Omerta Code in the Classical Music Industry
Sefik Büyükyüksel
As long as this woman continues to perform we cannot hope to make a career. She can play everything and play them all very well. Alfred Brendel to Jean-Bernard Pommier in the early 1960s
These were, reportedly, Alfred Brendel’s words about Idil Biret to a colleague nearly six decades ago [1] when Brendel was not yet well known. He was then recording extensively for VOX records, a budget label in the days of the LP as Naxos would be in three decades time in the days of the CD. In 1959, after a concert of Idil Biret in Paris, Marc Pincherle, a doyen of French critics and musicologists, was writing, We are in the presence of one of the greatest virtuosos of our times. I do not see in her generation another pianist who possesses a similar mastery of the keyboard in the service of a mind so mature in thought and so rich of imagination. [2] Richard Dyer, the chief music critic of Boston Globe, remembering those days, wrote in 2000, When I was a struggling piano student in Paris in 1961-1962, Biret was a brightly blazing star, already generating the kind of excitement that would surround her contemporary Martha Argerich after the Chopin Competition in 1965. I still have a vivid memory of the tiny Biret, tearing into Bartok’s 2nd Piano Concerto with a ferocity and accuracy I had never seen paralleled.[3]
In 1988, after a concert of Idil he attended, Brendel told the author of these lines, Idil can play everything and play them all so well. That is why her colleagues are afraid of her. [4] This was similar to what he had said to Jean-Bernard Pommier in the early 1960s. I always wondered who the other colleagues referred to by Brendel could be. Were some of them Biret’s contemporaries of great fame, star pianists of EMI, Deutsche Grammophon (DGG) , DECCA, like Argerich, Barenboim, Pollini, Ashkenazy and later Maria Joao Pires (who did not come to collect her prize at the Grand Prix du Disque Chopin ceremony in Warsaw in 1995 when Idil Biret also received the same prize) or Rudolf Buchbinder (who was terrified when he learnt that Idil was in the audience after he gave a rather indifferent performance of Beethoven sonatas in front of an audience of airline chief executives at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna). [5]
Then there are stars of DGG Anatol Ugorski, Andrei Gavrilov and Lilya Zilberstein. The first two cancelled their recitals at short notice at the Schwetzingen Festival in Germany in 1999 when Idil was also engaged to perform there. Lilya Zilberstein, who was asked to replace Ugorski replied that she could only play the same program of her recital the evening before – difficult to believe for a concert pianist who should have two or three recitals programs at hand. Information that came to knowledge later indicates that they were probably encouraged by DGG in these acts. Idil Biret then replaced Ugorski with five hours notice, coming by plane and helicopter from Brussels, and played his exact Chopin program (Polonaise Fantasie, 12 Mazurkas, Sonata No. 3). There was also Pavel Gililov who frowned unhappily upon learning that Idil would give a recital after him in Cuernavaca Mexico in 2006, saying, But why? She is blacklisted (see more later on this). [6] Who knows who they are other than Brendel and he certainly would not tell.
This is not all. We could also query why Peter Alward a senior executive of EMI intervened to stop Idil Biret from recording the nine Beethoven Symphonies in Liszt’s transcriptions while EMI’s International Division had endorsed the project for the Liszt Centennial in 1986 and three symphonies had already been recorded. Was it perhaps because he feared that Biret’s reputation would rise above that of the star pianists of EMI with this first ever complete recording of the symphony transcriptions?
Or again, why is it that negative reviews of Biret’s Chopin performances in concert and on CD were initiated (yes, they were initiated) suddenly in England, France and Germany in 1991 when Biret began recording the complete piano works of the composer for Naxos? [7] Was it done to stop the project so that she would not challenge the established stars of EMI, DGG, DECCA and cut into the sales of their Chopin recordings which dominated the market? If so, this effort failed when eminent critics like Ivan March, Tully Potter, Bill Newman in England, Igor Kipnis in the USA, Henry Louis de la Grange in France, Joachim Kaiser in Germany and others wrote outstanding reviews of Biret’s Chopin recordings. The fears of the major labels, though, were not unfounded as the sales of Biret’s Chopin CDs reached one million copies by 2004.
And again, why did DGG couple Chopin’s F Minor Concerto recording of Maria Joao Pires, released in 1994, with a solo work, the 24 Preludes instead of the E Minor Concerto recorded with the same orchestra and conductor in 1991 which had not yet been released (or one of the four short pieces for piano and orchestra), as is customary ? Had this anything to do with ensuring that Mme Pires received the next Polish Grand Prix du Disque Chopin prize in 1995 in both categories – concerto and solo and thus stop Idil Biret who had recorded the complete works for piano solo and with orchestra on 15 CDs for Naxos from getting either of the prizes? Anyhow, if so, this effort also failed when the Polish jury, while as expected by DGG gave both prizes to Ms Pires, presented exceptionally a Grand Prix du Disque Chopin prize also to Idil Biret for her Complete Chopin Edition, for the first and only time in the history of the competition.
