforte

17. No. 1, Gamelan (2:48)

18. No. 4, Chattering Monkeys at the Sacred Lake of Wendit (1:41)

19. No. 9, In the Streets of Old Batavia (3:32)

Godowsky: Transcriptions and Paraphrases

20. Albéniz/Godowsky: Triana, from “Iberia” (4:42)

21. Strauss/Godowsky: Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes from Die Fledermaus (10:58)

22. Strauss/Godowsky: Symphonic Metamorphosis on the waltz Artist’s Life (13:37)

Tracks 1 – 11, 21, 22 recorded 1952

Tracks 12 – 20 recorded 1957

GODOWSKY'S STUDIES

by Frank Cooper

Leopold Godowsky's fifty-three Studies on Chopin Etudes, eleven of which David Saperton recorded, stand as legends among all of the most difficult of all piano pieces. In writing them, the composer acknowledged Chopin's originals as "the highest attainment in the realm of beautiful piano music combined with indispensable mechanical and technical usefulness." Godowsky wrote that he "thought it wisest to build upon their solid and invulnerable foundation, for the purpose of furthering the art of piano playing."

Godowsky's intentions were spurred by an idealistic keyboard imagination which left behind the more limited ideas of virtually all his contemporaries. He not only opened up new vistas in the mechanical, technical and musical possibilities of pianism, succeeding in expanding the keyboard's potentials for polyphonic, polyrhythmic and polydynamic expressivity, but he also widened its range of coloristic effects enormously. Even he called these works "unusual" and hoped that performers and composers would benefit from studying their revolutionary innovations. This, alas, did not happen.

Many were those who ignored Godowsky's purposes, only to attack him for desecrating Chopin! Their puristic attitudes excluded these fascinating pieces from consideration as technique or as music. Perhaps their minds and fingers were simply too impoverished to grasp the ideas behind so many notes, much less the notes themselves. And they probably cared little that such incomparable artists as Pachmann, Hofmann and Rachmaninoff considered Godowsky's compositions with awe. Rachmaninoff went so far as to call Godowsky "the only musician of this age who has given a lasting, a real contribution to the development of piano music."

Thanks to this reissue of Saperton's recordings, today's listeners can know something of the labyrinthine splendors of Godowsky's musical mind as it was applied to Chopin and to Strauss. No one came closer to the transcendental quality that personifies the piano, the instrument itself, than Godowsky. Harold Schonberg wrote of these Studies, "nothing since Liszt has been so imbued with the idiom of the piano qua piano."

Godowsky had seven of these pieces in his repertoire at the time of his famous Berlin debut in 1900, though none was to appear in print until 1903. The entire series finally appeared in 1914, printed as five volumes. Today's collectors treasure these original editions, while modern scholars can obtain the set as reprinted by Schlesinger. That these extraordinary works are available once again may augur well for their possible entry into the repertoire. And their ready access on these discs should help to stimulate more than a modicum of interest.

One has only to listen to Godowsky's Study No. 4, Ignis Fatuus (or Will o' the Wisp), based on Chopin's famous Etude, Op. 10, No. 2, Chromatic, to sense the special world of Godowsky's advanced technique. The original Etude is there, note for note in the pianist's left hand, while overhead, in the right hand, scampers an equally continuous series of double notes in triplet rhythm against the quadruplet sixteenths of Chopin's original. Godowsky said that the effect was "softly murmuring," and it is. Its sonorities can be compared to Liszt's famous Transcendental Etudes No. 4, Feux follets, though its technical demands are those of another world.

Godowsky's Study No. 13, dating from 1909, is an amazing, free transcription for solo left hand of Chopin's gloomy Etude, Op. 10, No. 6. A rich web of arpeggio thirty-seconds swirls about the melody, creating a luxurious harmonic texture unparalleled among works for a single hand. Its closest relative is Felix Blumenfeld's famous Etude for the Left Hand Alone.

Studies No. 14 and 15 are based on Chopin's Op. 10, No. 7, the so-called Toccata about which James Huneker asked, "Were ever Beauty and Duty so mated in double harness?" Godowsky copyrighted both in 1903, along with Nos. 4, 26, 47 and 48. In No. 14 the pianist is concerned with transferring to the left hand Chopin's problems of changing fingers on double notes (created for the right hand), while countering in the right hand with a new legato melody in octaves. For his second version, No. 15, Godowsky changes the key to G-flat Major and slows the tempo to allegretto espressivo. Triplets cross rhythms with the now transformed Chopin figuration for an elegant effect, and the hands exchange duties with rhapsodic freedom. Utmost suppleness of the wrists, coupled with fingertips which never seem to leave the keys, result in a particularly beautiful array of rainbow colors as evanescent as any of Debussy's Preludes (which came later). Godowsky himself thought of this Study as a nocturne.

