Agi Jambor

[m]

Watching something on Youtube I just noticed a picture of lady, who played some Bach. Something in her face and look I found so special that immediately I thought she should be real good.

Well, was I wrong calling it "real good"!!!
From the very first note I was blown away. I found it sensational!!! Her every note speaks in a way only the very greatest could. I spent most of the evening listening to this extraordinary Hungarian woman, who seemed to teach somewhere in college in PA.

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Her Partita I listened three times:

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If anybody has any information/interesting stories please post it here.

Best, M

[pianowolfi]

Finally, finally, finally a Bach playing that I like!

[furtwaengler]

Agi Jambor. (1909-1997) This is the first I've ever seen the name.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Marik for bringing her to our attention.

Another hidden gem from that golden age...such wonderful contrasts she brings out in the Chromatic Fantasy, but improvisational in the highest sense.

And (briefly) married to Claude Rains who recorded Strauss's melodrama setting of Tennyson's Enoch Arden with Glenn Gould?

When I searched her name I was hoping to find her alive in Pennsylvania. It would have been a thrill, but 87-88 years. It seems a long time - especially considering the likes Rosa Tamarkina, Dinu Lipatti, Dino Ciani ect. It seems a long life, just not long enough, and that makes me sad, death. The recorded tones ring out, but are like ghosts, sounds of what was but will never ever again be on this earth. And to study music, as in anything else...they are just people...but gone to their graves, all these composers and performing musicians. Why am I in this mood?

[m19834]

haha ... holy smokes, this is *insane*  .  

I can hear how everything is like you say, that each note speaks ... what I hear is that her articulation of every, single note is so clean and clear --without being abrasive-- in a literal sound, even in the fast passages, but her harmonic ear is so good in hearing how every, single tone fits into/with the others, as well as how to draw on the piano's resources (the initial tone "burst," its length and decay), and how all of this fits into/with the overall and specific musical flow/meaning.  I am listening to the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, and will listen to the Partita soon.

I love what is written by the person who posted this recording on YouTube :  "Before Glenn Gould and Angela Hewitt, there was Agi Jambor."  Somehow that just seems 'right' ... in the Universe.  

Thanks for posting this, Marik.

[edit]  PS -- The way she plays this somehow makes it seem that the music was actually written for the piano and no other isntrument.

[rachfan]

What an incredible artist, this Agi Jambor!  I read that she was a pupil of Edwin Fischer.  Her playing is nothing less than brilliant.  And Bach's "Chromatic Fantasy" is so modern age--what a marvelous combination!  Thanks, marik, for discovering and sharing these legacy recordings here.

[pianowolfi]

[edit]  PS -- The way she plays this somehow makes it seem that the music was actually written for the piano and no other isntrument.

That's exactly what I felt, too

[m19834]

(Yep, I erased yet another post ! -- sorry if the post that was here offended anybody !)

[birba]

Yes, this is truly an amazing discovery.  Thank you for posting!  And her Chopin!

[furtwaengler]

And her Chopin!

Indeed! I'm blown away. I wonder if there is more out there...maybe in the land of Ormandy/Philadelphia broadcasts?

[m]

Not very often I listen to music, and not very often I listen to the same performance over and over, just trying to understand what is going on there, trying to understand what powers make me hit reply botton again and again.

One can recognise a great artist from only a couple notes, in which one can hear the VOICE of that artist--unique and distinguished--the one which differs one performer from another. Only very few had that quality. The artists whom we could recognize from two notes were Rachmaninov, Gilels, Gould, Horowitz, Cortot, Friedman... This incredible woman had this unique voice. What else needed to be a Great Artist! No fame or popularity can make up for it.

I found another passage about this incredible woman:

Agi Jambor won fifth prize in the third Chopin competition in 1937. She had a huge repertoire, and played with many of the great orchestras of the world. She emigrated to the United States in 1947, taught at Peabody and Bryn Mawr, played repeatedly with the Philadephia Symphony under Eugene Ormandy and was a favorite of Bruno Walter. Agis life could have been the subject of a Hollywood movie. In fact, it was tragically similar to that of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. After playing with great orchestras, escaping the Nazis, playing for a President, having universally spectacular reviews which she modestly ignored, surviving a brief failed marriage to Claude Rains and a bout of a mysterious encephalitis, Agi turned her back on her career and became a lonely eccentric recluse. She lived alone, semi debilitated, with her cats and no human contact, for many years, until, in 1987, the Baltimore psychiatrist and musician, Joseph Stephens, stumbled upon one of her recordings, remembered her from her brief stint at Peabody, tracked her down, and brought her back into the world of the living. Just before her 80th birthday he arranged for her to move to Baltimores Bolton Hill, where her life began again. Joe would walk over to Agis new apartment every day without fail and either listen to her miraculously play pieces from memory that she had not played in 50 or so years, or play with her the orchestra parts of other pieces, or music for two pianos.

[m19834]

What else needed to be a Great Artist! No fame or popularity can make up for it.

