Waltz ("Minute") Op. 64 No. 1 0:00
Ballade No. 1 in G Minor 2:17
Berceuse 10:27
Andante Spianato e Grande Polonaise 13:55
Etude Op 25 No 9 25:13
Nocturne Op 9 No 2 26:35
Rachmaninov 30:42
Mendelssohn 34:32
Beethoven 36:24

From the New York Times: ONE of the most celebrated concerts in recent times was Josef Hofmann's Golden Jubilee program at the Metropolitan Opera House, November 28, 1937. The formidable, world acclaimed pianist, then 60 years old, was commemorating his 50th year before the American. public. His career was never less than a sensation — like his playing. A spectacular debut at 10 in the huge Metropolitan Opera auditorium was followed by some years of flagrant exploitation, of the boy genius's gifts by his father and manager. Then rescue by a mysterious benefactor, who provided money for study so long as the boy stopped playing in public. At resumption of the career, Hofmann was again acclaimed a prodigious master of music and the key board.

That Golden Jubilee concert was attended by the musical and social luminaries of., the period—President Roosevelt sent his regrets that he and Eleanor couldn't attend but said they hoped that the concert would be a memorable event “in a career so crowded with distinction and that the music lovers of America for years to come [would] have the ennobling influence which your art has for so long in fused into the musical life of the Nation.” The Musicians Committee for the con cert included just such prominent musical names as Farrar, Flagstad, Heifetz, Hess, Horowitz, Paderewski, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Stokowski, Stravinsky, Toscanini; the list went on and on. The Citizens Committee included some 250 listings of illustrious names in society and finance.

The concert was recorded, but only portions of it were released on Columbia label disks. Now this memorable event—it was what Roosevelt had expected—has been released on recordings for the first time complete, and it is an important document in sound. It is available from the International Piano Library in a two‐disk set of monaural recordings (IPL 5001/2) and can he had by writing the IPL at 215 West 91st Street, New York 10024.

New to recording from this concert is a heroic and poetic performance by Hofmann of the Piano Concerto in D minor by his teacher, Anton Rubinstein. This is accompanied by the Curtis Student Orchestra under the direction of Fritz Reiner. (Hofmann was then director of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.) Also previously unreleased is a performance by the orchestra of Brahms's “Academic Festival Overture” and, again with Hofmann as soloist, Hofmann's own “Chromaticon,” which he described as a “duologue for piano and orchestra.” And there is a speech by Walter Damrosch extolling Hofmann. The balance of the concert was made public in the 1950's and includes a Chopin group and a gaggle of encores — more Chopin, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff, Moszkowski and Hofmann's arrangement of Beethoven's “Turkish March” from “The Ruins of Athens.”

To hear Hofmann play is to hear a supreme colorist at work. What his fingers could not do, could probably not be done, so complete was his digital control. Feathery pianissimos, shifting muted sonorities, volcanic upheavals of sound poured from his palette in never ending freshness. The musical mind was equally sharp. If the great Rachmaninoff always aimed at “the point” of a composition—the realization of the shape and con tent of a piece that the Russian composer‐virtuoso deemed uppermost in the mind of the piece's com poser—then Hofmann aimed at proving that a work had as many “points” in performance as there were performances. Over a fifty‐year period this view enabled Hofmann to experiment constantly within his repertory. The results of this life‐long probing into what was the organizing principle in this or that work can be heard accurately, awe‐inspiringly and even a little uncomfortably in this album. #beethoven #classicalmusic #pianosonata

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