Study No. 25 finds Chopin's Op. 25, No. 1, Aeolian Harp, placed in the pianist's left hand, its melody floating between the bass line and the accompanying sextuplets above! To all this is counterpoised a new and expressive melody accompanied by what the composer called "undulating arabesques" in the right hand. The character is ethereal. Godowsky wrote, "A most sensitive and sympathetic touch, extreme delicacy and refinement, independent and even fingers, a perfect legato, a poetic soul—all these requisites are indispensable to a proper rendering of this Study." Chopin's original thus becomes a cantus firmus supporting but never overshadowing the highlighted right hand's "song without words." This remarkable piece was written in 1904.

In Study No. 26 the bees of Chopin's highly original Op. 25, No. 2 buzz merrily in 12/8 meter against a 6/4 counterpoint, to result in an overall meter of 2/2. The difficulties to surmount are almost unrealistic: most of the entire original Chopin Etude has to be played in the left hand, where the fingerings are infinitely more complex: the right hand's material includes, by turns, four notes to the bar, six, sometimes eight, nine—and the final page is devoted to a duet in which the right hand plays duplet sixteenth triplets, then triplets against duplets. Blending all this with twelve triplet eighths per bar in the left hand requires mastery at a level of pianism possessed by very few.

Study No. 33, composed in 1905, takes Chopin's Op. 25, No. 5, with its eerie accented passing tones, into neoteric realms of elaboration. Godowsky extends Chopin's harmonies, displaces his melodic contour, sheds cascades of double notes over the middle section and enriches the final section by the cleverest complexities. Miraculously, it can all be heard! The textures are clear, the colors clean.

Study No. 36, a product of the same year, seeks to do for the pianist's left hand what Chopin's Op. 25, No. 6 does for the right. The celebrated thirds are reproduced in the left hand with great fidelity to the original, while the right occupies both the bass and the treble, commenting upon the flow of traffic in sixteenths and punctuating it from time to time. Though its colors are darker than those of Chopin's Etude, this Study is every bit as intelligible and twice as challenging!

Study No. 45, also from 1905, treats the second of Chopin's posthumous Etudes for the Method of Moscheles and Fétis to the most far-reaching variations. Everything which happens herein stems from the implications of Chopin's original—harmonies conceived as flickering shadows and as suggestive of melody as the first Prelude of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, and cross-rhythms such as two-against-three-against-four and five-against-three—while in one variation, as Paul Affelder says, "there is the almost unplayable juxtaposition of 18/16, six dotted eighths, 12/8, and 8/8." Godowsky considered the pedalling here to be crucial, and prefaced the music with an essay calling for the utmost care in blending tones. A model of its kind, the little essay touches upon every point of pedalling: not merely the pedals should be used, but how and when to use them and for what effects. The Study itself is thus a microcosm of Godowsky's principles of balanced taste in tone production, simultaneous voices, and multiple rhythms.

Studies Nos. 47 and 48 combine two Chopin Etudes each. Only Godowsky could have discovered such potentials. His contrapuntal insights inspired Busoni, Philipp, Rosenthal, Sorabji and others to investigate the possibilities for virtuoso pianistic counterpoint, and they produced a number of very daring works which are just as unplayed as Godowsky's.

The idea for Study No. 47, a combination of Chopin's Op. 10, No. 4, Black Key, and Op. 25, No. 9, Butterfly, "came to the author," Godowsky tells us, "as a musical 'espièglerie,' as a polyphonic 'badinage'"—and the latter is the subtitle he gave it. Light, graceful and waggish, the piece scampers over the keyboard with great wit—a real "black-key butterfly," as Rosenthal called it.

Study No. 48 performs a happy marriage in F Major between Chopin's Op. 10, No. 11, Arpeggio, and Op. 25, No. 3. As in the Badinage, the pianist's hands are asked to interchange the two Etudes, to delineate each with absolute clarity and to do so with ease.

