Chopin: Nocturne Es-dur played on cello! - Emanuel Feuermann, 1929

Описание: Emanuel Feuermann, Cello -- Nocturne Es-dur (Chopin), Parlophon c. 1929 (Germany)

NOTE: Today is All Souls' Day - a big religious event in Poland, having nothing to do (in a spiritual sense) with the Halloween festival - street jamboree, which is so popular on this very day in Western societes. In Poland, on ther contrary - it is a day of religious meditation and remembering (or - at least, it should be - for the Halloween inclination towards the ghost and skeleton-masked street ball is becoming year after year, still more and more evident). In spite of that, let us respect the ages of Polish national and religious tradition and stay in the autumnal and nocturnal mood. Therefore, I selected for tonight a really unique rendition of Chopin's nocturne played on cello by one of the greatest cello-virtuoses in history.

Emanuel FEUERMANN was iternationally famous cello-virtuose, born in 1902 in Kołomyja - Polish town located in what is today Western Ukraine (then -- a part of Poland annexed by Austro-Hungarian Empire) -- d. in 1942, New York City. Feuermann's father played the violin and cello and he was Emanuels' first teacher. Feuermann's older brother Sigmund was also musically talented and their father decided to move the family to Vienna in 1907 so that his sons could launch a career. At the age of nine, Emanuel received lessons from Friedrich Buxbaum, principal cello of the Vienna Philharmonic, and then studied with Anton Walter at the Music Academy in Vienna. In February 1914, at age eleven, he made his concert debut, playing Joseph Haydn's Cello Concerto in D major with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Felix Weingartner. In 1917, Feuermann went to Leipzig where he studied with the legendary cellist Julius Klengel. Klengel wrote of Feuermann, "Of all those who have been entrusted to my guardianship, there has never been such a talent...our divinely favoured artist and lovable young man". In 1919, he recommended Feuermann for a position at the Gürzenich Conservatory in Cologne. Feuermann also became principal cellist of the Gürzenich Orchestra, by appointment of its conductor, Hermann Abendroth. At this time, he also joined a piano trio with his brother and Bruno Walter, the latter on piano. In 1929, Feuermann became the youngest professor at the Musikhochschule in Berlin where he taught for the next four years. His musical collaborations during this time included Paul Hindemith, who played the viola in a string trio with Feuermann and Wolfsthal, Jascha Heifetz, William Primrose and Arthur Rubinstein.

In 1933, Feuermann was dismissed from his position at the Berlin Conservatory because of his Jewish background. He moved to London, along with Hindemith. He toured Japan and the United States (New York City). He then returned to Europe, where he played in London, Zürich. The London, critic Reid Steward wrote "I do not think there can any longer be doubt that Feuermann is the greatest living cellist, Casals alone excepted...". In 1938, Feuerman happened to stay in Vienna at the time of the Anschluss. He was lucky to have been offered immediate aid from the world-famous Polish violin-virtuose, Bronislaw Huberman, who helped the Feuermann family escape to British Palestine. From there they moved to the United States.
In the US, Feuermann mostly taught privately and at the Curtis Institute of Music until his death. Each of Feuerman's public appearances met with enthusiastic reviews from music critics. In the US, Feuermann made numerous legendary chamber-music recordings with Jascha Heifetz, Arthur Rubinstein and others. Jascha Heifetz remarked that talent like Feuermann's comes once every one hundred years and Artur Rubinstein declared Feuermann to be "the greatest cellist of all time". However, a banal hemorrhoid operation which suddenly turned into a series of severe complications, ended his life in 1942. His funeral procession included an array of the greatest musicians of his time: the pianists Rudolf Serkin and Artur Schnabel, the violinists Mischa Elman and Bronislaw Huberman, the conductors George Szell, Eugene Ormandy, and Arturo Toscanini. During the procession, Toscanini broke down and cried, "This is murder" (seemingly, referring to rumors about mistakes made by the surgeons during the operation).