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The Hungarian pianist, Etelka Freund, was taught initially by her brother, Robert Freund (1852-1936), himself a fine musician who had studied with Moscheles, no less, as well as Carl Tausig and Franz Liszt and was twenty-five years Etelka's senior. She was also taught by Ignaz Brüll despite having also been accepted by master pedagogue Leschetizky. It was during her Viennese years that she called on Johannes Brahms, weekly, to play to him. In 1898 she went on to Ferruccio Busoni and she was, and was to remain, a favoured and much admired student of his. He wrote well and admiringly of her. She knew Béla Bartók for many years and was apparently responsible for introducing him to F. Busoni. She was an early exponent of B. Bartók's music, his Op. 6 Bagatelles and the Sketch in particular.
Etelka Freund's marriage in 1910 led to her effectively giving up public performance for the next quarter of a century, only resurfacing in 1936, at which point her career took on depressingly familiar - and yet not entirely unprofitable - turns. She emigrated to America in 1946, joining her son (who was majorly responsible for ensuring that so many of her radio broadcasts were recorded). Her USA debut was in the following year (at Washington's National Gallery) In her early seventies she made a couple of now exceptionally rare LP's for Remington (and off-shoot Plymouth, Frédéric Chopin's Waltzes) by which any external reputation she had was for long to be judged. Some of these are here, added to which we have a welter of astoundingly rare broadcast survivals. |