Godowsky composed four fantastic waltz transmutations which he called "symphonic metamorphoses," two of which David Saperton recorded. Both date from 1912 and exploit Godowsky's vast concept of the keyboard heartily, sumptuously, ingeniously—while the listener is left gasping. In the realm of keyboard settings of dance music, these Corybantic pieces have no peer. Arthur Lockwood described them as "the last word in terpsichorean counterpoint," and they are. Die Fledermaus uses not only the lovely waltz themes, but also other tunes from the celebrated operetta by Johann Strauss the Younger. In Artist's Life Godowsky juggles as many as four or five melodies at once, treating the piano as a huge canvas on which his complex subject matter can be displayed and manipulated fastidiously, precisely, and with a degree of finesse otherwise almost unknown. This is transcendental, romantic pianism taken to its outer limits.

Godowsky's achievement is greater than that of the mere transcriber or arranger. He aimed higher and opened up new vistas for developing our pianistic mechanisms. Treating the piano almost as a way of life, Godowsky eschewed all that might lead to percussiveness and tension, though the "age of steel" in music had already begun in his lifetime. He knew that tight arms, stiff wrists and ice-pick fingers are inefficient, cause noises which interfere with the production of tone from a piano, and result in emotional tension in the pianist which can be physically and mentally debilitating. He tried to show us the way to good health at the keyboard based on relaxed muscles, efficient use of them coupled with effects of gravity and inertia, sharpened aural faculties, continuous mental exercise, and a spirit of musical curiosity and adventure unparalleled in its pianistic scope. When teachers, performers and students wake up to the possibilities and potentials of the Godowsky legacy, and when they apply themselves to its enormous challenge, we will begin once again to enjoy the music they make, to find recitals less of a duty and more of a joy to attend, and to share in the experience of expressivity through beautiful sounds produced with freedom and ease.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

The Chopin Etudes as well as the eleven Godowsky Studies and the two Strauss waltz transcriptions were recorded in 1952 and issued on the Command Performance label. Three years later Kapp Records released an LP that included the eight original Godowsky selections and the transcription of Triana included here.

Godowsky visited the Middle East more than once, and his responsiveness to the external influences and spirit of the East is vividly brought out in his Java Suite, which possesses subtlety and atmospheric charm. Triakontameron is a large cycle for piano subtitled "Thirty Scenes in Thirty Measures." The word "Triakontameron," derived from Greek, means "thirty days." The collection embraces almost an infinite variety of moods and textures. A fact that adds to the suite's interest is that all thirty sections are composed in triple time, which never seems to become monotonous.

A Watteau Paysage of course is an impression of the 17th century painter; Alt Wien and Salon are self-explanatory, as is The Temptress, and Whitecaps is a fine musical seascape. From the Java Suite, "Gamelan" was Godowsky's attempt to create a gamelan sonority on the piano . . . "A typical Javanese atmosphere," he wrote in the introduction to the suite. Lake Wendit, with its monkeys, was viewed by Godowsky in the middle of a dense jungle. And In the streets of Old Batavia is a musical recreation of the capital city. The musical ramble lets the listener imagine wandering through the hectic Chinese quarter, the quiet and contemplation of the Arab section and the native quarter. The climax is reached on arrival at the bazaars, where the effect is kaleidoscopic.

DAVID SAPERTON

by Sidney Foster

These extraordinary performances are among the few which record the historical place of an amazing pianist, David Saperton. In spite of his exceptional achievements, his life was one of disappointment and frustration, and he died relatively unknown in 1970 at the age of eighty—mourned only by a son, a handful of devoted students and a few ardent cognoscenti.

He led a very private life and little is known about him beyond the bare outlines. Nevertheless, he left his mark on an ungrateful world. He was born David Sapirstein in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 29, 1889. He became known as a child prodigy when Leopold Godowsky heard him play at the age of eight. His principal teacher was August Spanuth, to whom he was sent by unidentified patrons, and for a while he attended some master classes of Busoni, though he was never Busoni's student. He may even have had a few lessons with Josephy.

He made his debut in New York at the age of fifteen at a concert in the Metropolitan Opera House playing the Chopin Concerto No. 1 in E minor. A year later he played a recital in Mendelssohn Hall, and he was highly praised by the press.

He then went to Germany where he continued his studies with Spanuth in preparation for his debut in Europe, which took place in October 1908 when he appeared in a joint concert with Geraldine Farrar in Berlin. A year later he embarked on a tour of 180 cities presenting 300 performances throughout practically all of Europe and into Russia, performing a large repertoire.

