Music of Beethoven this weekend – his piano concerto Number 4 – in a historic performance by Friedrich Gulda, piano and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony conducted by Hans Mueller-Kray from a concert recorded on February 18, 1960.
Born in Vienna the son of a teacher, Friedrich Gulda began learning to play the piano at age 7 with Felix Pazofsky at the Wiener Volkskonservatorium. In 1942, he entered the Vienna Music Academy, where he studied piano and musical theory under Bruno Seidlhofer and Joseph Marx.
During World War II as teenagers, Gulda and his friend Joe Zawinul would perform forbidden music, including jazz, in violation of the government’s prohibition of playing of such music.
Friedrich Gulda won first prize at the Geneva International Music Competition in 1946. Initially, the jury preferred the Belgian pianist Lode Backx, but when the final vote was taken, Gulda was the winner. One of the jurors, Eileen Joyce, who favoured Backx, stormed out and claimed the other jurors were unfairly influenced by Gulda’s supporters. Gulda began to play concerts worldwide. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1950. Together with Jörg Demus and Paul Badura-Skoda, Gulda formed what became known as the “Viennese troika”.
Although most renowned for his Mozart and Beethoven interpretations, Gulda also performed the music of J. S. Bach (often on clavichord), Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Debussy and Ravel. His recordings of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier are well regarded, but Gulda performed very few other pieces by Bach and recorded even fewer. In the late 1960s Friedrich Gulda recorded the complete Beethoven sonatas. He continued to perform classical works throughout his life, composing cadenzas for two Mozart concertos, which he famously recorded with his former pupil Claudio Abbado, although he sometimes conducted from the keyboard himself. A notable feature of his Mozart recordings were his own improvisations.
Phillips Records included Gulda in its Great Pianists of the 20th Century CD box set, which came out in 1999. His piano students included Martha Argerich, who called him “my most important influence,” and the conductor Claudio Abbado.
In 1956, Gulda performed and recorded at Birdland in New York City and at the Newport Jazz Festival. He organized the International Competition for Modern Jazz in 1966, and he established the International Musikforum, a school for students who wanted to learn improvisation, in Ossiach, Austria, in 1968. From the 1950s on Gulda cultivated a professional interest in jazz, writing songs and free improvisation or open music improvisations. He also recorded as a vocalist under the pseudonym “Albert Golowin”, fooling music critics for years until it was realized that Gulda and Golowin were the same person. He played instrumental pieces, at times combining jazz, free music, and classical music in his concerts. He once said:
“There can be no guarantee that I will become a great jazz musician, but at least I shall know that I am doing the right thing. I don’t want to fall into the routine of the modern concert pianist’s life, nor do I want to ride the cheap triumphs of the Baroque bandwagon.”
In jazz, he found “the rhythmic drive, the risk, the absolute contrast to the pale, academic approach I had been taught.” He also took up playing the baritone saxophone.
In the 1960s, Gulda wrote a Prelude and Fugue with a theme suggesting swing. Keith Emerson liked Gulda’s Fugue so much, that he often performed it in Emerson, Lake & Palmer concerts in the 1970s, and a studio version was also issued on Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s The Return of the Manticore.
Gulda died of heart failure at the age of 69 on 27 January 2000 at his home in Weissenbach, Austria. He is buried in the cemetery of Steinbach am Attersee, Austria. He gave instructions for there to be no obituary.
Enjoy the performance.
