Already at a very young age Conrad Hansen performed with conductor
Eugen Jochum and from 1927 on he often concertized with Wilhelm Furtwängler
as well. With Furtwängler he performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto
No. 4 Op. 56 in 1943 which was to become Conrad Hansen's most famous
recording. But he also made a recording for Remington Records.
Conrad
Hansen was born on the 24th of November 1906, in Lippstadt in Westphalia.
According
to pianist Gisela Sott - it was Fritz Volbach (at the time
'Generalmusikdirector' in Münster) who discovered the young talent.
Young Conrad Hansen came to Berlin in 1920 and
two years later he was accepted as a student by the great Edwin
Fischer. He
studied with Fischer until 1930 and later became an adept of the Cortot-school
of piano playing.
Edwin
Fischer, who had a busy concert schedule, asked Hansen to be his assistant
and to teach Fischer's students when the great performer was on tour.
So from 1935 on Hansen taught at the Berlin Municipal Conservatory
(Berliner Musikhochschule, formerly 'Sternsches Konservatorium').
After a successful
concert performance of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat
minor, Op. 23 in 1940, commemorating the composer's 100th birthday
(April 25th), Hansen was asked to record the popular concerto with
famous Dutch conductor 
Willem
Mengelberg together with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
The recording was made in July of that same year - oddly enough, just
about two months after the Netherlands had been invaded by the Nazis
on May 10th 1940 and the center of the city of Rotterdam had been
severely bombed by the Germans on May 14th, which illustrated Willem
Mengelberg's position in respect to the Nazis and that the political,
social and humanitarian consequences for Europe were generally not
understood or were deliberately welcomed by many, and by such a celebrity
as Willem Mengelberg included.
The cooperation
between Hansen and Mengelberg resulted in a balanced performance.
Mengelberg did not put his personal stamp on the music and let Hansen
be his own self. It is known that Mengelberg did not "interpret"
specific popular works like the Tchaikovsky B Flat. The Berlin Philharmonic
plays the part as probably any good orchestra led by a first class
conductor would have. A Mengelberg approach would be in great contrast
with Conrad Hansen's sober style, one could say. For time's sake,
Hansen plays (as one side of a 12 inch 78 RPM disc could only contain
about 4 minutes) the shortest cadenza ever, skipping several bars
and proceeding practically immediately to the end of the cadenza.
Recording in
the shellac era was not always an easy enterprise. If a serious mistake
in the execution was made, the four minutes of a specific side would
have to be played and recorded again. So minor irregularities can
be noticed in the rendition. Nevertheless the accent is on precision.
It is also a performance without much passion.
"Mengelberg was very happy with my playing", Hansen said
later.
As so many Mengelberg recordings also this performance was released
on the Telefunken label as well as on the Czech label Ultraphon.
During the period
of the Third Reich, the artists who had specialized in performing
modern repertory, had difficulty in keeping their positions as the
modern repertory soon was declared to be 'entartete Musik' (degenerated
music). Many performing artists, composers and conductors fled the
country. Those who stayed just kept a low profile and tried to come
by. Not all musicians and especially the performers of the classical
repertory did have too much to fear. Wilhelm Furtwaengler, Herbert
von Karajan, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Karl Böhm, Carl Schuricht,
Richard Strauss, Elly Ney, Willem van Hoogstraten, Wilhelm Backhaus,
and others could continue their careers. Some because they sympathized
more or less with the Nazis, others despite of the Nazi regime as
in the case of conductor Günther Wandt who had a narrow
escape when he was arrested.
These were dangerous
times as is illustrated by the arrest, trial and execution in September
1943 in Berlin of young concert pianist of Dutch origin, Karlrobert
Kreiten (1916-1943) who as a young man was careless when he expressed
that Adolf Hitler was merely a mad man and that the Third Reich would
soon end. Karlrobert was arrested. Wilhelm Furtwangler who was asked
to intervene merely wrote a note thinking that this was sufficient
to free young Kreiten. Furtwängler's intervention was ineffective,
right from the start. (See the German
website about the young pianist
Karlrobert
Kreiten in Berlin in 1943.)
Many artists in Germany and other European countries stayed. Also
Conrad Hansen continued to perform.
