Ignaz Friedman

"Ignaz Friedman, who I admired, was a great artist. He had wonderful fingers and a very personal, individual way of playing, even if some of his ideas were very strange to me. He had no hesitation touching up the music. I got annoyed with him at one concert when he changed the basses in Chopin's F minor Ballade. I didn't like that. For some reason he was happier making records than he was on the stage."

"He was a lazy artist, he wasn't a pusher. but he was one of the few pianists of the caliber of Rosenthal and Rachmaninoff."

"His style was completely his own, and it was marked by a combination of incredible technique, musical freedom (some called it eccentricity), a tone that simply soared, and a naturally big approach, with dynamic extremes that tended to make a Chopin mazurka sound like an epic. In his youth he was accused of uncontrolled banging, and the charge may be true. He must have had something of Rosenthal's approach in his make-up: a colossal technique that sometimes would run away. As he matured he was able to control his fingers, and whatever he did was because he specifically wanted it so. He handled a melodic line inimitably — deftly outlining it against the bass, never allowing it to sag, always providing interest by a unique stress or accent. As he thought big, he played big. His recording of Chopin's Revolutionary Etude is a remarkable, magnificent conception. To provide impetus, Friedman runs the left-hand arpeggios with tremendous speed — running the notes together so that they slur a bit up to the climactic E flat. The effect is heroic, though purists might wrinkle their nose. Equally remarkable are his records of a series of Chopin mazurkas and Mendelssohn's Songs without Words. Again he does not play by the book — he was a true child of the late romantic age and, especially in the Chopin, his rhythms, accents and volcanic approach are apt to unsettle conservative listeners. But the more one hears them, the more one admires. And his recording of Chopin's E flat Nocturne (Op. 55, No. 2) may well be the most beautiful, singing, perfectly proportioned performance of a Chopin nocturne ever put on records. Like him or not, Friedman was a force — a powerful, unusual, original pianist, sometimes erratic but always fascinating, and always full of imagination and daring."