Incidentally, an intriguing question is why DGG did not release the E Minor Concerto Ms Pires had recorded at considerable cost in 1991 (finally released thirty years later, in 2021)? Was it perhaps because the quality of the recording of the E Minor by Mme Pires was not at the same level of Idil Biret’s recording of the same concerto released by Naxos the same year, in 1991 (together with the F Minor)? Tully Potter a doyen of the British critics had praised the E Minor and the F Minor by writing in the January 1992 issue of the Classic CD magazine, The distinguished Turkish pianist Idil Biret, a pupil of Cortot, Kempff and Nadia Boulanger, shows herself to be one of the finest exponents of Chopin’s concertos in the world today. In fact I cannot think of any competitor at any price, who can offer better performances than these. Who would want to issue a Chopin concerto recording in England immediately after this review?
We will never know the facts about the blacklisting and all these deliberate cruel acts of the labels against Idil Biret, unless EMI director 1980s Peter Alward, DGG executives of the 1990s and pianists like Anatol Ugorski, Andrei Gavrilov, Lilya Zilberstein, Maria Joao Pires, Pavel Gililov speak. But, they will never do. The “Omerta” code dominates the classical music industry with dire consequences for those who dare to speak.
One thing is certain though, and that is that most of those colleagues who feared Biret are “stars” who had contracts with major labels that benefited the labels financially from the income generated from their considerable concert income. For example, reportedly, a star Japanese pianist was paying 100.000 German Marks (today 50.000 Euros) a month to a major label in 1998 to cover the costs of her recordings, publicity, marketing.[8] So, the major labels had all the reason to try to stop Biret from rising to fame, recording and performing. Here we have to note that the major labels act together as an oligopoly and also collectively dominate the major concert agencies. A confirmation of this was received when Wolfgang Stresemann who was the intendant of the Berlin Philharmonic for many years, spoke with Hans Ulrich Schmid about the representation of Idil Biret in Germany. Schmid whose office based in Hanover is one of the most prominent agents in Germany, told Mr. Stresemann, somewhat apologetically, We only represent artists who have a contract with one of the major labels.
Putting commercial interests aside, why would her pianist colleagues fear Idil Biret artistically? What was she capable of doing that the others could not which made these pianists so afraid? Perhaps we can look into this briefly here on her 80th anniversary and 75th on the stage.
As Marc Pincherle and Richard Dyer remarked, Idil Biret is a pianist like no other of her generation. Arriving in Paris at the age of eight, she was trained by three of the greatest musicians of the 20th Century; Nadia Boulanger, Wilhelm Kempff, Alfred Cortot and gained the admiration also of other great pianists of the time like Rubinstein, Gilels, Backhaus. At the age of eleven she played Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos with Wilhelm Kempff at the Champs Elysee Theatre in Paris in front of an audience of 2700. . She appeared on a French TV show with Arthur Rubinstein when she was thirteen. At fifteen she graduated from the Paris Conservatory with three first prizes. At seventeen she made her first LP recording. At the age of eighteen she made her first tour of the Soviet Union organized for her by Emil Gilels, giving sixteen concerts. She was twenty when she made her US debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on the tragic date of 22 November 1963 (the death of President Kennedy was announced during the concert). The breadth and depth of her repertoire is immense with over one hundred concertos and almost all the important solo and chamber works of the piano literature. Without ever entering a piano competition she made her name known in Europe and the USA by the 1960s. Here we can take a look at her activities from the year 1980 to the present:
1980 She made her first Australian tour giving thirty concerts seven of them at the Sydney Opera House 1980-82 She played all 32 Sonatas of Beethoven in seven recitals in Istanbul 1982 In her first tour of East Germany (DDR) she played with the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Dresdner Symphonie orchestras 1983 She played Rachmaninov’s 3rd Piano Concerto with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orhestra. The conductor Alexander Dimitreev told her afterwards, In the entire Soviet Union no woman pianist can play this concerto the way you did and the number of men who can do so are counted with the fingers of one hand 1984 She toured Australia and New Zealand giving forty concerts 1985 In her second tour of DDR she gave a recital at the newly reopened Semper Oper, played Bartok’s 2nd Concerto with the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody with the Berlin Radio Orchestra 1986 She performed all the nine symphonies of Beethoven in Liszt’s transcription which she had recorded for EMI (6 LP box) in four recitals at the Montpellier Festival in France 1990-92 She recorded the complete piano works of Chopin on 15 CDs for Naxos 1995 She won a Grand Prix du Disque Frederic Chopin in Poland for her recordings of the complete works of the composer and she won a Diapason d’Or of the Year in France for her recording of the piano sonatas of Pierre Boulez – two composers at opposite extremes of the pianistic repertory 1997 She performed all the solo piano works of Brahms and completed the recordings of these and the two piano concertos during the Brahms Centennial year 1998 During this year she performed eighteen different piano concertos in concerts and recordings 2000 She completed the recording of Rachmaninov’s complete solo piano works and all the concertos 2002 She recorded Ligeti’s Etudes Books I & II 2007 President Lech Kaczynsky decorated Idil Biret with the highest order of Poland (Krzyzem Kawalerskim Ordera Zaslugi) for her contribution to Polish culture through her recordings and performances of Chopin’s music 2008 She completed the recording of Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas, 5 piano concertos and the Choral Fantasy 2012 She recorded Hindemith’s complete works for piano and orchestra with the Yale Symphony Orchestra, released in 2013 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death 2014 She recorded the 48 Preludes and Fugues of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier in seven days 2018 All of Biret’s studio recordings on LP and CD made since 1959, together with some concert recordings, were released in a box set of 130 CDs
These are just some examples of her work. The major labels who started building careers of artists from the 1960s with 360° contracts to turn them into so called “stars”, initially shunned Biret hoping that she would somehow disappear. They wanted marketable products, each in his/her own niche of specialty, preferably coming from countries with large markets like Germany, France, England, Italy, Spain and, when possible, specializing in music of their land; French pianists playing Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saens etc., Germans and Austrians playing Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann and pianists from the Soviet Union playing Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev etc. Italian pianist, South American pianists, especially from Argentina and Brazil and pianists from China were exceptions and they could play whatever best suited them. Idil Biret coming from mostly Moslem Turkey, with no mentionable tradition of classical music and a negligible market for the classics in her home country, who refused to be boxed into a corner playing only a few composers’ carefully selected works as her colleagues did, was a problem for the major labels. How could they market a Turk with no home market who played everything, even though she played them all so well. Yet, how could they also avoid comparisons between her and their “stars” and explain why she was not one of them? After initially avoiding Biret they had to grudgingly recognize her after she recorded all the nine Beethoven Symphonies in the transcriptions by Liszt in less than a year, released in a box set of 6LPs by EMI in 1986 (when the Chairman of Thorn-EMI overruled the objection of Peter Alward). So, she had many engagements all over the world after 1986 playing especially the Beethoven symphonies in New York, London, Frankfurt, Munich, Milan, Istanbul, Tokyo and other cities.
