Recording technology is an invaluable means to document a musician’s artistry for both present and future generations. It is surprising and disappointing to consider that this medium’s long-term potential was often not recognised at times when there was the opportunity to preserve vitally important historical perspectives. One artist whose deeply informed musical knowledge and playing we can fortunately experience, even while lamenting the absence of more, is the German pianist Carl Friedberg.

Friedberg was a pupil of Clara Schumann who also found himself in the privileged position of being coached on the piano works of Brahms directly by the composer himself. In 1893 the 21-year-old played an all-Brahms recital in Vienna while completely unaware that the composer himself was in attendance (he later said he’d have died of fright had he known). After the recital, Brahms introduced himself and invited Friedberg to the Café Imperial; it wasn’t until three in the morning that the composer even mentioned the recital, expressing admiration for Friedberg’s playing while warning him not to play entire recitals of his music because no one would want to listen to so much of it (how things have changed).

When the young pianist got the nerve to ask the composer for advice for playing his music, the initial response was a haughty ‘I don’t teach’, but Brahms soon invited Friedberg to his home. After brewing some coffee and opening his favourite cognac, Brahms played through all of his solo piano music (with the exception of the Paganini Variations – he no longer had the required dexterity because of gout) while giving both general and precise indications. On other occasions, Friedberg turned pages during performances that Brahms gave of some of his chamber music.

Friedberg went on to have a successful performing career both in Europe and abroad, and after emigrating to the US he also became a beloved teacher at Juilliard for 23 years. It boggles the mind that the pianist was suddenly and unceremoniously relieved of his position by the new Juilliard administration in 1946 – one wonders by what reasoning they thought that having a pupil of Clara Schumann and disciple of Brahms would no longer be a boon to the institute. Nevertheless, Friedberg continued to teach privately and he still gave recitals at Juilliard.

It can seem mystifying to present-day musicologists and recording buffs that no one in Friedberg’s orbit made sure to document systematically his playing and with it all that he had learnt from Brahms and Clara Schumann. (The same applies for another pupil of Clara Schumann and protégé of Brahms, Ilona Eibenschütz – more about her in a future column.) One would hope that he would have written down all of his recollections but it appears he did not: instead, he passed them on to his pupils (who adored him), among them Bruce Hungerford, Malcolm Frager and William Masselos.

Fortunately, Hungerford took advantage of a reel-to-reel tape player he’d obtained and recorded his lessons with Friedberg in 1951-52, approximately 20 hours’ worth of material. A few extracts have been made public (I’ve included two in my feature about Friedberg on my own website: thepianofiles.com), and they are illuminating to say the least. In one lesson, Friedberg stated that composers were not always the best at playing their own works – he said that Grieg was boring when playing his own Piano Concerto and that Brahms did a few things that he found ‘very objectionable’ – yet he also highlighted important considerations about the master’s intentions. He noted that composers like Brahms didn’t micromanage by indicating every single nuance in the score, yet Friedberg stressed key tenets like not changing note values when implementing subtle timing adjustments. Friedberg’s pupil Joseph Banowetz told me that the elderly pianist insisted on adhering to the score, but that didn’t preclude bringing individuality and nuance to a performance.

One hopes that the complete recordings of Friedberg’s teaching will some day be made public: for the time being, they are safely housed at the International Piano Archives at Maryland (IPAM), and copies can be purchased for study. A complete transcript is also part of a thesis by Ann Riesbeck DiClemente that is available online.

Not only did the German pianist apparently not consider it essential to preserve for posterity all that he’d gleaned from Brahms, he also resisted recording his own performances: like many of his generation, he did not buy into the concept of preserving a fixed interpretation for repeated listening, as he considered music to be an ephemeral, in-the-moment experience. Although Friedberg did make some player-piano rolls (and later disavowed them, as many pianists did), he refused to make actual audio recordings. He was finally persuaded to do so in the early 1950s, once tape technology and long-playing records allowed for greater fidelity.

By the time Friedberg went into the studio for the Zodiac label in April and May 1953, he was 81 years old – but we can be very grateful that he did, as his playing is sublime. He set down accounts of Schumann’s Kinderszenen and Études symphoniques, as well as Beethoven’s G major Piano Sonata, Op 14 No 2, and several shorter works, including a few by both Schumann and Brahms. Even at his advanced age, he played with impressive dexterity, but it is the subtler qualities of his playing – tonal colours, dynamic shadings, voicing, timing – that are most mesmerising.

The handful of concert recordings of Friedberg that survive show his playing to even greater advantage, among them two Juilliard recitals from 1949 and 1951 that feature some jaw-dropping performances. Among the most astonishing are accounts of Brahms’s G minor Ballade, Op 118 No 3, and Chopin’s Nocturne in A flat major, Op 32 No 2. An excerpt of Friedberg explaining to Hungerford some details about how Brahms played this Ballade was available online, so I uploaded that to YouTube paired with his own complete live performance of the work, which makes for a fascinating combination of his spoken statements and his impassioned yet lyrical performance. The Chopin Nocturne has the kind of nuancing that words can scarcely begin to articulate: actually hearing how Friedberg plays with seemingly elastic timing yet with a steady pulse, while simultaneously adjusting phrasing, dynamics, pedal effects and tone, is a masterclass in historical performance practice that goes beyond what any written treatise could offer.

We are also fortunate to have a complete 1951 concert recording of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto that Friedberg played in Toledo, Ohio, which was captured by Hungerford’s tape machine, and although the sound quality leaves a good deal to be desired, the playing is superb (after he recovers from a lapse in the first minute). Some other notable surviving performances are a volcanic Beethoven Piano Sonata in E minor, Op 90, and Chopin’s Polonaise in F sharp minor, Op 44, both of which have such steely intensity and power, fused with Friedberg’s extraordinarily fluid phrasing, that it is amazing to remember that the pianist was in his late 70s; one can only imagine the fiery forthrightness his playing might have had decades earlier.

While we can of course regret that the full scope of Friedberg’s invaluable wisdom and glorious pianism were not duly preserved, we can be grateful for what does exist. His priceless recordings are a kind of time capsule, providing direct access to a musical culture from which so much of the present-day repertoire emerged while revealing so much of what is possible at the piano. 

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of International Piano. Never miss an issue – subscribe today