Magda Tagliaferro
HAHN: Concerto, Sonatina; SCHUMANN: Vienna Carnival, Romance 2; CHOPIN: Impromptu; ALBENIZ: Sevilla; MOMPOU: La Rue, Le Guitariste et Le Vieux Cheval, Jeune Fille au Jardin ; DEBUSSY : Jardin sous la Pluie, Toccata
Pearl 0157-79 :17
Magda Tagliaferro (1893-1986) entered the Paris Conservatory in Marmontel’s class in 1906 and obtained her first prize eight months later. She impressed Albeniz who was on the jury and Cortot who took her as a student. In addition to her career as a soloist, she performed with Jacques Thibaud, Jules Boucherit, and Pablo Casals, as well as playing in piano duos with Risler and Fauré. She performed with conductors like Furtwangler, Ansermet, Munch, Monteux, Paray and Raynaldo Hahn, who dedicated his piano concerto to her. She premiered it in Paris in 1931 and recorded it under the direction of the composer on the Pathé label in 1934. This version, reissued by Pearl, contains several cuts in the third movement that suggest revisions Hahn wished to make (unless it was to respond to a technical constraint for this early recording). The original version is available on disc by pianists Stephen Coombs (Hyperion 66897) and Angeline Pondepeyre (Maguelone 111106). This four-movement concerto is less daring than certain pieces in Hahn’s The Bewildered Nightingale (Earl Wild on Ivory 72006). The good-naturedness of the first two movements recalls Chabrier’s Roi malgré lui. The sweetly ingenuous Rêverie is followed by a tempestuous and capricious finale, a kind of piano portrait of Magda Tagliaferro whose recording here displays all the brio and vitality for which she was known. Hahn’s Sonatina illustrates the tendency of his period toward what was called Neo-classicism, although the term "neo-Baroque" might be a more accurate description of this stylistic exercise, dedicated to Diémer. Its three movements share the form and character of the dance as well as of a suite. Tagliaferro draws the maximum from this lighthearted piece in C major in which the naïve chord progressions and self-evident scales in the last movement recall one of Marmontel’s witty remark: "The fingers are little horses returning all by themselves to the stable!"
This recording of Schumann’s Vienna Carnival obtained the Grand Prix du Disque in 1934. Given the voluntarism and impetuosity of Tagliaferro’s playing, one might expect that she would transform Schumann’s piece into a gust of wind. Not at all! The initial Allegro, profound and sonorous, accentuates the contrasts between feminine and masculine themes. Her light, celestial Scherzino is in marked contrast to Arturo Benedetti-Michelangeli’s strongly rhythmic version. Less demonic than her Italian colleague in the Finale, she opts for the quivering of a soul, thus demonstrating that she is able to wax poetical upon occasion.
Chopin’s Impromptu in C sharp minor is played with authority, wrapped in a classic beauty that is a stylistic model for players who tend towards a sickly-sweet interpretation like that favored by provincial old maids. Tagliaferro was a champion of the Polonaise-Fantaisie recorded for Philips in 1955 and was highly respected in Poland for her interpretations of Chopin’s music.
She plays Sevilla in the style of the great romantic pianists like a bonbon offered as an encore to further galvanize her public. Although she takes almost unthinkable risks, she manages to bring out the precision of the central melismas, which she articulates with a diaphanous dialectic. It must be noted that Tagliaferro’s repertoire included the Goyescas as early as 1913 and thus was no stranger to Spanish music. She was the first pianist to record Mompou’s music. In the first piece on this disc, an excerpt from the collection called Suburbis, she seems to have found it difficult to contain the volcano inside her. While the evocation of the guitar is more faithful than the original, the old horse gallops perhaps just a bit too fast. In Jeunes Filles au Jardin, an excerpt from Scènes d’Enfance, she displays an appropriate ingenuity. Jardin sous la Pluie, 3rd Estampe by Debussy, explodes with life and bravery. Its raindrops fall very straight and its garden shines with a thousand virtuoso and virtuous fires. A presage confirmed by her Toccata, sans peur et sans reproche, in which the sense of line fights with architectural qualities over a global vision which animates it almost to the point of breaking.
The absence of Magda Tagliaferro, the Martha Arguerich of the mid-century, from the Philips collection of Great Pianists of the XX Century is only one of many gaps in this anthology. The present disc edited by Pearl admirably completes her recordings of Liszt, Chopin, Saint Saens, Villa-Lobos, Brahms and Schubert for the Dutch firm in 1955 (Philips 438959). One merely needed to add her Fauré program, recorded earlier for HMV, to revive a red-letter discographic legacy.
VILLEMIN
Published in American Record Guide, Vol. 65, N. 2