He returned to New York in 1912 to play two very successful recitals. In 1914, apparently having failed as yet to gain the interest of an important impresario through whom he could hope to make a "career," he planned an extravagant series of four recitals at two-week intervals. These proved arresting in terms of audience and critical acclaim, but still no impresario came forward. Therefore, the following year he planned and played in Aeolian Hall an amazing series of six recitals on six consecutive days which included the American premiere of the Second Sonata of Szymanowski, such major works as the Schubert-Liszt Wanderer Fantasie, all of the Liszt Transcendental Etudes and Etudes de Paganini, Paganini-Brahms Variations, and important works by Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin and others. A coast-to-coast tour followed in 1917-18, the routing slip showing concerts in all major cities beginning August 27 and continuing until the last on April 15.

After that, nothing. Silence.

In 1924 he married Godowsky's elder daughter, Vanita. Soon after, Godowsky spoke to Josef Hofmann on Saperton's behalf, and Hofmann, newly appointed as Head of the Piano Department and Director of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, engaged him as assistant and as a member of the faculty.

Saperton's marriage and closer contact with his father-in-law Leopold Godowsky caused him to immerse himself totally in a study of virtually all of Godowsky's original compositions as well as the complete transcriptions. He played it all, but so difficult are the Studies on Chopin Etudes that he never played more than a handful of them at any one time.

Saperton began to shift the emphasis of his career from performing more and more to teaching and composition—his short work Zephyr gained some renown at the time.

In June and July, 1940, Saperton recorded an album of Godowsky works for RCA Victor. The album contained the transcription of Albéniz's Triana and the Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes from Johann Strauss' Künstlerleben. This album, the first of the few recordings he was to make, was issued shortly after. Saperton also recorded ten of the Chopin-Godowsky Studies. I was one of those who sat with him day after day for many hours while he agonized over the different test pressings. When he finally made his decisions, performances probably unparalleled for their perfection were ready for publication.

They were never to be released, however, because the attack on Pearl Harbor resulted in RCA's contributing these priceless brass masters to our war effort, to be melted down for shell casings!

This was not only a great loss to the music world, but it was also a stunning blow to Saperton, who considered these records the fruit of his life's work. It was another traumatic disappointment to sustain. Only a short while before, he had been "fired" (along with most of the Curtis staff members who had been intimately associated with Josef Hofmann).

Why was he fired? Had he not truly dedicated himself to the institute? Had he not produced many remarkable pianists, among them Jorge Bolet, Abbey Simon, Shura Cherkassky? Was he not a successful teacher? Had he not had a profound impact on the creation of the quality of the Curtis Institute, on the selection of its faculty, on the development of its library, and on many other aspects of the school's artistic climate? Yes, of course, to all of these; but after the departure (under a cloud) of the great Hofmann, the founder and ever-president, Mrs. Mary Louise Curtis Bok (later Mrs. Zimbalist), was of a different mind. Like most of the "Hofmann crowd," Saperton was let go.

The recordings for RCA Victor were made just after this and helped occupy his mind and rescue him from despair. He tried to focus his life with the accent on performing rather than teaching, but remained essentially a private teacher in New York. He never fully recovered from his disappointment at the cancellation of the album of Chopin-Godowsky Studies, which represented the playing of this master pianist at the peak of his prime. They were Saperton as great dramatist, sensitive poet, superb colorist—an incredible pianist.

Twelve years later David Saperton recorded these ten Chopin-Godowsky Studies along with an eleventh, and these recordings were issued, along with the other repertoire presented here, on the Command Performance label. Later Kapp Records acquired the rights to these commercial recordings, and it is from his estate that I.P.A. has leased rights to reissue these performances.

The original Command Performance recordings were not widely distributed before they were withdrawn and are among the rarest piano LPs ever issued. In these recordings one can hear a sense of style and sonority, tonal and tempo control of a special order. His absolute command to place sounds in time, with intensities and balances as he pleased, was unique.

To perform these Godowsky arrangements and Metamorphoses is to be like a puppeteer who holds in his hands the strings to animate a whole company of puppets. There was never the equal of Saperton.

Two weeks before he died of cancer, he played the Prokofiev Toccata and the Barber Sonata, which he had just learned, as well as the Gaspard de la Nuit of Ravel and the Feux follets of Liszt. The small company of students and friends who listened that last evening were astounded at the youthful vitality and undiminished powers he possessed.

A short while before he died, on July 5, 1970, he sprang from his deathbed in the hospital and, pounding the floor with his cane, exclaimed in an angry voice: "This is preposterous! I have work to do!"

Sidney Foster, one of David Saperton's best-known students, was the pupil to whom Saperton sent his own students. Mr. Foster had just finished these notes when he died on February 7, 1977.