When Laszlo
Halasz supervised the Remington MUSIRAMA recordings (sometimes together
with Don Gabor himself who traveled many times to Berlin) with the
RIAS Symphony Orchestra from 1954 on, a new recording of Tchaikovsky's
Piano Concerto Op. 23 in B flat minor was on the list. It should replace
the early recording on Remington R-199-76 of pianist Hermann
Schwertmann
and conductor Alexander Paulmüller with the Austrian Symphony
Orchestra (Oesterreichisches Sinfonie Orchester).
That is when Conrad Hansen was asked to be the soloist in a
new LP recording of Tchaikovsky's popular concerto for Remington Records
Inc. In this recording Hansen illustrates what he preaches. It is
a very articulate performance, conducted very ably by 30 year old
Wolfgang Sawallisch. Hansen scarcely uses the pedal and plays legato
and staccato were appropriate and never gets sentimental or romantic.
His approach is merely classical and has a beautiful lightness. Hansen
gives precise passage work and also his "jeu perlé"
can be witnessed in this recording. His interpretation has great purity
and beautiful timing. This performance is above all about esthetics.
Only in the cadenzas of the first movement and the second movement
is he more telling. The cooperation between any conductor and any
artist is significant for the interpretation of a composition. Hansen
and Sawallisch go well together as they have more or less the same
strict ideas. Yet one cannot fail to notice that Hansen is very conscious
about his art as he illustrates in his other recordings, for example
Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 with Eugen Jochum.
If you are looking for humanity, there are other recordings to go
for. Witold Malcuzynski, together with conductor Witold
Rowicki, gave a compelling virtuoso performance, dynamic and passionate,
on Muza SX 0123 (stereo). Or you may even try out of curiosity the
old imperfectly recorded Remington disc of pianist
Hermann
Schwertmann
for a change, who interestingly takes all the time he needs and has
moments of fine phrasing and timing, but did not have the same quality
of orchestra mostly due to a bad recording technique with a more or
less altered characteristic, and there was practically no possibility
for more takes and splicing. But his performance is right from
the heart and has no pretense!
Hansen's recording
on Remington R-199-197 was later released on Don Gabor's Masterseal
label (MSLP 5006). There is no information about Conrad Hansen
on the Remington Musirama cover. But on the later Masterseal release
the liner notes state this simple phrase:
"Conrad Hansen is one of Europe's most gifted and upcoming
young pianists, whose sensitive interpretations have established
him along the top rated European pianists."
|
This of course
was advertising talk as Hansen had recorded the work when he was 48
and the Masterseal was released a few years later, around 1957/1958,
when Hansen was about 52. He hardly could have been an "upcoming
young pianist".
Much later there was a release of Tchaikovsky's 1st Concerto on Masterseal
in stereo which mentions Conrad Hansen as being the soloist, but this
is definitely not Conrad Hansen, as producer Tom Null told me in 2001.
(The same could be true for the Webster Continental LP with reference
number St-12-2.)
D
I S C O G R A P H Y
Conrad Hansen
did not make too many recordings. Of the recordings he made there
are a few cherished by connoisseurs.
On the recordings of Mozart's Piano Sonatas and Fantasy K475.
Hansen's cycle of Mozart Sonatas on the Hammerklavier for Deutsche
Grammophon was started in 1956 and was not completed when in 1958
the stereo format arrived. Although
admired by a few purists, the recordings apparently did not sell in
quantities high enough to justify the continuation of the project.
About the recording of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto
Nevertheless his discography is interesting, especially because of
his interpretations of various Beethoven concertos of which No. 4
with Wilhelm Furtwängler is -as said earlier- very compelling.
It was a live performance, probably recorded on acetates (as far as
I can judge), although the tape recorder, the Magnetophon (which had
been presented in 1936 at the Berlin Radio Fair) was already in use
by the RRG (Reichs Rundfunk Gesellschaft, the Third Reich radio broadcast
authority) in those days.
I advise you to look for the Italian Ariston LP release which
has the concerto spread over the two LP sides. It is the same as the
release on Unicorn UNI 106 in the UK, although the latter also contains
the Fifth Symphony, more or less to the detriment of the sound of
both the Concerto and the Symphony. The Ariston edition from Italy
indicates that the record is playable on mono and stereo equipment.
