American pianist Byron Janis died last Thursday in New York, at the age of 95, we learned late Sunday. This great musician and virtuoso, who marked the 1960s, unfortunately had a career hampered by illness in his mid-40s.
Byron Janis, born in 1928 in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, was with Van Cliburn (1934-2013) and Comet William Kapell (1922-1953), who died prematurely in a plane crash near San Francisco, one of the legends of American piano, to which list we must add the names of important artists associated with a more Germanic repertoire, such as Julius Katchen (1926-1969), Gary Graffman (born in 1928) and Leon Fleisher (1928-2020)
Record at night
For a very long time, the 1er Concerto of Tchaikovsky by conductor Kirill Kondrashin and pianist Van Cliburn was the best-selling classical record in the world in the Book of records. This RCA Living Stereo disc had slightly less famous and celebrated counterparts: the 3e Concerto of Prokofiev and the 1er Concerto by Rachmaninov, as well as the 2 Concertos by Liszt, on Mercury Living Presence label. The conductor was the same, the pianist, Byron Janis, different, and the project crazier.
It was not, as in 1958, the Soviet authorities who had let conductor Kirill Kondrashin out to record Tchaikovsky in the United States with the RCA Victor Orchestra, but, on June 8, 1962, it was the first recording in Moscow of an American technical and artistic team, with American equipment.
The bureaucratic obstacles were major, as one can imagine. When we had the good fortune to be received by Byron Janis and his wife, Maria, Gary Cooper’s daughter, at their home in Manhattan, a little over 25 years ago, Mr. Byron told us the saga of these records whose recording sessions took place after the concerts until 3 a.m.!
In 1960, Byron Janis was sent for the first time to the USSR as part of a cultural exchange in the middle of the Cold War. He remembered that when he entered the stage, no one applauded. The mood had turned around at the end.
The pianist, through his Mercury records, marked the discography of the workhorses of the repertoire for decades: Concertos by Liszt, Concertos Nos. 1 to 3 by Rachmaninov (the 1er with Kondrashin, the other two with Dorati), 3e Concerto by Prokofiev. Among the qualities of these recordings, not only an impressively mastered virtuosity, but a tremendous clarity and subtle cantabile. There is also this winning way (like Graffman) of getting to the essential.
Hidden feat
Among his confidences, Byron Janis told us that in fact, he had spent a large part of his career… with 9 fingers. Quite early on, he suffered a major cut on his little finger which left it stiff. He later made this fact public in his memoirs, Chopin and Beyond.
The musician had been Vladimir Horowitz’s first student. After the pianist’s debut, on his 20th birthday, in 1948 at Carnegie Hall, a phrase from the latter remained famous: “I don’t want you to be a second Horowitz; I want you to be a first Janis. » The student followed the master’s advice.
Byron Janis’ career was dazzling, but quite short, since in 1973 arthritis in his wrist and hands forced him to put a stop to his activities. He continued sparingly for 12 years. At the end of the 1990s, he recorded for EMI a disc of works by Chopin adapted to his ability to make the music sing.
Chopin left his mark on the artist’s life, since, by an incredible coincidence, his path crossed the scores of the Waltz in G flat op. 70 No. 1 and the Great brilliant waltz in E flat op. 18. Very surprisingly, he rediscovered manuscripts lost twice! Once at the Château de Thoiry in 1967 and, in 1973, at Yale University, earlier versions. The same two works in versions differing in terms of articulations, connections and staccatos. In one of the two cases, there was no previously known manuscript in Chopin’s handwriting.
In an interview given in 1997 to Vantage Music, Mr. Janis gave this advice to young pianists: “Don’t think of yourself as a pianist, but as a singer. Young musicians don’t use enough colors. Color is so important; it helps you interpret. When I first played with Horowitz, he said to me, “You know, musically, you paint beautifully with watercolors. When I work with you, you also have to paint with oil”. »