Thank you for your post.  I agree with what you wrote, and even though I erased my last post, the spirit of it still lives on inside of me  .  I recognize that fame and popularity can't replace something like having a unique pianistic voice and being an artist, I mean, that is ... it is astounding, really.  I guess what I don't -- or didn't -- understand, is how a person like that could not be known for that very thing and reason ?  I didn't understand how she could remain nearly completely hidden.  I didn't realize she had had a career and that she was in fact well-respected in the larger music world.  I guess my impression of the world in general, and of the music world too, is that even though there is seemingly so much corruption and misunderstanding in it, that there is some kind of fundamental principle of some kind of "justice" or something that is a little hidden if one is not looking for it.  I know that the world is a seemingly very backwards place in general, I know that.  

I guess part of the reason I have been drawn to music and drawn to the piano throughout the years is that, somewhere in me, I have had some kind of belief, or rather some kind of memory or something of some kind of land where ... there is something that is just pure, to be quite honest.  And, I don't mean pure in the sense of good or bad or whatever.  I won't really try to explain it.  But, in my mind, somewhere in me I have believed that there is some kind of group of thinkers, some kind of group of knowers, in the world, some band of people who also know this world.  Somehow I truly believe it's part of everybody, deep down.  And, I just couldn't understand how somebody like Agi could escape those eyes and ears, the ones that would truly appreciate what she represents.  I guess I felt that either there is no such eyes and ears in the world, that my fundamental beliefs are untrue, or that the world right now is still so dark and dim in all ways.  I guess it was just a little disturbing.  

For a group of people, musicians, whom claim that we serve the art, we serve the music, there are some pretty backwards and confusing messages sent in other ways ... for example, age limits on competitions, and competitions ruling the music scene.  If music were really about art and if competitions were really about music, why an age limit ?  I know, it's a sticky subject, but my point is that there are all of these mixed signals and it seems there is some huge group of people "out there" who either don't realize that, or they just don't care.

Well, I can't express this very well and I feel like it's condescending towards humanity, but I don't mean it that way.  I don't believe in elitism, I do believe in purity though.  Well, if there were ever a post which were a candidate for being erased, this one would be right up there.  We'll see.

[pianowolfi]

I appreciate these posts and actually I don't think that anything of your previous one in this thread or this last one would (have) needed to be erased. Thinking is like living, a post can be like a snapshot, nobody awaits from you or anybody else to write the absolute and final perfect conclusions. There aren't any of these latter ones anyway, perhaps. I like the sprouting life and its manifestations We aren't in a math class.

[richard black]

Well spotted, Marik, and thanks for passing the tip on. I quite agree, it's exceptionally fine playing. I did a little digging and found some references to her recordings - mostly LPs from the 1950s - and exchanged a couple of quick emails with Stephen Johnson, who was clearly a close friend of hers in her late life, who tells me that plans to reissue the LPs on CD came to nothing.

[richard black]

After my last post a couple of minutes ago I had the idea to scour ebay for Jambor recordings. There are several on offer, all in the States (they're USA discs and likely to be as rare as hens' teeth in other territories). I'm in the UK and shipping costs more than the discs, but if anyone reading this is in the States and fancies receiving some discs on my behalf, then forwarding them to me in a single box, PM me! I could clean them up, make transfers to digital, tidy those up and find some way of circulating them, quite legally because any recording issued in the 1950s is now out of copyright in practically all parts of the world.

[m]

After my last post a couple of minutes ago I had the idea to scour ebay for Jambor recordings. There are several on offer, all in the States (they're USA discs and likely to be as rare as hens' teeth in other territories). I'm in the UK and shipping costs more than the discs, but if anyone reading this is in the States and fancies receiving some discs on my behalf, then forwarding them to me in a single box, PM me! I could clean them up, make transfers to digital, tidy those up and find some way of circulating them, quite legally because any recording issued in the 1950s is now out of copyright in practically all parts of the world.

Richard,

Yes, I am watching a few LPs on ebay and was planning to purchase them (of course, if other folks won't start overbidding like crazy--STAY AWAY   ).
I am booked for the year (I still cannot finish a few concerts recorded last year, then I have 3 commercial CDs to record/edit/master/release, and on top of that I have a few microphones to prepare for production and I even haven't finished prototyping, yet) and won't be able to work on them in any near future. The best I could do is to transfer them to files and send you for track separation/remastering/noise removal/etc., if you would be up to it. I have here B&O Beogram 8000 tangential tracker with fresh stylus, Mytek and Lavry AD converters, Croft tube RIAA, so most likely it might be an overkill, depending on the LP condition.

Or alternatively, if you want to purchase the LPs yourself then let me know, so we won't play bidding wars against each other  . I can help you with any ebay shipping stuff, incl. electronics--just let me know when you need something and it won't be a problem to consolidate stuff and ship everything together.

Best, M

[steinerway]

My Mom knew Agi. She studied with Fischer who distanced himself from her during the Nazi rise to power in the 30s. Agi refused to perform in Berlin again. She and Fischer would play Bach together, one with the left hand and the other the right hand. I have an old tape of her playing with a local and not so good symphony a Bach concert. Mom she brought this otherwise miserable sounding, tone deaf group to the top of their abilities. She was a genius. I'll have to pull out the one vinyl I have from my Mom and play it. Your comments agree with my Mom's impression and awe of this lady.