The transfer is done in electronic stereo, but this time in
a rather unobtrusive way and is really well done. And if your
speakers
are well positioned, this really is enjoyable. It has the
beautiful harmonic sound of ancient tube gear with all the distortion,
the coughing and door slamming included, while the Deutsche Grammophon
release in the 2000 Series (2535 807) has been filtered and restored
a bit too much to my taste, and thus does not convey the atmosphere,
does not have that same intensity. The Melodiya Lp ( M10 46067
GOST 5289-80) also is a clean version but suffers from flutter
and is not too enjoyable. The Unicorn UNI 106 and Deutsche
Grammophon releases are of course worthwhile alternatives if you do
not find the Ariston release or the cheaper Super Oscar SPO 1001
release which is pressed from the same plates as the Ariston. I cannot
judge about the quality of the various CD-transfers, because I do
not own one of them. But generally these transfers have often been
cleaned up so severely that they lack the naturalness, plasticity
of the piano tone and miss the atmosphere of the old transfers to
analog LP. So when I made a transfer to CD I found an acceptable balance
between hiss and distortion at one hand and musical and relatively
clean sound on the other.
Tchaikovsky:
Concerto No. 1
in
B Flat Op. 23, with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Willem Mengelberg
(recorded July 9, 1940)
ULTRAPHON G 14273/6
TELEFUNKEN SK 3092/5
Dubbed to LP in the early nineteen fifties: CAPITOL P 8097
and later as PAST MASTERS PM-18
Irving Kolodin
reviewed this performance in "The New Guide of Recorded Music"
(New York, 1950): "Should the Mengelberg version appear here
in a reasonable pressing, or an LP transfer, it can be noted in advance
as an imperious statement of the orchestral score, with facile assistance
from Hansen. It is also a better recording than any of the domestic
ones." (Rubinstein-Mitropoulos, Levant-Ormandy, Horowitz-Toscanini.)
In this recording
the full cadenza was not played as was often the case in the 78 RPM
era. Reasons could be:
a) the pianist finds the cadenza too difficult to perform impeccably
in a direct-to-disc recording session;
b) it saves a minute or two and that section of the movement can be
accommodated on one specific side.
Beethoven:
Concerto No. 5
with the Orchestra of the Deutsches Opernhaus, Eugen Jochum
(recorded June 22 + 23, 1941)
TELEFUNKEN SK 3203/7 (also referred to as TSK 3203/7)
Mozart: Concerto
No. 26 KV 537
Berlin State Opera House Orchestra, Arthur Rother
(recorded June 27, 1941)
TELEFUNKEN SK 3734/37
LP: CAPITOL P 8109
Liszt: Concerto
No. 1
with Berlin State Opera Orchestra, Arthur Rother
(recorded July 4, 1941)
TELEFUNKEN not issued
Beethoven:
Concerto No. 4
with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler
(recorded live 31 October - 3 November 1943). This performance was
never issued on 78 RPM but was later transferred to LP in the nineteen
seventies. The Melodiya transfer may have been made much earlier.
Melodiya M 10 49721
UNICORN UNI 106
ARISTON ARCL 13028
Super Oscar SPO 1001 (pressed from the plates of Ariston ARCL 13028)
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2535 807
(Mike Gray, in his excellent Berlin Philharmonic discography, gives
only October 31, 1943, as recording date) (see the NOTE above)
Frank: Prelude,
Fugue and Variations
(recorded July 20, 1942)
TELEFUNKEN SK 3741
+ Brahms: Ballade Op. 118, No.5
(recorded July 20, 1942)
TELEFUNKEN SK 3741/42
Mozart: Rondo
D Major KV 485
(recorded July 20, 1942)
TELEFUNKEN SK 3725
Mozart: Piano
Sonata G Major KV 283
(recorded July 21, 1942)
TELEFUNKEN SK 3724/25
Brahms: Intermezzo
Op. 117, No. 2
(recorded July 21, 1942)
TELEFUNKEN not issued
Chopin: Nocturne
E Flat Major Op. 9, No. 2
(recorded July 21, 1942)
TELEFUNKEN not issued
Recordings
made in the LP era:
Tchaikovsky:
Concerto No. 1
with the
RIAS
Symphony Orchestra and conductor
Wolfgang
Sawallisch
REMINGTON R-199-197
Released in Germany on the Bertelsmann label, "Bestell-Nummer 13 174.
Reissued around 1958 as MASTERSEAL MSLP 5006
Beethoven:
Trio for Piano, Clarinet and Violoncello Op. 11
Conrad
Hansen (Piano), Erich Röhn (Violin), Arthur
Troester (Cello) Brahms: Trio for Clarinet Op. 114
Conrad Hansen (Piano), Heinrich Geuser (clarinet), Arthur Troester
(Cello)
ELECTROLA/COLUMBIA SMC 80902. Later reissued on Mace.
