Frederic Lamond

Frederic Lamond

Frederic Archibald Lamond (born January 28, 1868 in Glasgow , † February 21, 1948 in Stirling , Scotland) was a Scottish pianist , composer and music teacher .

Youth and education

His brother David, who was 19 years older than him, trained him to be an organ player, so that in 1878 - at the age of 10 - he became organist in Newhall Parish Church (Glasgow), where his father was choirmaster. He had to play 4 organ works every Sunday. Lamond remembered that his legs couldn't reach the pedals, so a piece of the organ bench had to be sawed off. Those were the only problems he had. At the age of 12 he became an organist at Laurieston Parish Church. At the same time he took violin lessons with HC Cooper in Glasgow and also played the oboe and clarinet. In Glasgow, Lamond was considered a “child prodigy”.

Lamond first heard Hans von Bülow at the age of 9, when he was engaged as a conductor for four months from 1877–78 under the patronage of the Glasgow Choral Union. Here he heard a work by Liszt for the first time, namely the symphonic poem “Les Preludes”. Thanks to the generous financial support of the city fathers and his siblings, he traveled to Frankfurt in September 1882, accompanied by his brother David and his two sisters Elizabeth and Isabella. He wanted to be taught by Clara Schumann , but she only accepted students with recommendations. In 1882 he attended the Raff Conservatory in Frankfurt, where he took violin lessons with Hugo Heermann , but at the same time studied piano with Max Schwarz and Anton Urspruch . Hans von Bülow taught him the Beethoven sonatas.

When Lamond finished his studies at the conservatory in 1885, Max Schwarz gave him a letter of recommendation for Franz Liszt in Weimar. He also received a recommendation from Carl Stasny , which was addressed to Arthur Friedheim , Liszt's secretary. He invited him to a meeting in the "Russian Court", where Lamond made the acquaintance of the luminaries of Liszt's 1885 class, that is, alongside Friedheim Karl Schroeder , Conrad Ansorge , Bernhard Stavenhagen , Alexander Siloti and Moriz Rosenthal . The next day he had his appointment with Liszt. He only said “Schwarz writes that you have a good rendition of the Sonata Op. 106 can deliver. Well, tomorrow afternoon at 4 o'clock I would like to hear the fugue from you. ”('Schwarz writes that you can give a good rendering of Sonata Op. 106. Very well! Tomorrow afternoon, at four o'clock, let me hear you play the fugue! ') Liszt took him on as a student and gave him lessons four times a week, with Lamond playing his entire repertoire for him. Later he was with Liszt in Rome and again with Stavenhagen in 1886 in London, where Liszt saw Lamond's first appearance on April 15th at St. James Hall. Harold Bauer described this incident in his autobiography.

• Bach / Tausig - Toccata and Fugue in D minor
• Beethoven - Appassionata Sonata, op.57
• Chopin - fantasy
• Brahms - Two Capriccios, op.76
• Liszt - Harmonies du Soir, Feux Follets, Mazeppa
• Raff - Fantasy and Fugue op.91
• Lamond - Impromptu
• Rubinstein Waltz
• Liszt - Dream of Love, Hungarian Rhapsody no.9

First successes

Newspaper advertisement 1906

In February 1886 Lamond gave a Brahms evening in Vienna with the following program:

• 3rd Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 5
• a rhapsody
• two ballads
• Scherzo in E flat minor, Op. 4
• two capriccios from op.76
• Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel in B flat major op.24
• Variations on a Theme by Paganini (two episodes) op.35

Von Bülow had put him in the right mood for the music of Brahms. Brahms had come to Meiningen personally in October 1885 to hear the premiere of his 4th symphony . Lamond was present at all the rehearsals that von Bülow had scheduled, including when Brahms conducted himself. Lamond was introduced to his own work by Brahms.

In 1888 Lamond performed in St. Petersburg and was introduced to Anton Rubinstein , who attended his second gig.

Lamond first heard Pyotr Tchaikovsky in Frankfurt in February 1889, where he was introduced to him by Hans von Bülow. He then went to London, where Tchaikovsky performed the 1st Piano Concerto in St. James Hall in April 1889 with Wasili Sapelnikow as a soloist. Lamond was so impressed that he added it to his repertoire and then played it across the UK, as did Tchaikovsky's 2nd Piano Concerto and his concert fantasy for piano and orchestra. He wrote to Tchaikovsky asking if he could go on a concert tour in Russia, where he would play his first piano concerto. In May 1892 he replied that he had spoken to Vasili Safonov , but the program of the Russian Music Society for the 1892/93 season was already booked out. In 1896, three years after Tchaikovsky's death, Lamond received a telegram from his former manager Hermann Wolff with the offer to play in Moscow from October 19 to 31.