But, the major labels became sour when in 1989 Idil accepted the proposal of Klaus Heymann, the founder of Naxos, to record the complete piano works of Chopin followed by the complete works for piano solo and the concertos of Brahms and Rachmaninov, still later all the piano sonatas of Boulez, the etudes of Ligeti and the Firebird transcription of Stravinsky – a total of 40 CDs over a decade which sold over two million copies by 2004. All this made the major labels furious and they put Idil Biret on a black list in the 1990s. A letter from Germany informed her that she had been blacklisted because of her recording for Naxos. A well known concert agent in Düsseldorf René Heinersdorf had stated in a private conversation that concert and festival organizers, orchestras were being told by a major label (which must be DGG) not to engage Biret. Otherwise, artists with contracts to that label would not accept engagements with that organizer and will cancel if already engaged. This explained the cancellations by the two pianists who were scheduled to play before and after Biret at the Schwetzingen Festival and why the festival never again invited her despite the “unheard of” performance of another artist’s program at such short notice. Such criminal threats by the labels was confirmed when Gerhard Abel, who organized Biret’s tours in Mexico, told her about his discussion with pianist Pavel Gililov, a naturalised German who was engaged to give a recital in Cuernavaca in 2006. Mr. Gililov had asked Mr. Abel who would play in the recital series after himself and when Mr. Abel said that it would be Idil Biret, Pavel Gililov had frowned and said, But why, she is blacklisted? Mr. Abel had then asked why, to which Mr. Gililov had replied saying Because she is recording for Naxos which is selling CDs cheaply. Mr. Abel had then said to him that here they were in Mexico and not Germany. This also explained an odd event of a few years back. The Swedish Radio had sent two staff members to Idil Biret’s Brussels home in 2001 to interview her for a program on Nadia Boulanger. They also asked if she would accept to perform with the Swedish Radio Orchestra and Biret said she would be glad to. Later came a message from one of these radio staff who, with great embarrassment, informed her that the music director of the orchestra Manfred Honeck had said he could not conduct her concert. Obviously, the blacklisting information had reached and put fear in the heart of Mr. Honeck who recorded for DGG, Decca and Sony. It also clarified messages from Biret’s agents in Holland and France who both said that they could easily get engagements for all their artists except for Idil Biret and given her great career they did not understand why this was so. Pavel Gililov had provided the answer in Mexico.
While, as in the German press Die Welt and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported, Biret could not appear in the main concert halls of Germany (9) (10) there were sufficient presenters and orchestras in Europe and the rest of the world that were not controlled by the oligopoly who engaged her for concerts. Biret also continued recording and finally releasing under her own label IBA, distributed worldwide by Naxos in 2018, a box set of all her studio recordings since 1959 and many live concert recordings. In this box set were almost all of the great works of the solo piano literature and sixty one piano concertos. When many star pianists go through major careers playing a handful of well selected concertos and a few recital programs, Idil Biret performing and recording nearly seventy concertos (by 2020) has definitely set a record that is the fear and, we can say, envy of her colleagues.(11) It is not without reason that Richard Dyer of Boston Globe concluded Biret’s recital review in Boston by saying, This is the kind of playing that makes reservations irrelevant; there is no one like her, which is what defines a unique artist. (12)
A new box set of 12 DVDs containing about forty hours of film is being released in celebration of Idil’s 80th anniversary. All the concerto performances and solo recitals are live footage from her concerts. When financing was available, which was rare, some of them were made with professional crews and multiple cameras such as the Beethoven concertos at Bilkent University in Ankara and the Hindemith and Liszt concertos at Yale University in New Haven. Others were single cameras that covered the keyboard and made Idil’s hands visible. The latter would be of invaluable help to young pianists who can see her performing style and fingering in many difficult pieces such as Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit and Stravinsky’s Petrouchka among others. So, as the sound is good in all of them, we decided to include these single camera videos in the set. Some of the concert recordings are of historic value like the first ever piano recital at the two thousand year old Roman Aspendos theatre near Antalya and the St. Irene Church (now museum) in Istanbul that dates to the time of Justinian in the 6th Century AD. Then there is a documentary film on Idil’s life produced by Eytan Ipeker between 2008 and 2015. It was done just in time since, sadly, we lost many of those who had worked with and knew Idil intimately that were interviewed there – Claude Samuel, Rémy Stricker, Irene Kempff, Nevit Kodalli and Michel Devos. They were all beloved friends and colleagues of Idil and are sadly missed.
