It was from his father, also a pianist, that Alexander Brailowsky received his first lessons at the piano. He attended the Kiev Conservatory, where he studied with Vladimir Puchalsky, a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky, and in 1911 moved to Vienna where, with his sister, he began taking lessons from Leschetizky himself. In 1916 Brailowsky went to France and in fact retained French citizenship throughout his life. Part of World War I was spent in Switzerland, and in Zürich he received advice from Busoni. He received instruction also from Francis Planté and made his Paris recital debut at the Salle Gaveau in 1919, having already performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 Op. 58 in the city with great success. In 1922 he gave a Liszt recital in Paris, and about a year later, after tours of Europe, Brailowsky devised a cycle of the complete solo works of Chopin which he played in six recitals. This cycle was first given in Paris in 1924, Brailowsky eventually playing it there three times, twice in Buenos Aires, and also in Brussels, Zürich, Mexico City and New York. This debut in New York in November 1924 was so successful that two further recitals at Carnegie Hall were scheduled for 10 January and 14 February 1925. Olin Downes in the New York Times wrote, ‘He is a born virtuoso in the highest sense of that word. He feels instinctively the resources of the piano and makes it an instrument that sings and throbs with color. The overwhelming temperament and sincerity of the artist compel respect and response in those who listen.’ A six-week tour of the USA was extended to four months, but Brailowsky was not to return to New York again until 1936. In 1926 he was the first pianist to give a solo recital at the Paris Opera, and at the beginning of October he achieved the extraordinary feat of giving four different recital programmes on consecutive nights at London’s Wigmore Hall, something only a very popular artist could do.

Brailowsky was a success with critics and audiences alike; he became known as a Chopin specialist, and when he performed his third Chopin cycle at Carnegie Hall in the 1946–1947 season the attendance level was one never before reached in New York—this at a time when Horowitz and Rubinstein were dominating the scene. Brailowsky lived in New York and Etoy in Switzerland. He was made a member of the French Légion d’honneur and decorated with the Belgian Croix de Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Couronne and the Danish King Christian X Medal, in addition to receiving awards from the United Nations.

Brailowsky was elegant, kind, generous and reserved, but his reputation as a pianist and his recorded legacy present a paradox. He was undoubtedly a fine musician and artist, initially popular with both critics and the public, yet the majority of his recordings do not bear this out. Those made after the war are often prosaic and uninteresting, with little insight, as if Brailowsky has no connection with the music he is playing.

His first recordings were made in Germany for Polydor, and between 1928 and 1934 he recorded prolifically, the results of which are mixed. Rhythms in the Chopin Barcarolle Op. 60 and Ballade in G minor Op. 23 are mannered; in his playing of the Étude Op. 25 No. 12 he bludgeons the listener, and a recording of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is lacklustre. However, some of the discs are very good: Mendelssohn’s Scherzo in E minor Op. 16 No. 2 is rhythmically incisive, the Pastorale and Capriccio of Scarlatti (arranged by Tausig) is beautifully controlled with wonderful tone colours, and Liszt’s arrangement of Wagner’s overture to Tannhäuser is probably Brailowsky’s finest moment on disc. Even though he simplifies a few left-hand figures, it is a performance in the true grand Leschetizky style on a par with the recording by Benno Moiseiwitsch.

In the mid-1920s Brailowsky said, ‘I have no cut-and-dried manner of playing… I cannot tell, beforehand, exactly how I shall play a certain composition at a given time.’ This, combined with the constraints of the recording studio, may be the reason for Brailowsky’s particular form of charisma not being captured by the microphone. In the same way that some people are not photogenic, it may be that Brailowsky was not reflected favourably by the microphone; it just did not capture what audiences heard in a live performance. Fortunately, however, there was one series of highly successful recordings made in 1938 when he was in London. He had given recitals in Birmingham and Leeds on 17 and 19 November, and after giving a recital in London on 22 November he spent the following two days recording for HMV at Abbey Road Studios. (His contract with Polydor had expired in 1934 and he had recently signed with RCA in America, the sister company of HMV in England.) The sessions were produced by Fred Gaisberg, who wrote in his autobiography, ‘His achievement as a recorder is unique in that, among the thirty-odd sides which he made, not one had to be repeated because of a smudged or false note on the part of the player.’ A glance at the session sheets proves that this statement was not entirely accurate, but the fact is that Gaisberg did manage to capture Brailowsky at his best, helped no doubt by the pianist himself being in exactly the right mood and frame of mind for recording. There is some fine Scarlatti, arranged by Tausig, which he had already successfully recorded for Polydor, and a brilliant Rondo a capriccio in G (‘Rage over a lost penny’) by Beethoven; but most of the time was spent recording Chopin. An elegant and beautifully poised Waltz in E flat Op. 18 is one of Brailowsky’s best recordings, and the Sonata in B minor Op. 58 has an extremely exciting and committed finale.

Brailowsky’s recordings for RCA and CBS do not have the panache and style of the 1938 HMV recordings and it is this fact that has led to some less than generous remarks, such as those of Abram Chasins. He wrote in his book Speaking of Pianists: ‘The calibre and extent of his engagements, recording assignments, and public following have made Brailowsky a mystery to the profession… It may also be that his audiences prefer to hear the bare bones of a work without being involved in its subtle or profound meanings. Certainly Brailowsky has posed few intellectual problems to himself or to his auditors.’ The best discs from the post-war period are those of Chopin nocturnes recorded for RCA in 1957.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — Jonathan Summers (A–Z of Pianists, Naxos 8.558107–10).