Igor Kipnis

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy six, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

Cast Away on our desert island this week is the harpsichordist Igor Kipnis. Mr. Kibnis, have you ever experienced loneliness?

Presenter0:38

No, I don't think so. Mainly because I rather enjoy music around me, so that if I am lonely, if I happen to be by myself, for example, on a tour, I still keep everything on. If it's not uh the television, well, it's the radio.

Presenter0:51

Touring in the States, of course, you've got some very long jumps. Yes, I do. I tour about half of the year. Not all at one time, of course. And a great deal of that, I would say almost half of that, I tour with my own instrument. And in order to get the instrument to the next concert,

Presenter1:10

I have to drive it myself. There are not too many ways of doing this. You could send it by uh the train or put it on a plane. All of this is expensive and not always very reliable. So I put it in a van and I'm my own driver.

Presenter1:22

And that's when the uh the music in the background comes in very handy. Of course. Well, our our desert island is even lonelier than a United States freeway, so y you must be prepared. You have your eight records. What's the first one you've chosen?

Presenter1:36

I

Presenter1:37

as a harpsichordist, uh get terribly involved in Baroque music mainly, this Renaissance and to some extent the later eighteenth century and contemporary music. But if it's music that I want to listen to for my own entertainment,

Presenter1:50

What I like is the nineteenth century.

Presenter1:53

uh a busman's holiday, but uh a different kind of a bus. So the first one that I picked is uh the Brahms F minor piano sonata, the third, opus five, and instead of one of the standard recordings, a very, very old one made sometime in the very late twenties, about nineteen twenty six, twenty seven.

Presenter2:12

and the pianist is Percy Granger.

Presenter3:13

Percy Granger playing the opening of the Brahms third piano sonata in F minor. When you come to Europe, do you bring your own harpsichord? I did once, but at the moment there are not enough boats that are leaving, and again I don't like the idea of flying, partly because of the expense. So I've gotten quite accustomed to playing instruments that are not my own. There's a certain period of adjustment with an instrument that isn't yours, because they all vary so tremendously. Pianists complain about this all the time, but I think they really have a very easy lot when it comes down to it, because at least their keys are the same spacing overall. If there's any difference between one piano and another, it was it's bound to be in a matter of feel, action. But with the harpsichords you have that difference as well as the spacing.

Presenter3:56

And some harpsichords have hand stops, some have pedals. On one instrument one pedal may do one thing, on another instrument it may be doing something entirely different.

Presenter4:08

Well, again, uh the piano.

Presenter4:10

area is something that fascinates me. And there are so many pianists that I absolutely adore. Um Edwin Fischer, for instance, or Mozevich, Horovitz, Schnabel, Lepati, Myra Hess.

Presenter4:22

And Solomon, who I started collecting when I was in my teens. And I remember walking into a record store in New York and being told about Solomon for the first time. And I remember asking the person who was in charge of the foreign, the import department of Liberty Music, who this Solomon was and was he really as good as Rubinstein. I was laid out on the floor by this man. And I found out he was quite right, not to take anything away from Rubenstein, but Solomon was magnificent. And as a result, I've been collecting all of his records. What would you like to hear in Player now? Well, of the various composers, I have to be extremely partial to Chopin. My grandfather, that is my mother's father, was a pianist and a composer and a teacher in Chicago. And I had some of my first piano lessons from him.

Presenter5:14

He was Polish, and Chopin is very, very much connected both with him and with my whole background. This is a part of I think one of the grandest pieces that Chopin wrote, something very close to the end of his life, the Fourth Ballade.

Presenter6:30

An excerpt from Chopin's Ballard No. Four, played by Solomon.

Presenter6:35

You talked about your your mother's father. On your father's side, of course, you're you're the second musical generation in the family. Your father is the great Russian bass Alexander Kibnies, and he's living quite close to you in the United States now. Well, I live in Reading, Connecticut. That's where I've spent a great deal of his time.

Presenter6:53

And uh my father lives in Westport.

