Frederic Lamond
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- This is a page about the Scottish pianist and composer. For the Wiccan author and elder please see Fred Lamond.
Frederic Archibald Lamond (28 January 1868–21 February 1948) was a Scottish classical pianist and composer, and the second-to-last surviving pupil of Franz Liszt.
[edit] Early Life
Lamond was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and died in Stirling, Scotland. After exhausting the resources of his home town, he continued his musical study abroad in Germany under Max Schwarz and Hans von Bülow. He studied with Franz Liszt at Weimar and Rome in 1885, and in London in 1886. In 1886 Lamond also met Johannes Brahms who coached him in his own works. Lamond also became acquainted with Anton Rubinstein in Germany, hearing him conduct and play many times there, and later in Russia in the 1890s.
[edit] Career
In addition to becoming one of the early champions of Brahms' piano works, Lamond was considered the primary authority on Beethoven's piano music before Artur Schnabel, and Breitkopf & Härtel published his edition of the piano sonatas. In 1893 Lamond was invited by Vasily Safonov to Moscow to play Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto in B flat minor, Op. 23, at the request of the composer. While in Russia, he met Alexander Scriabin, whose Second Sonata, Op.19, Lamond later played. In the 1920s and 30s, Lamond recorded many works of Beethoven (including an acoustic recording of the Emperor Concerto complete under Eugene Goossens, fils, for HMV) and Liszt, as well as a scattered assortment of smaller works by other composers. While not the greatest of technicians by the time of his recordings — reviews from his youth praise his accuracy and bravura in such taxing works as the Brahms Paganini Variations, Op.35 — his graceful phrasing and singing tone are quite remarkable.
[edit] Later Life
Despite his declining technique, he continued to concertize until the end of his life, and was in Prague in 1938 when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia. Forced to leave most of his belongings behind, including an unfinished novel, he left for England. A friend later recounted Lamond's flight: stopped at the border, "A Gestapo officer insisted on seeing his passport. 'You can see it, he said, 'but I will not allow you to take it into your hands.' The officer then asked him, 'Are you an Aryan?' to which Lamond replied, 'No, I am a monkey!'[citation needed] Lamond was a courageously outspoken man who would stand no nonsense."
A few months after Lamond's death at the age of eighty, the last of the Liszt pupils, the Portuguese pianist José Vianna da Motta died, also eighty years old.
Frederic Lamond was a highly respected teacher, among whose pupils were Gunnar Johansen, Jan Chiapusso, Erwin Nyiregyhazi, and Victor Borge.
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lamond, Frederic |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lamond, Frederic Archibald;Lamond, Frederick Archibald;Lamond, Frédéric |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 28 January 1868 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Glasgow |
| DATE OF DEATH | 21 February 1948 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Stirling |
