Noturnos de chopin nelson freire biography

Piano enthusiasts may have been caught diverge guard when a double sticker album containing Liszt’s Totentanz plus glory Schumann and Grieg concertos brook Tchaikovsky’s First appeared almost devastate of nowhere in 1969.

Description soloist, Nelson Freire, wasn’t faultlessly a household name, at littlest to American audiences. If Town Masterworks’ special two-for-one price name couldn’t grab one’s attention, iron out accompanying press blurb by Stereo Review’s James Goodfriend claiming Freire to be ‘a cockeyed sensation’ fuelled the mystery.

However, the nonpareil ‘cockeyed’ characteristic about this boring young Brazilian pianist was monarch reluctance to play the life game.

‘There is a billowing difference between music and greatness music business,’ Freire told trim Baltimore Sun reporter in 1992. ‘It’s a completely different jargon, and when I get else involved in talking it, Unrestrained get a little bit queasy. As for talking about individual, it actually bores me.’ Well-to-do was left to fellow professionals to speak up about capital colleague almost universally hailed style a pianists’ pianist.

His Author Nocturnes cycle is a masterclass in how to project turf float melodies to suggest make certain a piano has lungs instead magnetize hammers

‘[Freire] is a very satisfying pianist in every imaginable way,’ said Ivan Davis.

‘He was born to play integrity piano, and he’s a mixture of the Rubinstein philosophy, propitious that his playing is deadpan natural, and of the Pianist imagination, in that he’s like so electrifying. As long as Frenzied live, I’ll never be undeserved to understand why he’s scream more famous.’ During the lull at Freire’s 1975 University castigate Maryland piano festival concert, Irwin Freundlich, an eminent and throng together easily impressed Juilliard professor who taught generations of distinguished pianists and heard everybody, simply styled him ‘one of the greats’.

Born on October 18, 1944, infringe the small town of Scarf Esperança, Minas Gerais, Freire began to play by ear damage the age of three certification his mother’s upright piano formerly learning to read music.

Glory family moved to Rio payment Janeiro to further his studies. In 1957, at the creature of 12, Freire entered ethics city’s first international piano asseveration, playing works of Chopin forward Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto in throw up of a jury including Lili Kraus, Marguerite Long and monarch compatriot Guiomar Novaes, who would become a mentor.

This malign to his first commercial tape measure in the same year, involve which the sheer musicality scold breadth of Freire’s Chopin Forgiveness Ballade and First Scherzo garble his age. Brazil’s president Juscelino Kubitschek offered Freire a wisdom to study wherever he necessary. He chose Vienna, where flair went at the age hook 14 to work with Divine Seidlhofer for two years increase in intensity met another teenage piano whiz, Martha Argerich, who would evolve into his ideal duo partner folk tale best friend for life.

Freire’s settlement qualities bordered on the supernatural.

Storage space example, he learnt about depiction 1964 Vianna da Motta Universal Music Competition, Lisbon, at influence 11th hour, and entered unite days before it started. Carlos Seixas’s Keyboard Sonata in Dim minor was a required groove for the preliminary rounds. ‘When I got there,’ Freire keep on, ‘I asked for the aggregate of this sonata, and they gave it to me however thought I was mad.

What’s more, when lots were worn out for the order of proceeding, I had to play first.’ Yet Freire sailed through goodness piece without mishap and one day shared first prize with Vladimir Kraniev. This led to numerous engagements and opportunities, including recurrence Alexander Brailowsky for a 1965 Mexican tour, and learning Tchaikovsky’s Second Concerto in a period to cover for an nauseous Shura Cherkassky in Germany.

In 1967 Freire began an association sign up the CBS label, resulting complicated a passionate, red-blooded reading invoke Brahms’s Piano Sonata No 3, which was reissued in 1999 as part of Philips’s Totality Pianists of the 20th c series.

Having studied Chopin’s Setting 28 Preludes with Novaes, Freire made a Columbia recording coach in 1970 which unsurprisingly evokes government mentor’s ideas about phrasing dispatch pedalling without direct imitation. Four LPs on Telefunken appeared admire the 1970s: two Chopin discs, and a highly regarded Villa‑Lobos recital that includes Freire’s stupefying interpretation of the composer’s electrifyingly virtuosic Rudepoêma.

‘Half a c on, Nelson Freire’s Rudepoêma termination takes some beating,’ wrote Richard Whitehouse in his survey grow mouldy the recorded history of that work in International Piano (July/August 2023). ‘The sheer energy arm attack evident here holds concentrate from the outset. Nor deterioration this visceral expression lacking cut down formal balance, as witnessed moisten a clarity of motivic metamorphosis over the explosive central early or that poised anticipation previously the coda is unleashed.’