Presenter6:56

which is about twenty five minutes away. Mhm. And he's still very active. He's teaching. He's teaching. He goes into New York one day a week. He has uh quite a few pupils. He enjoys himself. He loves his home.

Presenter7:09

We think of him as the as the great Russian bass. In fact, he left Russia quite early in his life. Yes, he did. I think really before he was in his teens. And then he went to Poland and he studied at the Conservatory in Warsaw. And eventually he wound up in Germany because that was the place where one went as a singer to make a career, as well as with other instruments at that time. That's where you were born, in fact. I was born in Berlin, rather later than when he first went there, mainly because he was performing with the Berlin State Opera. If I had been born two weeks later, I would have been born in the United States, because he was on tour then. And perhaps about a month or two after that.

Speaker 17:40

Yeah.

Presenter7:48

Had I been born that late, uh it would have been in South America. Moving around with your father when he was with the Berlin State Opera, for example, and and the American companies, how how was it that you didn't get hooked on opera yourself?

Presenter8:00

I was hooked on opera. I was very much interested in whatever it was that was being played on the phonograph or that I happened to hear on the radio. Occasionally I'd be taken to concerts or rehearsals. So opera was very much part of my background. The fact that I went into the harpsichord was almost uh a total accident. What did you want to be as a child? Do you remember?

Speaker 18:19

Left into

Presenter8:21

I really didn't know, uh, up until the time I was in my teens. I knew quite well that I was not going to become a performer.

Presenter8:29

That's a funny thing to say at the moment. But I was interested in the production, the peripheral areas of music, so that I'd hoped, I think by the time I was 16 or 17, that I would get into artists and repertoire work with a record company. Or if it wasn't records, it would have been radio. In other words, doing the sort of thing we're doing now. I would have loved to have produced this. You took a degree at Harvard. What did you read there?

Presenter8:55

I began majoring in music, but I wasn't that fond of the music department per se. And as a result, I wound up majoring in social relations. That was psychology. You were playing a lot of piano. Why was it that you switched to the harpsichord? How did this come into your life? I've been record collecting for a very, very long time. My whole history background has been so much associated with records. When I was 16, I was collecting the complete well-tempered clavier. These were HMV recordings by Edwin Fischer, and I spent about two summers trying to get enough money to pay for these. They were about $2.62 a record at that time, and there were quite a few records involved. And the very last album, when I finally managed to get enough money to pay for it, I remember being somewhat disappointed because the preludes and fugues 44 through 48 were used for that volume, and that only took four 78s. The album itself was filled out with two other 78s, the English suite number two, played not on the piano by Fisher, but on the harpsichord by Landowska.

Presenter10:00

It turned out I liked the Landowska rather better than I liked any of the other after I got used to it. And I had an ambition that I would like to try a harpsichord sometime. It sounded like a fun thing to do. I didn't until I was in college. And in my senior year at Harvard, I of course had been taking music courses all along. And we had a number of projects. And as part of one of these projects, I received permission to try a harpsichord that happened to have been made by Arnold Dolmich when he was in the United States in the early part of this century. And there was a girl that I was going around with, whom I later married. She played the recorder. So we played some of the Handel Fitzwilliam recorder sonatas. And that was my first experience with the harpsichord. At which point let us break off your third record.

Presenter10:45

Not harpsichord at all, but back to the piano. I think almost everything of Horowitz uh fascinates me. He makes the instrument sing, but above all I think he's just such an electrifying person to listen to.

Presenter10:58

And uh am among the many pieces that I really enjoy, whether it's uh his Chopin or some of the big blockbusters that he does, uh there is a little piece called Etin Celle, which is Sparks by Moskovsky. And it's fascinating, just what he does. I've heard this in concert and it bowls the audience over.

Presenter12:14

Horobitz playing Etan Sell by Moskovsky.

Presenter12:18

How does your work break down between symphony concerts and recitals?

Presenter12:23

About three quarters of my concerts are recitals, and the majority of those are with colleges.