There are other valuable mini documentaries, on the making of the Beethoven recordings in Brussels and Ankara and the Hindemith recordings at Yale University in New Haven. A most interesting document is the interview with Gottfried Wagner, the great grandson of Wagner and Liszt. When I first met him in Brussels some twenty five years ago, I heard him speak against women pianists saying they could not reach the levels of the male ones. I waited for him finish speaking and the asked if he had heard Idil Biret. He said he had not. Then, when he did he changed his opinion as can be witnessed from this fascinating interview. A film of great interest is her performance of the ”Ode to Joy” passage from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in Liszt’s piano transcription at the Bosphorus Bridge joining Europe and Asia in Istanbul during an eerie day of lockdown due to the Covid pandemie in 2020. Then there are films of her playing on Liszt’s Bechstein piano at his museum home in Weimar and Chopin’s Pleyel piano at the Cobbe Collection in England. Finally, there is the fascinating short silent black and white fragment footage from 1948 with six year old Idil playing Bach’s D minor Concerto for keyboard with a string quartet in Ankara. The film was dubbed with sound from her performance of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue recorded at the RTF studio in Paris in 1953.
The story goes that back in history, in the dark middle ages, there was a village in Russia where the inhabitants were happy with the existing order and feared change. So, when a new born child showed signs of high intelligence they buried and killed it thinking the child, if allowed to live, would disturb the peace and order of the village. Similarly, from the mid 1960s onward, the forces that controlled the classical music industry tried to bury Biret and get rid of her so that the stars they themselves made – who were no match for her – could prosper unchallenged. They failed thanks to one man, Klaus Heymann. Initially, he helped Idil make a large number of recordings for Naxos and then supported her own label Idil Biret Archive (IBA) by distributing and promoting its products all over the world. With more than 150 LPs and CDs she has recorded from 1959 onwards now all on CD and available also digitally (nearly two hundred hours of music), and now the 12 DVDs being released in a box set with nearly forty hours of live concert takes on film, Biret’s legacy will remain to guide the pianists of today and tomorrow who admire her and haunt those who feared and envied her.
We can finish this article with the words of Jean-Michel Damian who presented Idil Biret at the program “Cordes Sensibles” in France Musique on 7 February 2004:
“Idil Biret, you are a legend in the world of musicians and of pianists in particular. You are a legend, first because you were a child prodigy among the most prodigious of the 20th century. You absolutely amazed everybody and you aroused the admiration of the great people. You were the little girl who, when you were seven years old, played on the radio, when you were eleven you played with Wilhelm Kempff, the Mozart Concerto for two pianos. Everyone who met you, Nadia Boulanger and all the greatest names, admired you. Then you embarked on a career that continued to surprise everyone. We might say that you assaulted Everests, meaning that we knew that in every five or six years Idil Biret would do something incredible. First, it was the complete Beethoven symphonies transcribed by Liszt; next, it was nothing less than the recordings of all of Chopin’s works for which you received a Grand Prix in Poland. Then, about ten years ago, the world was amazed again when you recorded the three sonatas by Boulez, an almost inaccessible peak, difficult to the extreme. You have made seventy recordings and you have received all the medals possible and imaginable. We wonder, “Who is this person, Idil Biret, who started out as a magic child and then continues surprising the whole world and whose career is not at all ordinary; she must be someone very special.” Last week I was in Nantes and all my musician friends were asking me about my next program on France Musique. When I said that I would be receiving Idil Biret they looked at me as if I had said that the Queen of England was coming, because you are a person of legend, somewhat rare and mysterious.”
As Richard Dyer said there is no one like Idil Biret.
