A Sparkling Sky at the Liszt Academy

The one hundredth anniversary of the birth of the great Hungarian pianist  Annie Fischer is an ideal opportunity for us to remember her personality as  well as her artistic greatness. This aspect of Annie Fischer is not as obscure  today as it was during her life. For Annie Fischer was repelled by the  expectations of the popular press. She neither gave interviews nor appeared  before the camera. For this reason, strange legends about her circulated even  in her lifetime. But she appeared largely unconcerned. Following her death,  the reminiscences of friends and contemporaries inevitably became public.  These also sharply refute the rumours that she was a recluse and shrank  from human contact. She did not reject friends, only the notion of a public  private life. Everyone who knew her talks with respect and nearly always  with the greatest enthusiasm. I would like to recall two of my own memories  which bear witness to Annie Fischer's generosity of spirit. 
 

The legendary singing teacher István Ungár taught at the Kölcsey  Secondary School in the seventies. His father, István Ungár, was one  of Annie Fischer's best friends and their families knew each other from  long before. Under the guidance of István Ungár, the small choir of the  Kölcsey School to which I belonged attended the funeral of Annie  Fischer's much respected mother. As to what we produced as a choir,  memory has perhaps been rightfully wiped clean, but then the news  arrived that Annie Fischer wanted to express her thanks by visiting our  school and giving a concert to the students. Two classrooms opened up  into one another, serving as the Communist Youth Club, and since this  was both the largest and only public space of the building, they somehow  managed to cram into it the enormous concert piano. Annie Fischer gave  a marvellous and perhaps even more inspired Beethoven recital than she  had done at the Liszt Academy. In the last year of her life, she often mentioned  she would prefer to only play in schools to entirely untrained and unprejudiced  children, with no pre-announced programmes. She also added that if the  state were to build a new college for young talented musicians (which it  never did) then she would help carry the bricks. 

The second memory is not just about Annie Fischer but the importance of  István Ungár as a teacher because there are not many teachers who would  go to the trouble of giving each of his students a considerable present. As  I learned much later, our teacher made a single phone call to Annie Fischer,  briefly mentioning his two students to whom he wanted to give a memorable  gift. Annie Fischer did not query it but lugged her tape recorder into the  Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy, and on the occasion of a solo rehearsal,  recorded two late Beethoven sonatas, enclosed them in a box with a charming  dedication and sent them as a matriculation present. The other recipient  of this gift was Dorottya Fábián, also a music historian who now lives in  Australia. Professor Ungár wished through this gesture (it would seem  successfully) to offer us encouragement to join the profession. 

Besides personal gifts and memories, it is naturally important to recall what  Annie Fischer's artistry offered to those who were present at her concerts.  This, though, is a pretty hopeless enterprise since the ever dwindling number  of witnesses may recall their impressions, moods and even concrete musical  moments, but they can only express them in words, and for youngsters this  can seem like empty nostalgia. There remain her recordings. Of the dubious  glories of the 20th century, one of the least open to dispute is that through  sound recordings an artist today can cement his place among the immortals.  Neither artists nor we ourselves are always convinced of the enjoyment  value of conserved music. Bartók thought it was nothing more than a  surrogate. Others, for example Glenn Gould, came to acknowledge it as  the only valid form of music making. 

Annie Fischer wasn't a fan of recordings. She expressly loathed studio work  because she never felt she could offer full value there. While she was never  unconditionally happy about it, she did sometimes allow her concerts to be  recorded. I think she rightly thought that these perhaps offered a truer reflection  of her artistic habits. But what else can posterity do to recall and acquaint  themselves with earlier artists except on the basis of recordings? Certainly  the musical power of the great musicians, their personality and artistic  achievements permeate their recordings as well. And this is no different  when it comes to Annie Fischer. And her performances of some works have  never been surpassed. Performances can be good in a different way but  what she did with certain Beethoven or Schubert movements and Mozart  concertos is not just beautiful but one can never tire of them. They contain  some inexplicable individual extra. 

There is no doubt that the elemental dynamism of the young artists  emerging in the late sixties and early seventies, who found the new in  everything they touched, awoke in Annie Fischer the impatience that one  generation tends to feel for another, but today, with the passage of half a  century, we can say that the values of Annie Fischer's art have stood the  test of time. In the slow funeral-march movement of Chopin's Piano Sonata  in B flat minor there is a central section in D flat major. It is just 24 bars  long, and with repeats, no more than three minutes of music. Once at the  Liszt Academy when Annie Fischer reached this passage it was as if the  roof of the Liszt Academy had been silently lifted and above it the starry  sky sparkled and we felt that gravity had stopped, everyone was just floating  together outside of time and space. Somehow every tangible musical  parameter, rhythm, tone colour, everything had changed but there was no  rational explanation. There is only one word for this, however exhausted:  magic. There is no recording of it. It doesn't matter because Bartók was  right – it would merely be a surrogate. My recollection, for those who were  not there, is just empty nostalgia. But I have put it into words because  I want to indicate that however rare, these types of experience do exist.  It is worth waiting for them and to seek them out, too. At Annie Fischer's  concerts – to express myself in prosaic modern terms – such things  occurred with significant regularity.