Presenter12:30

Last season, for instance, I played

Presenter12:33

seven, eight, nine, something like that, different orchestras.

Presenter12:37

Uh all kinds of material, not just uh Bach concertos, but uh Mozart. I enjoy that very much, where it's possible to play it on the harpsichord. It's not too late a composition. And also contemporary pieces such as the uh the Poulenc Concert Petre, which is marvelous and a very effective work and great fun to play with an orchestra. And you come to Europe every year? I seem to be coming to Europe almost every year now, yes. Let's have record number four.

Presenter13:01

I do love instrumental music very much, and one of the people that I collect and have almost a complete collection of, including a great deal of the broadcast material, is Toscanini. When I was a kid, I remember hearing a lot of the early recordings of Toscanini, things with the BBC Symphony or with the New York Philharmonic. These still stick in my mind. I have a very nostalgic feeling about them. The Haydn Klock Symphony, for example, or the Brahms Tragic Overture, the Beethoven First Symphony, and I think especially the Mozart Hoffner Symphony, which I still cannot hear without remembering what this particular recording sounds like. What's the date of it? About 1930.

Presenter14:38

Toscanini conducting the New York Philharmonic in the opening of Mozart's Hafner Symphony. You talked about your earlier ambitions to work in radio and and and in the record business. You have in fact done a lot of well, on radio you you have been the world's first and only Baroque disc jockey. A number of jobs. Yes, I did that several years ago. I in New York on WQXR. I had a Baroque programme for three years and I was the host of that and I just played a lot of records. On occasion we'd have interviews with different people. And of course you made a lot of records yourself.

Presenter15:15

What about the modern, the contemporary repertoire for the harpsichord? Well, a lot is happening there. There's a great deal of music and some really great classics. The Poulanque concertium petra that I mentioned before, which I love to play. That is marvelous. The Falia harpsichord concerto, although that's with just a few instruments.

Speaker 115:19

What is happening there?

Presenter15:35

Frank Martin.

Presenter15:36

One of the people that I really regret out of this whole slew of composers that have approached the harpsichord and sometimes created very significant pieces for it, one of the ones that I regret not having written for the harpsichord is Ravel. He would have done a marvelous job. Yes. There is a Ravel disc on your list and this seems the place to play it.

Speaker 115:55

Mm-hmm.

Presenter15:57

A piece that I think was recorded for the first time in the late 40s. His little

Presenter16:03

Fairy tale opera with a libretto by Colette, L'Enfant des Sautilage, the Child and the Sorcerers as it's sometimes translated. And uh there's a foxtrot in this with a a dialogue between a black wedgwood teapot and a Chinese cup. And it's just it's very sophisticated, it's very, very funny, very charming, and extremely sensitive in the way it's handled.

Speaker 216:27

I bunched on.

Speaker 216:30

I punch on the horse.

Speaker 216:34

I punch, I knock out your store.

Speaker 216:37

Black and thick and dry bogus and dry bogus I bought you

Speaker 216:43

I bought you high a bottom lady you

Igor Kipnis17:13

Swamp.

Igor Kipnis17:16

Someone runs a little machine.

Presenter17:24

An excerpt from Rabel's L'Enfant ille Sortilège.

Presenter17:28

A recording directed by Ernest Bohr.

Presenter17:32

How well would you be able to look after yourself on a desert island? Can you cultivate? Are you have you green fingers? If I were entirely by myself, I probably would starve to death.

Presenter17:42

would do the best I can. Would you try to escape?

Presenter17:47

if at all possible.

Presenter17:49

Do you know anything about small bits? No, but I would try to learn as quickly as I could.

Presenter17:54

Record number six.

Presenter17:56

You asked me about the operatic background before, and uh although I do enjoy the instrumentals, there are times when I like to get into opera. I don't have very much of a chance to see opera any more. I'm lucky if I get to my own concerts, much less other other recitals or opera performances. I love Melcure.

