A rare moment for Uncle Eddie




Click on photos to Enlarge




London 1934. 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 Swaythling


                                                Edward Cahill (1885-1975) at the piano in London at the Queen's Hall 1935


He was featured in the Prologue of my literary travel book on Poland. I have promoted the Polish edition of my book at a number of venues around Poland since I returned from South Africa. In Lodz, Krakow and at the Warsaw International Book Fair.
The most remarkable event however was on June 1 at the Chopin Institute in Tamka Street Warsaw in the Conference Room of the New Museum building. I was to formally present the surviving private recordings of Edward Cahill, my great-uncle and the brilliant but forgotten Australian concert pianist. The promotion was moderated by the former Director of the Chopin Institute Andrzek Sulek - a rare honour for me. The audience was quite distinguished with ambassadors, well-known music critics, journalists and of course many of my closest friends.

The evening began with the playing of some pieces from the remastered recordings from 1930 of Eddie's playing of Liszt ('La Campanella') and Chopin (B flat minor Scherzo Op.31). How proud he would have been to hear the enthusiastic applause of this appreciative and musically well-informed audience. Also the extremely positive remarks of the Director of the Chopin Institute concerning the delicacy of his touch and refined tone, his understanding of the 'tragic jests' in this scherzo. Well, Eddie adored Vladimir de Pachmann for his refined tone and qualities of touch  (if lamenting his increasingly disruptive behavioral ecccentricities). Edward Cahill belonged to that same glorious late nineteenth century school of pianism - Hofmann, Lehvinne, Rubinstein, Horowitz, Godowsky - all these pianists glorified tone, touch, velocity, charm, poetry and delicacy. The son perle. It is hard indeed to impress Poles with the playing of Chopin.

It was the greatest pleasure for me to have been able, with the help of my Polish publisher Czarne, to bring this event to a happy conclusion. The event revealed this pianist as truly great and 'a visionary'. He came from the tiny town of Beenleigh in Queensland Australia (400 souls when he was born) that distilled a powerful rum to reach European fame among the royalty and aristocracy of the glamorous London, Paris and Riviera of the 1920s and 1930s.

He also made a number of private 'visionary' Chopin recordings that also survived but you will have to wait for my book to hear those.


Free download of Edward Cahill playing La Campanella ('Little Bell') of Liszt which reveals all these rare qualities of touch, tone and finesse at:

http://www.michael-moran.net/paderewski-recordings.htm

 
Now he has been heard with approbation in Warsaw at the very heart of the Chopin world in the 200th anniversary year of the composer's birth. My mission promised to him all those years ago on his death-bed in Monaco has almost been fulfilled.


My task will be completed with the book, accompanied by the remastered CD of his playing - a real challenge. The research is becoming a 'quest', the material evolving into a type of 'travel biography' if there is such a thing. If one is terribly famous like Artur Rubinstein every breath is documented. For a distinguished but for a not mega famous individual there are many biographical gaps....they need to be filled.

Popular posts from this blog

Elisey Mysin recital - XVII International Piano Forum - Bieszczady Without Borders - Sanok, Poland

Image
Astounding musical experiences a lways happen i n Poland! Has been happening to me for as I long as I began visiting the country to work in 1992. The astonishing recital by the child prodigy  Elisey Mysin   I watched online last night prompted me to write this review immediately. It was broadcast from the International Piano Forum, a Polish musical event now in its seventeenth year. The Forum (lectures and concerts) is held in the town of Sanok (the 'capital' of the remote Bieszczady Region). I knew or know nothing about this remarkable Forum until last night.  The concert was  'In Memoriam Tatiana Shebanova',  that magnificent Russian pianist who died so tragically of leukemia in 2011 whilst at her pianistic peak. The concert was organized by her husband, the Chairman of the Piano Forum Council, Prof.  Jaros ław  Drzewiecki.    Tatiana Shebanova was one of the first pianists I heard play works by Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849) in concert in Poland in 1992. It was an over
Read more

78th International Chopin Festival in Duszniki-Zdrój, Poland. August 4-12, 2023

Image
  78th International Chopin Festival Duszniki-Zdrój Poland  August 4-12, 2023   An introduction from Piotr Paleczny, Artistic Director Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Music Lovers, Hard as I find it to believe, it is already for the thirty-first time that I have the pleasure, honour, and great joy to welcome you – lovers of Fryderyk Chopin’s music and all the piano enthusiasts – in Duszniki-Zdrój and invite you warmly to the recitals presented during the 78th International Chopin Piano Festival. I am deeply convinced that this year’s Festival concerts will meet with your great interest and prove to be major events; that the emotions and experience of contact with the invited artists and their art will long remain in your memory. The names of those artists guarantee that our concerts will uphold the highest artistic standards. The Festival opens with a recital by Francesco Piemontesi, called the ‘Wizard of Sound’. Similarly extraordinary emotions also await us in the following evenings, feat
Read more

The Polish Romantic Guitar - The Polish Musical Renaissance - National Chopin Institute Recording Review

Image
Mateusz Kowalski Works by Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849) Jan Nepomucen Bobrowicz (1805-1881) Felix Horecki (1796-1870) Stanisław Szczepanowski (1811? - 1877) Marek Konrad Sokołowski (1818-1883) Guitarist:  Mateusz Kowalski CD number: NIFCCD 118 Again, this ghastly pandemic has opened up caverns of reading time for me without distractions. I am once more inspired in my life and music practice by that singularly appropriate text from Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius taken from the poem of the same name by Cardinal John Henry Newman And while the storm of that bewilderment Is for a season spent And, ere afresh the ruin on me fall, Use well the interval. I brought this to bear in the following review of a CD devoted to the guitar in Poland and outstanding Polish guitar compositions. I agree, at first sight an arcane and not a well-known subject, but it suffers undeserved neglect. I have always loved the classical, acoustic guitar. My harpsichord builder, the great luthi
Read more