Brahms: Piano
Concerto No. 1
with the RIAS Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ferenc Fricsay
(live recording April 19, 1953)
LONGANESI I grandi Concerti No. 50
NOMOS 9.809212
Schubert:
Trio Op. 100
Conrad Hansen (Piano), Erich Röhn (Violin),
Arthur Troester (Cello) (recorded September 14-16, 1954 Hamburg)
TELEFUNKEN LE 6525 / LGX 66039
Dvorak: Trio
E minor, op. 90
Conrad Hansen (Piano), Erich Röhn (Violin),
Arthur Troester (Cello) (recorded December 8-11, 1954 Berlin)
TELEFUNKEN LB 6122
Mozart: Trio
B Flat major, KV 502
Conrad Hansen (Piano), Erich Röhn (Violin),
Arthur Troester (Cello) (recorded December 8-11, 1954 Berlin)
TELEFUNKEN issued ??
Schubert:
Trio Op. 100
Conrad Hansen (Piano), Erich Röhn (Violin),
Arthur Troester (Cello) (recorded June, 12-14, 1956)
TELEFUNKEN BLE 14131
Schubert: Forellenwuintett (Trout Quintet)
with Max Strub (Violin), Walter Müller (Viola),
Irene Güdel (Cello), Rolf Heister, (Contrabass)
BERTELSMANN Schallplattenring 13353 P10
Brahms: Trio
in A minor Op. 114, Beethoven trio in B Flat Op. 11
with Heinrich Geuser (clarinet) and Arthur Troester
(cello)
MACE MS/MCS-9038 (a Electrola GmbH recording)
Mozart: Sonatas
Nos. 1 (K279), 2 (K280), 3 (K281) and 4 (K282)
performed on Hammerklavier
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON LPM 18320
Mozart: Sonatas
Nos. 5 (K283), 11 (K331) and 15 (K545)
performed on Hammerklavier
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON LPM 18322
Mozart: Sonatas
Nos. 6 (K284) and 8 (K310)
performed on Hammerklavier
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON LPM 18505
Mozart: Sonatas
Nos. 7 (K309) and 11 (K331)
performed on Hammerklavier
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON LPM 18321
Mozart: Fantasie
(Fantasy) K 475 and Sonata K 457
Sonatas K533-494
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON LPM 18479
Beethoven:
Piano Concerto No. 1
with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra/Heinz Wallberg
OPERA 3959 (Stereo) Later reissued on Eurodisc 70296.
Beethoven:
Piano Concerto No. 3
with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra/Istvan Kertesz OPERA/Europäischer
Phonoklub 3269
Later reissued on PARNASS S 61 425 (Stereo)
Discographer Ernst Lumpe - known for his research on the
Allegro-Royale
bootlegged recordings - notes that the recording on REGENT
MG 5026 of Piano Concerto No. 3 of Beethoven with pianist
Franz Schultz and the Berlin Symphony Orchestra conducted by
Gustave Kuntz is actually the radio recording of the German
Reichsrundfunk Gesellschaft with Conrad Hansen and the
"Grosses Orchester des Berliner Rundfunks" (Large Orchestra
of the Berlin Radio), Artur Rother conducting. He adds:
I now have definite proof of the identity of this recording
with Hansen's RRG recording. The DRA in Frankfurt still has
the first movement of Hansen's recording, and it is absolutely
identical to the movement on Regent. The DRA does not have
movements 2 and 3 which are on the Regent LP. So the complete
performance has only been preserved under pseudonym on the
Regent LP. - Ernst Lumpe
|
On Compact
Disc:
Beethoven:
Piano Concerto No. 5, Sonata No. 5, Sonata No. 32. Brahms: Piano Quartet
Op. 25, Sonata Op. 5, Intermezzo Op. 119 No. 1. Conrad Hansen
with the RIAS Symphony Orchestra conducted by Karl Böhm, Ernst Doberitz,
viola.
MUSICAPHON M 56845 (2 CD)
Rudolf A. Bruil,
September 2000.
On Tuesday June
25, 2002 the German newspaper 'Die Welt' announced that "pianist
and pedagogue Conrad Hansen died on Saturday June 22, 2002 at the
age of 95." - R.A.B.
