The greatest Brazilian classical musician of the past 50 years, pianist Nelson Freire, died Sunday to Monday night in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 77. A major performer of the music of Chopin, Schumann and Brahms, he formed a legendary duo with Martha Argerich.
For a long time Nelson Freire was a name known to piano lovers, but not an artist recognized in his true dimension. His colleague pianist Ivan Davis, quoted by Jed Distler in a set of recordings made for Columbia, summed up the situation well: “Nelson Freire realizes the marriage between the philosophy of Rubinstein, because his playing is just as natural, and the imagination. Horowitz, because he’s just as electrifying. As long as I live, I will be unable to understand why he is not more famous. “
The quote is undated, but smells of the 1970s. Almost 50 years later on this Monday morning 1er November 2021, the day of the death of Nelson Freire, the French pianist and radio host Philippe Cassard writes on Facebook: “A giant has just left us. And a whole world with him. Incandescent virtuoso with the touch of velvet, big beast of the piano with devastating paws in Rachmaninoff and Liszt, singer in Chopin, orchestra in Beethoven and Brahms, flowing of source and luminous in Bach and Mozart. And what about the most extraordinary duo in all of history that he formed for 4 hands and 2 pianos with Martha Argerich? “
Humble giant
Davis and Cassard, colleagues of Nelson Freire, over time sum up the eminence of the artist. But to know fame in the broad sense is to be, or to compose, a character that some do not want to be or endorse.
Nelson Freire was an introvert, a humble giant who did not seek the spotlight or the career as such. The world (in a somewhat broader sense) realized its dimension when Decca signed him to a recording contract at the turn of the century. From then on, each publication, scrupulously distilled, was an event or even a reference, even in highly recorded repertoires such as the Piano concertos by Brahms.
These combined an astonishing concentration of energy and a velvety touch that worked wonders in one of the pianist’s emblematic works, the Fancy by Schumann. It is a radio archive record (1971-1994) published in 1999 by INA Mémoire vive and including in particular the Symphonic studies of Schumann who had alerted, just before the Decca contract, to the eminence of this then neglected artist. Everything he published in the last twenty years was major. All that it leaves us, generally speaking, too – including, on YouTube, some excellent filmed concertos, like a 2e by Chopin, two 2e de Brahms, a dream Schumann, a 4e by Beethoven.
The Emperor at 13
Born in B oa Esperança, in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil, on October 18, 1944, Nelson Freire began playing the piano at the age of three, observing his sister who was studying this instrument. He perseveres and wins the International Piano Competition of Rio de Janeiro by performing the Emperor Concerto of Beethoven at the age of 13. He obtained a scholarship to study in Vienna, where he attended the courses of the legendary Bruno Seidlhofer and met Martha Argerich, who studied with Friedrich Gulda.
Nelson Freire won awards in the mid-1960s and recorded a few records for Columbia between 1967 and 1970 (his Schumann Concerto with Rudolf Kempe is a benchmark, but no one noticed it!) Before a long discographic eclipse out of duets with her friend Martha Argerich.
Among the influences that we know of him, we must mention the great Brazilian pianist Guiomar Novaës (1895-1979) who was part of the jury for the Rio competition and took him under her wing. Much of Nelson Freire’s sonic instinct in Schumann and Chopin stems from the mentorship of this great artist: “Her playing fascinated me, her sound was liquid, silvery, spontaneous,” Freire said.
In 2019, Decca published the day of the 75e Nelson Freire birthday album Still, gathering his favorite bis, including, in opening, the melody ofOrpheus and Eurycides by Gluck transcribed by Sgambati. He will no longer have the opportunity to play it. On October 31, 2019, he fell on a sidewalk in Rio and broke his right shoulder. He is operated on the same day.
We were waiting for the news of his return, not of his disappearance.