Gina Bachauer / Historic Piano Masterclass / Student - Yefim Bronfman / Jerusalem Music Centre

From the Jerusalem Music Centre's Archives: Historic Masterclass with legendary pianist Gina Bachauer at the Jerusalem Music Centre (1973). JMC graduate Yefim Bronfman works on Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491 with this great master of the 20th century.

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Gina Bachauer’s outstanding capabilities as a concert pianist endeared her to famous New York Times music critic Harold Schonberg, who wrote, “She is one of today’s pianistic originals. That means her technique and her interpretations are sui generis. One does not have to see her to recognize her playing. Ten measures would be enough for any trained listener to put his finger on what constitutes a Gina Bachauer performance. Certain traits are immediately apparent. There is the enormous technical solidity, including a bravura, when necessary, that is hair-raising. She makes piano playing sound very easy. There is the curiously penetrating tone…so well manufactured, weighted, and measured that it sounds enormous.”

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From the website of the Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation:

Regarding her illustrious teachers, Mme. Bachauer said:

“Cortot knew Ravel and Debussy and I think that no other pianist could have given me a better undemanding of their music, of their specific sounds. On the other hand, Rachmaninov was an amazing pianist, with superb hands, and an uncanny technique. He did not attempt to teach me, he was not really a teacher. If I asked him—and this happened very often—‘How do you do that passage?’ the answer was always the same. He sat at the piano, illustrating it, and saying: ‘Like that.’ He could not explain what he wanted me to do. He would always add: ‘Don’t try to copy what I am doing. You must try again and again until you find your own way of doing it. When you will show me what you want to do with that phrase and if you can convince me, then it is right.’ He made me realize that there are several ways to interpreting the same phrase, as long as it is convincing, as long as this comes from one’s own judgement. He was very demanding and quite strict when it came to phrasing and rhythmic vitality and he wanted, above all, a complete involvement in the music.”

"After a recital at Carnegie Hall, Harold Schonberg declared, “Governments rise and fall, and the seasons change, but Miss Bachauer’s playing remains a constant. She represents the romantic tradition in piano playing—she, with her enormous technique, her big and penetrating tone, her love for the piano as a steed upon which to ride… Gina Bachauer continues to be one of the great pianists.”

Theodore W. Libbey, Jr., classical music editor of High Fidelity, wrote “Her pianism had the sort of energy and scale and sweep that a listener, once he had experienced it, could never forget. Today, nearly ten years after her death, the memories are still vivid. The mind’s ear still recalls the sound she produced, the brilliant tone, the intensity of her passage work, the weight and clarity of, for instance, the opening chords of the Rachmaninoff Second Concerto. Few pianists of either sex make such an impression when they perform; fewer still make it in a way that lives on after they are gone.”