Soloist and teacher

Frédéric Archibald Lamond, 1903.

On 27 September 1905 Lamond took twelve piano pieces for the reproduction piano Welte-Mignon in Leipzig recording studio of Welte on. He was convinced that the piano roles were the only way to play them back then.

Lamond was a successful interpreter of the works of Brahms, Liszt and Camille Saint-Saëns , but owes his recognition in particular to the interpretation of Ludwig van Beethoven's piano sonatas , whose outstanding representative in the early 20th century he can be considered alongside Artur Schnabel and Wilhelm Backhaus . The music publisher Breitkopf & Härtel published all 32 piano sonatas in 1923 under the editorship of Frederic Lamond. In the 1920s and 1930s Lamond made many recordings of Beethoven's works (including the 5th Piano Concerto op. 73 with Eugène Goossens (conductor, 1867) ) for HMV.

Lamond was in the USA for the first time in 1902 and then toured four times between 1922 and 1929. In the school years 1923 and 1924 he was a teacher of piano for advanced classes at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, founded in 1921 . In 1935 he went on a concert tour through South America.

Lamond also taught master classes at the conservatory in Sondershausen.

Since his wedding in 1904 to the Austrian actress Irene Triesch (1875–1964), with whom Lamond had a daughter, he lived in Berlin until the First World War and gave private lessons. He was considered a respected teacher and among his students were Gunnar Johansen , Jan Chiapusso , Ervin Nyíregyházi and Victor Borge . Johansen later said that Lamond first asked them to master Bach's “The Well-Tempered Clavier” as well as Adolf von Henselt's “Étuden” . Lamond spoke perfect French, in German he even understood the dialects typical of the country, a little Russian and Turkish and in old age he still studied the Gaelic language.

In 1917 Lamond became a professor at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague . He later lived in Berlin again before moving back to Scotland in 1938 because of the National Socialist government.

Late years

Lamond was in Prague when the German troops marched there in 1938. After fleeing Germany, he was left with nothing. In 1940 he gave piano lessons at the Academy of Music in Glasgow. During the war he gave a few concerts in Scotland, Bath and London, where he was announced in 1945 in the Wigmore Hall with "Lamond - the greatest living exponent of Beethoven" (Lamond - the greatest living representative of Beethoven). Another source of income was radio broadcasts with the BBC.

In 1986, in memory of Lamond, The Scottish International Piano Competition was launched, the first winner of which was awarded the Frederic Lamond Gold Medal.

Works

• Piano pieces Op. 1.
• Piano trio in B minor for pianoforte, violin a. Violoncello Op. 2.
• Symphony in A major Op. 3 (1893).
• Overture from the Scottish Highlands , Concert Overture for large orchestra, Op. 4th

literature

• Alan Vicat: Great Pianists of the Twentieth Century: Frederic Lamond . In: International Piano Quarterly 1, 1997/98, 3, ISSN  1368-9770 , pp. 54-69.
• The memoirs of Frederic Lamond . Foreword by Ernest Newman. introduction & postscript by Irene Triesch Lamond. Publisher: William Maclellan, Glasgow; First Edition edition (1949)
• Lamond, Frederic Archibald , in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 256

Web links

• Material relating to Archibald Frederic Lamond - Glasgow University Special Collection
• Lamond - Historical sheet music in the Princely Court Chapel in Sondershausen
• Frederic Lamond: Discography
• Frederic Archibald Lamond painting by CWP at the Glasgow Museum Collection
• Biography Lamond by Naxos Music
• D'Albert and Lamond from Glasgow - Biographies by Hyperion
• Allan Evans in 1996 through Lamond at Arbiter Record Music Resource Center

Individual evidence

1. ↑ To Enigmatic Pianist - and two Opera Stars! with excerpts from the "Memoirs".
2. ↑ Lamond biography by grande musica
3. ^ Frederic Lamond: Speaks about Franz Liszt
4. ^ Frederic Lamond: Speaks about Franz Liszt
5. ↑ Harold Bauer. His Book. Publisher: WW Norton & Compay Inc., New York 1948 - page 22
6. ↑ Vasilii Sapelnikov
7. ^ Tchaikovsky's reply
8. ^ Tchaikovsky Research
9. ^ Frederic Lamond recording for the Duca - July 21, 1909, Frankfurt - The Pianola Institute
10. ↑ Tim Parry:  Lamond, Frederic. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
11. ↑ HMV and successor in recordings
12. ^ "Rochester Democrat and Chronicle" December 21, 1924 (PDF; 280 kB)
13. ^ The Rochester Review, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA
14. ↑ Lamond in Sonderhausen ( Memento of the original of July 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
15. ↑ The Scottish International Piano Competition ( Memento of the original from December 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.