Vlado Perlemuter with Jean Martinon and The French Radio Orchestra – March 22, 1956 – Radio France –
Vlado Perlemuter in concert this weekend. From a broadcast over French Radio on March 22, 1956, Perlemuter is joined by Jean Martinon and the French Radio Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto.
From his Obituary, published in The Guardian on September 5, 2002:
Born in Kovno (then in Russia, now Kaunas in Lithuania), at the age of three he lost the use of his left eye in an accident, and travelled with his Polish family to Paris. He was the third of four boys, and had a lively, sensitive and competitive nature. The family was highly intellectual, musical and, above all, happy; Vlado’s father was a cantor, and Vlado started his piano lessons at the age of eight.
In 1915 Perlemuter began studying with Moritz Moszkowski, and in 1917 was accepted into Alfred Cortot’s class at the Paris Conserva toire. From Moszkowski he learnt clarity and an imaginative choice of fingering, from Cortot a greater depth of tone and an artistic grasp of great music, much of it from listening to Cortot himself playing. The second half of each 30-minute lesson consisted of a remark or two, which could be severe – “You’ll be able to play that in 30 years’ time” – then of Cortot playing the same piece, with the student listening intensely for the secrets of tone-colour, phrasing and continuity.
One remarkable thing about Vlado Perlemuter is that he never grew stale, that after half-a-century he still engaged in slow and humble practice with the left hand of pieces that he had known all his life. It was not only for clarity – though Moszkowski’s imprint always remained (“un peu bouillabaisse” Perlemuter said to a pupil who scampered through the last two pages of Chopin’s F minor Ballade). His unceasing quest was rather to realize his poetic intentions, and they imposed a complete independence of the two hands, and a mastery of the greatest possible range of tone-colour.
This color and independence lay behind many marvels in his playing of the Chopin mazurkas, and of the études, nocturnes and sonatas as well. In general, the left-hand territory seemed particularly close to him. This may partly have been a matter of temperament, because he inclined more to depth than to brilliance; but partly also because he had always discovered each piece of music through the left hand – read it, as it were, from the bass upwards. That fitted in, too, with the simplicity and the long lines. At its best, like Schnabel’s playing of Schubert, Perlemuter’s playing of Chopin was incomparable.
Enjoy the concert.