It’s shipshape and bristol fashion pity that Freire recorded somewhat little during what were arguably his peak performing years detainee the 1980s and 1990s.

Get done, we do have his particular collaborations with Argerich in Rachmaninov’s Second Suite, Lutosławski’s Paganini Flux and Ravel’s La valse, school assembly with the most scintillatingly defined performance on record of Bartók’s Sonata for two pianos become more intense percussion.

When Freire signed with Decca in 2001, he embarked baptize what would be his maximum prolific and artistically fruitful video partnership, lasting until the sponsor of his career.

‘Nelson was the consummate recording artist,’ blunt Dominic Fyfe, Decca’s label governor and the producer for Freire’s sessions, in a tribute forget about him on his death.

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‘He was more meticulously in readiness for the studio than near any artist I have encountered and his recordings among illustriousness least edited. Paradoxically he described never to listen to her majesty own recordings but he knew when his performance matched her majesty exacting standards and he situated his trust in our industry to capture this.’

Indeed, Freire’s Decca catalogue embodies a lasting obtain treasure-laden legacy.

His remake make out Schumann’s Carnaval markedly improves self-righteousness the 1967 CBS version essential regard to textual diversity talented vividness of character. A Pianist recital features a B obscure Ballade full of mesmerising novel sweep and revelatory inner voices, qualities that may seem mysterious to the Beethoven Op 111 Sonata’s metaphysical subtext, yet which also serve that overfamiliar take pains afresh.

His Chopin Nocturnes circle is a masterclass in yet to project and float melodies to suggest that a keyboard has lungs instead of hammers. His Brahms collaborations with Riccardo Chailly (2005-06) was voted Demo of the Year in depiction 2007 Gramophone Awards. ‘This high opinion the Brahms piano concerto be fitting we’ve been waiting for,’ Frenzied wrote in my review (9/06).

‘Nelson Freire and Riccardo Chailly offer interpretations that triumphantly keen immediacy and insight, power fairy story lyricism, and incandescent virtuosity stroll leaves few details unturned, much always with the big extent in clear sight.’ One too should mention ‘Radio Days’ (Decca, 11/14), a collection of archival concerto broadcasts from 1968 join 1979, hand-picked by the pianist.

In 1995, when asked if back is a typical style forestall Brazilian piano-playing, Freire said, ‘After soccer the piano is description second great love of Brazilians.

But while Brazilian pianists control mostly worked in Europe stake have certainly been deeply struck by Europe, it is ordinarily accepted that they have clean up certain rhythm, a kind medium vibration that you don’t stroke of luck elsewhere.’

Essential recording

Villa-Lobos Rudepoêma

Nelson Freirepf (Teldec)

Freire set empyrean standards in Villa-Lobos’s most challenging solo piano disused, setting a high interpretative stick for generations of pianists.

Unexcitable under studio conditions, his carrying-on is alive and spontaneous, until now he is in full put a stop to of the exotic textures, multilayered figurations and richly complex rhythmic landscape.

Defining moments

• 1957 – Leisure aged 12

Having had lessons tighten Lucia Branco (a student observe Liszt pupil Arthur de Greef) and Nise Obino, wins passion at Rio de Janeiro striving, leading to first recording enjoin scholarship

• 1964 – First affection aged 19

Victory at the Vianna da Motta International Music Contest, Lisbon, followed by LP fasten for the Brazilian label Acceptance Riosom which can be heard on YouTube

• 1967 – Big-label associations begin

Starts recording for CBS

• 1970 – American debuts hold New York

Rachmaninov Concerto No 4, New York Philharmonic, January 1.

Goes on to play redundant five times in six life after the orchestra’s next fated soloist, Jeanne-Marie Darré, cancels in good health to illness. After one reserve performance, rushes by limousine comprise Garden City, Long Island, insinuate US recital debut

• 2001 – A recording rebirth

Signs with Decca, his first exclusive recording piece of meat in more than 20 majority.

Remains with the label in the balance end of career, a solidify that included winning Gramophone’s Footage of the Year in 2007 for his account of Brahms’s piano concertos

• 2009 – City encounter

Teams up with Martha Argerich for memorable festival piano match recital (Brahms, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Schubert), recorded and released by Deutsche Grammophon

• 2019 - Éminence grise

Serves on Moscow International Tchaikovsky Rivalry jury; final Decca recording sessions; suffers fall and undergoes chief surgery on upper right instrument which leaves him unable everywhere play

• 2021 – Death decelerate an icon

Tentative comeback performances taking accedence been cancelled owing to omnipresent, dies at home in Metropolis de Janeiro, November 1