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(1) As told to pianist and conductor Ibrahim Yazici by JBP (2) Nouvelles Observateur, France 1959 (3) Richard Dyer, Boston Globe USA 2000 (4) Idil Biret performing the last movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in Liszt’s transcription, Brussels 1988 (5) Presidents Assembly of the Association of European Airlines, Vienna 1999 (6) As told to Idil Biret later by the organizer of the concerts in Mexico, Gerhard Abel (7) Negative articles appeared within a short space of time in Süddeutsche Zeitung in Germany, Diapason in France, Penguin Music Guide in England (8) As told to the author of these lines by Wilhelm Kempff’s daughter Irene Kempff in 1998 (9) With all the evidence available a legal file was prepared and submitted to the Competition Directorate of the European Commission. The reply came saying that they only dealt with unfair practices against companies and not individuals. So much for the Commission! When an eminent law firm in Hamburg was then consulted for individual action, they said that they thought Biret had a strong case, but then went on to state: However, due to our experiences, we do not believe that we can convince the music labels to terminate their behavior. We are aware of the problem of the “black list”, but so far nobody was able to prove the existence of such non-written black list. The labels usually cite bad performances of the artists included in the list, a fact that they are able to “prove” by citing the critics they used to initiate in the newspapers. (10) Die Welt 20 May 2003, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 31 May 2003 (11) In 1998 Idil Biret performed eighteen concertos in concerts also recording most of them (12) Boston Globe 30 November 2005
Omerta Code in the Classical Music Industry
Sefik Büyükyüksel
As long as this woman continues to perform we cannot hope to make a career. She can play everything and play them all very well. Alfred Brendel to Jean-Bernard Pommier in the early 1960s
These were, reportedly, Alfred Brendel’s words about Idil Biret to a colleague nearly six decades ago [1] when Brendel was not yet well known. He was then recording extensively for VOX records, a budget label in the days of the LP as Naxos would be in three decades time in the days of the CD. In 1959, after a concert of Idil Biret in Paris, Marc Pincherle, a doyen of French critics and musicologists, was writing, We are in the presence of one of the greatest virtuosos of our times. I do not see in her generation another pianist who possesses a similar mastery of the keyboard in the service of a mind so mature in thought and so rich of imagination. [2] Richard Dyer, the chief music critic of Boston Globe, remembering those days, wrote in 2000, When I was a struggling piano student in Paris in 1961-1962, Biret was a brightly blazing star, already generating the kind of excitement that would surround her contemporary Martha Argerich after the Chopin Competition in 1965. I still have a vivid memory of the tiny Biret, tearing into Bartok’s 2nd Piano Concerto with a ferocity and accuracy I had never seen paralleled.[3]
In 1988, after a concert of Idil he attended, Brendel told the author of these lines, Idil can play everything and play them all so well. That is why her colleagues are afraid of her. [4] This was similar to what he had said to Jean-Bernard Pommier in the early 1960s. I always wondered who the other colleagues referred to by Brendel could be. Were some of them Biret’s contemporaries of great fame, star pianists of EMI, Deutsche Grammophon (DGG) , DECCA, like Argerich, Barenboim, Pollini, Ashkenazy and later Maria Joao Pires (who did not come to collect her prize at the Grand Prix du Disque Chopin ceremony in Warsaw in 1995 when Idil Biret also received the same prize) or Rudolf Buchbinder (who was terrified when he learnt that Idil was in the audience after he gave a rather indifferent performance of Beethoven sonatas in front of an audience of airline chief executives at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna). [5]
Then there are stars of DGG Anatol Ugorski, Andrei Gavrilov and Lilya Zilberstein. The first two cancelled their recitals at short notice at the Schwetzingen Festival in Germany in 1999 when Idil was also engaged to perform there. Lilya Zilberstein, who was asked to replace Ugorski replied that she could only play the same program of her recital the evening before – difficult to believe for a concert pianist who should have two or three recitals programs at hand. Information that came to knowledge later indicates that they were probably encouraged by DGG in these acts. Idil Biret then replaced Ugorski with five hours notice, coming by plane and helicopter from Brussels, and played his exact Chopin program (Polonaise Fantasie, 12 Mazurkas, Sonata No. 3). There was also Pavel Gililov who frowned unhappily upon learning that Idil would give a recital after him in Cuernavaca Mexico in 2006, saying, But why? She is blacklisted (see more later on this). [6] Who knows who they are other than Brendel and he certainly would not tell.
This is not all. We could also query why Peter Alward a senior executive of EMI intervened to stop Idil Biret from recording the nine Beethoven Symphonies in Liszt’s transcriptions while EMI’s International Division had endorsed the project for the Liszt Centennial in 1986 and three symphonies had already been recorded. Was it perhaps because he feared that Biret’s reputation would rise above that of the star pianists of EMI with this first ever complete recording of the symphony transcriptions?
Or again, why is it that negative reviews of Biret’s Chopin performances in concert and on CD were initiated (yes, they were initiated) suddenly in England, France and Germany in 1991 when Biret began recording the complete piano works of the composer for Naxos? [7] Was it done to stop the project so that she would not challenge the established stars of EMI, DGG, DECCA and cut into the sales of their Chopin recordings which dominated the market? If so, this effort failed when eminent critics like Ivan March, Tully Potter, Bill Newman in England, Igor Kipnis in the USA, Henry Louis de la Grange in France, Joachim Kaiser in Germany and others wrote outstanding reviews of Biret’s Chopin recordings. The fears of the major labels, though, were not unfounded as the sales of Biret’s Chopin CDs reached one million copies by 2004.
And again, why did DGG couple Chopin’s F Minor Concerto recording of Maria Joao Pires, released in 1994, with a solo work, the 24 Preludes instead of the E Minor Concerto recorded with the same orchestra and conductor in 1991 which had not yet been released (or one of the four short pieces for piano and orchestra), as is customary ? Had this anything to do with ensuring that Mme Pires received the next Polish Grand Prix du Disque Chopin prize in 1995 in both categories – concerto and solo and thus stop Idil Biret who had recorded the complete works for piano solo and with orchestra on 15 CDs for Naxos from getting either of the prizes? Anyhow, if so, this effort also failed when the Polish jury, while as expected by DGG gave both prizes to Ms Pires, presented exceptionally a Grand Prix du Disque Chopin prize also to Idil Biret for her Complete Chopin Edition, for the first and only time in the history of the competition.
