Message à tous les pianistes
Message to the Pianists
GEORGES CZIFFRA piano
Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897)
15 Hungarian Dances
transcribed for piano (2 hands) by G. CziffraGeorges CZIFFRA (1921-1993)
Paraphrase on The Flight of the Bumblebee (Rimsky-Korsakov)
Paraphrase on Tritsch-Tratsch Polka (Johann Strauss)
Fantaisie roumaine: improvisation dans le style tzigane
Paraphrase on Valse Triste (Vecsey)
Danse hongroise (Hungarian Dance) No.5 (Brahms)Recorded at the Auditorium Franz Liszt de la Fondation Cziffra at Senlis
in 1982 & 1983 (Brahms) and at Salle Wagram, Paris, 1957. Liner notes by Georges Cziffra.EMI Classics CDM5 66162-2
[68'54"] mid-price
by Soo Kian Hing
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! Get ready to be dazzled out of your senses, for here is none other than the virtuoso showman at the keyboard!
Just as Liszt swooned audiences with his lustful passion and imitable improvisation and Paganini stunned all with his demonic violin playing - carrying on the tradition of pianists like Carl Tausig, Ferruccio Busoni, Leopold Godowsky and Vladimir Horowitz who were familiarly disposed towards flights of fancy at the keyboard - here we have a taste of the superlative dramatic flair of Georges Cziffra.
Let's take a breather to pre-oxygenate our lungs. Before proceeding to listen to Cziffra's transcription of Brahms's Hungarian Dances, it would do good to know what they sound like in their "original" form. A good budget-disc introduction to the orchestral version of this collection of darkly brooding yet wildly passionate Hungarian folk-melodies is available on the CBS Special Products line (A 21705), as part of 'The Cadenza Collection'; or you could also go for the Naxos compilation on . Alright, so you've heard them. Or so you think. Ready for the ride? Let's go!
Brahms's Hungarian Dance No.1 opens with a suitably demure statement of the dark dance theme; at the second line however, when the theme comes back, Cziffra launches into his own improvisatory world proper, and there is no stopping him.
The first steps into Cziffra's world is so fraught with dazzling colours that the unwary listener may be disoriented for a while. Do not worry, it's a normal reaction. Just like Dorothy in Wizard of Oz, the listener is caught up by a whirlwind into another world: one where technicalities have long been transcended and the artiste's imagination is limited only by the confines of the 88 ivories.
Right: Detail from "Les Tsiganes" (1877) by Adrien Moreau.These Dances have a feet-tapping thrust and rhythmic cohesion that makes you want to get up and go! Yet the sizzling Hungarian gypsy tunes, mostly embodied in minor key melodies, brings a melancholic dark richness to the otherwise flighty dance rhythm. Originally written for piano duet, the Hungarian Dances have been orchestrated and transcribed for solo piano by various composers and pianists.
Despite this onslaught of arrangements, Cziffra is remarkably original in his transcriptions. Not one single moment is he resting nor boring - spontaneity being the essential element of improvisation. Repeats are always taken with a different twist. Stomping chords chomp down hard on the keyboard over the entire range, endless chromatic elaborations fly over and in between the main melody, and various other pyrotechnical inventions elevate the richness of colour and frantic idiosyncracy above even the possibilities of the orchestra.
In between stormy episodes, Cziffra can also be tender and enchanting with simple sweet melodies, but mushy interludes are short and soon the pianist starts to pull out the stops again.
Amidst all the tinkling trills and convulsing grace-notes, however, Cziffra never loses the thrust of the innate rhythm, and it is seldom that the melodic line is not evident above the unbelievable earthquakes and volcanoes that he commands from the singular instrument. Here then is one of the differences between an impressive improvisation (which Cziffra pulls off effortlessly) and a helpless runwaway fantasy: being able to shape and structure the course of the impromptu according to the vision of the original theme, and not smother it with overflowing passion, or cram it full of finger technique and lose the melodic thought altogether.
In his "message to the pianists", Cziffra has managed to let us, armchair pianists who like to doodle in vain on the keyboard (both types), hear the realisation of a dream: to be able to enjoy endless original improvisation, surrendering our fingers to the imagination that runs deliciously amok, hoping to move sky and earth with that bright momentous spark of inspiration.
In Singapore, EMI CDs are available at or can be ordered from Tower (Pacific Plaza & Suntec City), Sing Discs (Raffles City), Borders (Wheelock Place) or HMV (The Heeren).
Amidst heaving ground, spurting lava and swirling floods, a dishevelled and scorched Soo Kian Hing tries to calm himself as he reports 'live' from among the carnage.
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351: 22.11.98
Readers' Comments
From: r.h.velvart (velvart@idirect.com / Saturday, April 17, 1999 at 07:57:59)
I don't have Cziffra's Brahms but I'm running to get it. I'm afraid I own few of his recordings even though I knew him fairly well in Budapest in the late 50's. A great loss. Regards richard h. velvart