Edward Cahill (1885-1975) - the brilliant but forgotten Australian pianist - plays Chopin


The brilliant but now forgotten Australian concert pianist Edward Cahill (1885-1975)


Edward Cahill seated in the front row on the left of Princess Alice at a private Mayfair piano recital at the home of the Dowager Lady Swathling 1934 (click to enlarge)

A few of Edward Cahill's ('Uncle Eddie') private recordings of Chopin made in 1935 miraculously survived his glamorous career of travel and royal engagements. They also somehow survived a disastrous fire at his home in 1932.

I have recently had them all sensitively re-mastered by Selene records in Poland who specialise in this type of thing for all the great Polish Chopin pianists of the past - Michalowski, Koczalski, Turczynski, Zurawlew.....

You will realise on hearing these remarkable interpretations that Cahill lies on the cusp of the the great nineteenth century Chopin pianistic 'individualistic' tradition of de Pachmann, Friedman, Lehvinne, Godowsky and Rosenthal and the advent of the more 'modern' less overtly 'personality' based approach of say ArturRubinstein. 

Please consult the numerous posts on Edward Cahill on this blog to fill in the gaps if you are interested further in this astonishing story and have not already done so.

Free download of two of a number of Edward Cahill's Chopin recordings (Chopin's Etude in A major Op. 25 No.1 and the Scherzo in B-flat minor Op.31) made privately in 1935 on a Grotrian-Steinweg concert instrument - his favourite piano.

These recordings were made in one take without editing. Our modern 'perfectionist' practice of pasting together the 'best bits'  is vastly different to those days. His recordings preserve a conceptual completeness, tonal variety and intense drama lost in the standardised banality of so much of today's obsession with digital immaculateness and accuracy.

http://www.box.net/shared/s4xakeg578

Also a superb performance of La Campanella by Liszt of similar date at:

http://www.box.net/shared/59e773yxjq

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