Incidentally, an intriguing question is why DGG did not release the E Minor Concerto Ms Pires had recorded at considerable cost in 1991 (finally released thirty years later, in 2021)? Was it perhaps because the quality of the recording of the E Minor by Mme Pires was not at the same level of Idil Biret’s recording of the same concerto released by Naxos the same year, in 1991 (together with the F Minor)? Tully Potter a doyen of the British critics had praised the E Minor and the F Minor by writing in the January 1992 issue of the Classic CD magazine, The distinguished Turkish pianist Idil Biret, a pupil of Cortot, Kempff and Nadia Boulanger, shows herself to be one of the finest exponents of Chopin’s concertos in the world today. In fact I cannot think of any competitor at any price, who can offer better performances than these. Who would want to issue a Chopin concerto recording in England immediately after this review?
We will never know the facts about the blacklisting and all these deliberate cruel acts of the labels against Idil Biret, unless EMI director 1980s Peter Alward, DGG executives of the 1990s and pianists like Anatol Ugorski, Andrei Gavrilov, Lilya Zilberstein, Maria Joao Pires, Pavel Gililov speak. But, they will never do. The “Omerta” code dominates the classical music industry with dire consequences for those who dare to speak.
One thing is certain though, and that is that most of those colleagues who feared Biret are “stars” who had contracts with major labels that benefited the labels financially from the income generated from their considerable concert income. For example, reportedly, a star Japanese pianist was paying 100.000 German Marks (today 50.000 Euros) a month to a major label in 1998 to cover the costs of her recordings, publicity, marketing.[8] So, the major labels had all the reason to try to stop Biret from rising to fame, recording and performing. Here we have to note that the major labels act together as an oligopoly and also collectively dominate the major concert agencies. A confirmation of this was received when Wolfgang Stresemann who was the intendant of the Berlin Philharmonic for many years, spoke with Hans Ulrich Schmid about the representation of Idil Biret in Germany. Schmid whose office based in Hanover is one of the most prominent agents in Germany, told Mr. Stresemann, somewhat apologetically, We only represent artists who have a contract with one of the major labels.
Putting commercial interests aside, why would her pianist colleagues fear Idil Biret artistically? What was she capable of doing that the others could not which made these pianists so afraid? Perhaps we can look into this briefly here on her 80th anniversary and 75th on the stage.
As Marc Pincherle and Richard Dyer remarked, Idil Biret is a pianist like no other of her generation. Arriving in Paris at the age of eight, she was trained by three of the greatest musicians of the 20th Century; Nadia Boulanger, Wilhelm Kempff, Alfred Cortot and gained the admiration also of other great pianists of the time like Rubinstein, Gilels, Backhaus. At the age of eleven she played Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos with Wilhelm Kempff at the Champs Elysee Theatre in Paris in front of an audience of 2700. . She appeared on a French TV show with Arthur Rubinstein when she was thirteen. At fifteen she graduated from the Paris Conservatory with three first prizes. At seventeen she made her first LP recording. At the age of eighteen she made her first tour of the Soviet Union organized for her by Emil Gilels, giving sixteen concerts. She was twenty when she made her US debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on the tragic date of 22 November 1963 (the death of President Kennedy was announced during the concert). The breadth and depth of her repertoire is immense with over one hundred concertos and almost all the important solo and chamber works of the piano literature. Without ever entering a piano competition she made her name known in Europe and the USA by the 1960s. Here we can take a look at her activities from the year 1980 to the present:
1980 She made her first Australian tour giving thirty concerts seven of them at the Sydney Opera House 1980-82 She played all 32 Sonatas of Beethoven in seven recitals in Istanbul 1982 In her first tour of East Germany (DDR) she played with the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Dresdner Symphonie orchestras 1983 She played Rachmaninov’s 3rd Piano Concerto with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orhestra. The conductor Alexander Dimitreev told her afterwards, In the entire Soviet Union no woman pianist can play this concerto the way you did and the number of men who can do so are counted with the fingers of one hand 1984 She toured Australia and New Zealand giving forty concerts 1985 In her second tour of DDR she gave a recital at the newly reopened Semper Oper, played Bartok’s 2nd Concerto with the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody with the Berlin Radio Orchestra 1986 She performed all the nine symphonies of Beethoven in Liszt’s transcription which she had recorded for EMI (6 LP box) in four recitals at the Montpellier Festival in France 1990-92 She recorded the complete piano works of Chopin on 15 CDs for Naxos 1995 She won a Grand Prix du Disque Frederic Chopin in Poland for her recordings of the complete works of the composer and she won a Diapason d’Or of the Year in France for her recording of the piano sonatas of Pierre Boulez – two composers at opposite extremes of the pianistic repertory 1997 She performed all the solo piano works of Brahms and completed the recordings of these and the two piano concertos during the Brahms Centennial year 1998 During this year she performed eighteen different piano concertos in concerts and recordings 2000 She completed the recording of Rachmaninov’s complete solo piano works and all the concertos 2002 She recorded Ligeti’s Etudes Books I & II 2007 President Lech Kaczynsky decorated Idil Biret with the highest order of Poland (Krzyzem Kawalerskim Ordera Zaslugi) for her contribution to Polish culture through her recordings and performances of Chopin’s music 2008 She completed the recording of Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas, 5 piano concertos and the Choral Fantasy 2012 She recorded Hindemith’s complete works for piano and orchestra with the Yale Symphony Orchestra, released in 2013 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death 2014 She recorded the 48 Preludes and Fugues of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier in seven days 2018 All of Biret’s studio recordings on LP and CD made since 1959, together with some concert recordings, were released in a box set of 130 CDs
These are just some examples of her work. The major labels who started building careers of artists from the 1960s with 360° contracts to turn them into so called “stars”, initially shunned Biret hoping that she would somehow disappear. They wanted marketable products, each in his/her own niche of specialty, preferably coming from countries with large markets like Germany, France, England, Italy, Spain and, when possible, specializing in music of their land; French pianists playing Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saens etc., Germans and Austrians playing Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann and pianists from the Soviet Union playing Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev etc. Italian pianist, South American pianists, especially from Argentina and Brazil and pianists from China were exceptions and they could play whatever best suited them. Idil Biret coming from mostly Moslem Turkey, with no mentionable tradition of classical music and a negligible market for the classics in her home country, who refused to be boxed into a corner playing only a few composers’ carefully selected works as her colleagues did, was a problem for the major labels. How could they market a Turk with no home market who played everything, even though she played them all so well. Yet, how could they also avoid comparisons between her and their “stars” and explain why she was not one of them? After initially avoiding Biret they had to grudgingly recognize her after she recorded all the nine Beethoven Symphonies in the transcriptions by Liszt in less than a year, released in a box set of 6LPs by EMI in 1986 (when the Chairman of Thorn-EMI overruled the objection of Peter Alward). So, she had many engagements all over the world after 1986 playing especially the Beethoven symphonies in New York, London, Frankfurt, Munich, Milan, Istanbul, Tokyo and other cities.
