ETELKA FREUND (1879-1977)
Hungarian pianist

Etelka Freund knew Brahms, apparently played for him often, and it is unlikely that he held his peace.  Although she is not the only pianist to appear on these pages who can make this claim, she left us a larger number of recordings of his music to contemplate.  And there are subtleties of phrasing that I am fully prepared to believe may have come from Brahms himself.

The pianist's initial studies were with her much older brother, the pianist Robert Freund (1852-1936) who had studied with Moscheles, Tausig and Liszt. She herself had been accepted as a student by the famous Leschetizky though it seems she may have chosen instead to work with Ignaz Brüll, eventually moving on in 1898 to study with Ferruccio Busoni, a favorite of whose she was to become.

She was also a good friend of fellow Hungarian Béla Bartók whose music she championed, and is reported to have introduced him to Busoni.

In 1910 she married and ceased to play in public until resuming her concert career in 1936.  She emigrated to the United States in 1946 where to our good fortune, many of her radio broadcasts were recorded.

Some of the recordings you will hear were made when Etelka Freund was in her late seventies.  While they are not as technically polished as her recordings of even five or six years earlier, they are nonetheless musically excellent.

Brahms Capriccio in F# minor, Op 76 n1

recorded in 1950