Presenter18:15

I think he was an absolutely sensational tenor. What are we going to hear him sing? Well, I remember hearing one of the first operas, say after the magic flute with my father, and again this was with my father, Goethe Demrung. And I had a great passion for this opera, and I loved not only the sound of my father's voice in that, singing the part of Hagen, but the the Siegfried part sung by Melchior. And this is the section toward the end of the opera, just before he gets it in the back, literally, where he is recalling for the assembled mob there how he finally met Brunhilde and climbed up to the mountain top and went through the fire and in this marvellous change of colour in his voice, in addition to the clarion quality cutting through the this very thick orchestration, all of a sudden it is very tender, most beautiful singing.

Igor Kipnis19:25

Open up and give on.

Igor Kipnis19:29

Then heaven is become a parallelist of mine from India.

Igor Kipnis19:36

Me Look.

Igor Kipnis20:00

Yeah.

Igor Kipnis20:02

Yeah.

Presenter20:07

Lauritz Milkjor as Siegfried in Goethe Dammereung. Now you've been talking about your collection of discs which you've been busy with since you were a child. Do you have a complete set of your father's records, including the very early ones? Between my father and myself we have

Presenter20:23

If not in actual disc form, we certainly have on tapes all of the commercial recordings that he made. That also includes a few of the unpublished, of which there are uh very, very few. There's one interesting one because we are leading up to uh a record of my father.

Presenter20:38

And a number of things that I would like to have on the desert island. For instance, the Good Friday music from Parsifal, which he did at Bayreuth, with Siegfried Wagner conducting, which has always thrilled me. But there is a Rachmaninoff song, which I remember hearing all through my teens, because my father on occasion would play it. And this was something that he recorded in 1939. The song was Ossis Thy Singing, which is a terrible name for a song. But it was one that he rejected for the tiniest of reasons. In one place, I think he was slightly flat vocally.

Presenter21:15

And because of that, at the time he just simply rejected it, and it was never issued, up until perhaps a few years ago. This is a well, the typical happy Russian song. It it really it broods all over the place.

Speaker 121:29

Yeah.

Igor Kipnis21:30

Yeah.

Presenter21:30

And uh there is a certain part of this song toward the end where my father goes up very high, a falsetto, and it's just uh for me exquisite.

Igor Kipnis21:43

Yeah for free.

Igor Kipnis21:52

Peace in Grows.

Presenter22:41

Alexander Kippn is singing Rachmaninoff's O Cease Thy Singing, Maiden Fair

Presenter22:46

Now we come to your last disk. What's that?

Presenter22:49

Well, I had to do a great deal of soul searching.

Presenter22:52

As long as I'm not on the desert island, I don't really like to listen to my own records. But uh

Presenter22:59

I think if I were on the island and had to pick something

Presenter23:04

I would

Presenter23:05

probably pick this item. I've recorded the Italian Concerto twice. The first time I was not all that fond of it. Uh it was a little earlier in my own development. And I did it again about a year ago.

Presenter23:21

And I think if you do anything with a harpsichord, you have to make it an expressive instrument. It is not a mechanical sewing machine.

Presenter23:29

and above all

Presenter23:31

I I think you have to make the instrument sing.

Presenter23:34

And I think for the first time I was able to do that with this one section, the slow movement of the Italian concerto.

Presenter24:40

Your own recording of part of the slow movement of Bach's Italian concerto. If you could take just one disc out of the eight, which would it be?

Presenter24:48

A very, very difficult choice. I think probably the Toscanini.

Presenter24:52

the Toscanini, the Hafner, and one luxury to take with you.

Presenter24:56

A clavichord, if you can consider that a luxury. That's very close to home and very close to business, but that would be the instrument that I would want to play to myself, for myself.

Presenter25:06

Right, that can be arranged. And one book, not the Bible and Shakespeare or big encyclopedias.

Presenter25:12

One that I would like to read over and over again because of the language's Dylan Thomas under Milkwood.

Presenter25:18

Right.

Presenter25:19

And thank you, Igor Kipnis, for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you very much. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 125:34

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.