But, the major labels became sour when in 1989 Idil accepted the proposal of Klaus Heymann, the founder of Naxos, to record the complete piano works of Chopin followed by the complete works for piano solo and the concertos of Brahms and Rachmaninov, still later all the piano sonatas of Boulez, the etudes of Ligeti and the Firebird transcription of Stravinsky – a total of 40 CDs over a decade which sold over two million copies by 2004. All this made the major labels furious and they put Idil Biret on a black list in the 1990s. A letter from Germany informed her that she had been blacklisted because of her recording for Naxos. A well known concert agent in Düsseldorf René Heinersdorf had stated in a private conversation that concert and festival organizers, orchestras were being told by a major label (which must be DGG) not to engage Biret. Otherwise, artists with contracts to that label would not accept engagements with that organizer and will cancel if already engaged. This explained the cancellations by the two pianists who were scheduled to play before and after Biret at the Schwetzingen Festival and why the festival never again invited her despite the “unheard of” performance of another artist’s program at such short notice. Such criminal threats by the labels was confirmed when Gerhard Abel, who organized Biret’s tours in Mexico, told her about his discussion with pianist Pavel Gililov, a naturalised German who was engaged to give a recital in Cuernavaca in 2006. Mr. Gililov had asked Mr. Abel who would play in the recital series after himself and when Mr. Abel said that it would be Idil Biret, Pavel Gililov had frowned and said, But why, she is blacklisted? Mr. Abel had then asked why, to which Mr. Gililov had replied saying Because she is recording for Naxos which is selling CDs cheaply. Mr. Abel had then said to him that here they were in Mexico and not Germany. This also explained an odd event of a few years back. The Swedish Radio had sent two staff members to Idil Biret’s Brussels home in 2001 to interview her for a program on Nadia Boulanger. They also asked if she would accept to perform with the Swedish Radio Orchestra and Biret said she would be glad to. Later came a message from one of these radio staff who, with great embarrassment, informed her that the music director of the orchestra Manfred Honeck had said he could not conduct her concert. Obviously, the blacklisting information had reached and put fear in the heart of Mr. Honeck who recorded for DGG, Decca and Sony. It also clarified messages from Biret’s agents in Holland and France who both said that they could easily get engagements for all their artists except for Idil Biret and given her great career they did not understand why this was so. Pavel Gililov had provided the answer in Mexico.
While, as in the German press Die Welt and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported, Biret could not appear in the main concert halls of Germany (9) (10) there were sufficient presenters and orchestras in Europe and the rest of the world that were not controlled by the oligopoly who engaged her for concerts. Biret also continued recording and finally releasing under her own label IBA, distributed worldwide by Naxos in 2018, a box set of all her studio recordings since 1959 and many live concert recordings. In this box set were almost all of the great works of the solo piano literature and sixty one piano concertos. When many star pianists go through major careers playing a handful of well selected concertos and a few recital programs, Idil Biret performing and recording nearly seventy concertos (by 2020) has definitely set a record that is the fear and, we can say, envy of her colleagues.(11) It is not without reason that Richard Dyer of Boston Globe concluded Biret’s recital review in Boston by saying, This is the kind of playing that makes reservations irrelevant; there is no one like her, which is what defines a unique artist. (12)
A new box set of 12 DVDs containing about forty hours of film is being released in celebration of Idil’s 80th anniversary. All the concerto performances and solo recitals are live footage from her concerts. When financing was available, which was rare, some of them were made with professional crews and multiple cameras such as the Beethoven concertos at Bilkent University in Ankara and the Hindemith and Liszt concertos at Yale University in New Haven. Others were single cameras that covered the keyboard and made Idil’s hands visible. The latter would be of invaluable help to young pianists who can see her performing style and fingering in many difficult pieces such as Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit and Stravinsky’s Petrouchka among others. So, as the sound is good in all of them, we decided to include these single camera videos in the set. Some of the concert recordings are of historic value like the first ever piano recital at the two thousand year old Roman Aspendos theatre near Antalya and the St. Irene Church (now museum) in Istanbul that dates to the time of Justinian in the 6th Century AD. Then there is a documentary film on Idil’s life produced by Eytan Ipeker between 2008 and 2015. It was done just in time since, sadly, we lost many of those who had worked with and knew Idil intimately that were interviewed there – Claude Samuel, Rémy Stricker, Irene Kempff, Nevit Kodalli and Michel Devos. They were all beloved friends and colleagues of Idil and are sadly missed.
