Marie Novello

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (January 2008)

Marie Novello (1898 – 1928) was an English pianist.

[edit] Life

Marie Novello was born Marie Williams, daughter of one W.T. Williams; she owed her name to adoption by her piano teacher, Clara Novello Davies, mother of Ivor Novello and also a celebrated singing teacher. Following studies with her mother, Marie was among the last students of Theodor Leschetizky. He denied her first request to study with him in 1912, as she spoke only English; she responded by learning German, whereupon he relented.^[1]

Novello’s professional career began early. As a child, Novello won the principal piano prize at the Welsh National Eisteddfod. In spring 1908, she toured the English provinces with a company assembled by Percy Harrison, a promoter who regularly organized such groups; among her compatriots were John McCormack, fresh from his first season at Covent Garden and participating in a Harrison tour for the first time, and Emma Albani.^[2] Around the same time, a 10-year-old Novello performed at Wigmore Hall, then known as Bechstein Hall. She performed regularly in London during her teen years, often as one of multiple soloists sharing a recital. In her early twenties, she began appearing at the Proms, Ballad Concerts, and Sunday League Concerts and in music festivals at Brighton and Cardiff. As reported in the following day’s New York Times, her US debut was at Town Hall in New York on February 23, 1922, where she played a program including works of Chopin, Scarlatti, Debussy, Palmgren, and Poldini.

In her choice of repertory, Novello showed preference for music of the romantic era and particular affinity for virtuoso works such as Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B Minor. She did not entirely neglect contemporary works, however; she achieved notice for performing the premiere of the Rhapsody on Tipperary for piano and orchestra by Frank Tapp, a composer well represented in English concert halls at the time but now forgotten. She then took the work on tour throughout the United Kingdom.^[3]

Critical reception to her work appears to have been mixed, with more than one suggestion that she tended toward impulsiveness and a lack of firm control. Her tone also sometimes drew critical disparagement. Nonetheless, critics praised her technical facility and capacity to communicate.

Recording almost entirely for the English Edison Bell company, Novello accumulated an extensive discography of acoustic recordings, albeit, as was typical of the time, one weighted heavily to the sort of short works that could fit on one or at most two sides of a 78 RPM record. Her sole multi-disc set was a recording spreading over five sides of Mendelssohn’s op. 25 piano concerto. One source suggests that Novello was the first musician to record J.S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565 (Tausig arrangement), although the associated claim of extreme rarity for the record may be open to question.^[4]

Novello also recorded at least one reproducing piano roll for the Aeolian company's Duo-Art system; doubtless as a fruit of this connection, she once partnered with a reproducing piano in a public performance of the Variations on a Theme of Beethoven for two pianos, four hands by Saint-Saens.

At the dawn of the electrical era, Novello cut a few electrically recorded sides for HMV. Two were issued: a gavotte by Rameau and Arensky’s Étude de Concert in F-Sharp Major, op. 36 no. 13. Her death of throat cancer at age 30 cut short this promising new association.

[edit] Recordings

Very little of Novello's significant legacy of recordings has emerged in LP or CD reissues. A partial list of her acoustic 78 RPM records for the English Edison Bell company would include the following ("V" denoting Edison Bell's "Velvet Face" label and "W" its "The Winner" label):

Bach, J.S.: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565 (arr. Tausig) (V 676)
Beethoven: Incidental Music to The Ruins of Athens, op. 113 — Turkish March (W 3609)
Beethoven: Piano Sonata no. 14 in C-Sharp Minor, op. 27 no. 2 (Moonlight) — 1st, 3d mvts. only (V 529)
Chaminade: 4eme Valse (W 3768)
Chaminade: Air de Ballet (W 2340)
Chaminade: Pas des Amphores (W 3768)
Chopin: Etudes, op. 10 — no. 5 in G-Flat Major (Black Key) (W 3479)
Chopin: Waltz in C-Sharp Minor, op. 64 no. 2 (W 3479)
Godard: Mazurka (W 2340)
Grieg: Lyric Pieces Book VIII, op. 65 — No. 6, Wedding Day at Troldhaugen (W 3424)
Leschetizky: Toccata (W 3813)
Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 (abridged) (W 3599)
Liszt: Liebestraum no. 3 (W 3443)
Mendelssohn: Concerto no. 1 in G Minor for Piano and Orchestra, op 25 (with Royal Symphony Orchestra under Joseph Batten) (V 640-642)
Mendelssohn: Rondo Capriccioso, op. 14 (V 642)
Poldini: Poupee Valsante (W 3609)
Rachmaninoff: Prelude in C-Sharp Minor, op. 3 no. 2 (W 3443)
Schubert: Marche Militaire (W 3813)
Scott: Danse Negre, op. 58 no. 3 (W 3609)
Sinding: Frühlingsrauschen, op. 32 no. 3 (W 3424)

Her two issued electric sides for HMV (B 2592, 10", March 1, 1927) were the following:

Arensky: 24 Characteristic Pieces, Op. 36 — No. 13, Etude de Concert in F Sharp Major
Rameau: Gavotte with 6 Doubles

Novello also recorded at least one Duo-Art reproducing piano roll, Gamin by Ivor Novello, presently available as a reissue ^[5].

CD reissues include the following:

The Arensky Etude de Concert appears on Naxos 8.111120, Women at the Piano: An Anthology of Historic Peroformances, Volume 1 (1926-1952). The Rameau Gavotte appears on Pearl Opal 9839, Pupils of Leschetitzky; that disc also includes the Edison Bell Leschetitzky Toccata.