There are other valuable mini documentaries, on the making of the Beethoven recordings in Brussels and Ankara and the Hindemith recordings at Yale University in New Haven. A most interesting document is the interview with Gottfried Wagner, the great grandson of Wagner and Liszt. When I first met him in Brussels some twenty five years ago, I heard him speak against women pianists saying they could not reach the levels of the male ones. I waited for him finish speaking and the asked if he had heard Idil Biret. He said he had not. Then, when he did he changed his opinion as can be witnessed from this fascinating interview. A film of great interest is her performance of the ”Ode to Joy” passage from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in Liszt’s piano transcription at the Bosphorus Bridge joining Europe and Asia in Istanbul during an eerie day of lockdown due to the Covid pandemie in 2020. Then there are films of her playing on Liszt’s Bechstein piano at his museum home in Weimar and Chopin’s Pleyel piano at the Cobbe Collection in England. Finally, there is the fascinating short silent black and white fragment footage from 1948 with six year old Idil playing Bach’s D minor Concerto for keyboard with a string quartet in Ankara. The film was dubbed with sound from her performance of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue recorded at the RTF studio in Paris in 1953.
The story goes that back in history, in the dark middle ages, there was a village in Russia where the inhabitants were happy with the existing order and feared change. So, when a new born child showed signs of high intelligence they buried and killed it thinking the child, if allowed to live, would disturb the peace and order of the village. Similarly, from the mid 1960s onward, the forces that controlled the classical music industry tried to bury Biret and get rid of her so that the stars they themselves made – who were no match for her – could prosper unchallenged. They failed thanks to one man, Klaus Heymann. Initially, he helped Idil make a large number of recordings for Naxos and then supported her own label Idil Biret Archive (IBA) by distributing and promoting its products all over the world. With more than 150 LPs and CDs she has recorded from 1959 onwards now all on CD and available also digitally (nearly two hundred hours of music), and now the 12 DVDs being released in a box set with nearly forty hours of live concert takes on film, Biret’s legacy will remain to guide the pianists of today and tomorrow who admire her and haunt those who feared and envied her.
We can finish this article with the words of Jean-Michel Damian who presented Idil Biret at the program “Cordes Sensibles” in France Musique on 7 February 2004:
“Idil Biret, you are a legend in the world of musicians and of pianists in particular. You are a legend, first because you were a child prodigy among the most prodigious of the 20th century. You absolutely amazed everybody and you aroused the admiration of the great people. You were the little girl who, when you were seven years old, played on the radio, when you were eleven you played with Wilhelm Kempff, the Mozart Concerto for two pianos. Everyone who met you, Nadia Boulanger and all the greatest names, admired you. Then you embarked on a career that continued to surprise everyone. We might say that you assaulted Everests, meaning that we knew that in every five or six years Idil Biret would do something incredible. First, it was the complete Beethoven symphonies transcribed by Liszt; next, it was nothing less than the recordings of all of Chopin’s works for which you received a Grand Prix in Poland. Then, about ten years ago, the world was amazed again when you recorded the three sonatas by Boulez, an almost inaccessible peak, difficult to the extreme. You have made seventy recordings and you have received all the medals possible and imaginable. We wonder, “Who is this person, Idil Biret, who started out as a magic child and then continues surprising the whole world and whose career is not at all ordinary; she must be someone very special.” Last week I was in Nantes and all my musician friends were asking me about my next program on France Musique. When I said that I would be receiving Idil Biret they looked at me as if I had said that the Queen of England was coming, because you are a person of legend, somewhat rare and mysterious.”
As Richard Dyer said there is no one like Idil Biret.
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(1) As told to pianist and conductor Ibrahim Yazici by JBP (2) Nouvelles Observateur, France 1959 (3) Richard Dyer, Boston Globe USA 2000 (4) Idil Biret performing the last movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in Liszt’s transcription, Brussels 1988 (5) Presidents Assembly of the Association of European Airlines, Vienna 1999 (6) As told to Idil Biret later by the organizer of the concerts in Mexico, Gerhard Abel (7) Negative articles appeared within a short space of time in Süddeutsche Zeitung in Germany, Diapason in France, Penguin Music Guide in England (8) As told to the author of these lines by Wilhelm Kempff’s daughter Irene Kempff in 1998 (9) With all the evidence available a legal file was prepared and submitted to the Competition Directorate of the European Commission. The reply came saying that they only dealt with unfair practices against companies and not individuals. So much for the Commission! When an eminent law firm in Hamburg was then consulted for individual action, they said that they thought Biret had a strong case, but then went on to state: However, due to our experiences, we do not believe that we can convince the music labels to terminate their behavior. We are aware of the problem of the “black list”, but so far nobody was able to prove the existence of such non-written black list. The labels usually cite bad performances of the artists included in the list, a fact that they are able to “prove” by citing the critics they used to initiate in the newspapers. (10) Die Welt 20 May 2003, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 31 May 2003 (11) In 1998 Idil Biret performed eighteen concertos in concerts also recording most of them (12) Boston Globe 30 November 2005[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]