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If we attempt to classify and rank Elly Ney as a performer and interpreter,
we do well to remember that at the start of her career she was always
compared to Teresa Careño (1853-1917) and thought of as the female
counterpart of Paderewski (1860-1941). Later she was most closely compared
to Wilhelm Kempff (1895-1991), and as a pupil of Leschitizki the name
of Artur Schnabel (1882-1951) also deserves mention. On the artistic level,
though with a different concept of interpretation, a host of great names
from all over the world, too many to mention, come to mind: these include
her great German contemporaries Walter Gieseking (1895-1950) and Edwin
Fischer (1886-1960), and foreign artists such as Clara Haskil, the Swiss
pianist of Romanian descent, the great technician Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein,
Emil Gilels, Sviatoslav Richter, and Van Cliburn. After her death the
Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau (1903-1991) provides the closest comparison,
and today it is the Argentinian, Martha Argerich (*1941).
 (c)
Foto Weiss
Her
innermost musical circle consisted, of course, of her husband, the violinist
and conductor Willem van Hoogstraten, and her other chamber music partners,
the violinists Wilhelm Stross and Max Strub and the cellist Ludwig Hoelscher.
All were products of a classical tradition. It is noteworthy that their
common genealogical antecedent, if one may put it that way, was Joseph
Joachim, the friend of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms, a consummate
performer whose line of artistic descent went back via Böhm to Rode
and Viotti and thus to the age of Beethoven. As a violinist Hoogstraten
could trace his lineage back to Joachim through Schmuller, a pupil of
Auer, himself a pupil of Joachim, and also directly through Bram Eldering,
another of Joachim's pupils. Stross and Strub too had studied with Eldering,
Stross also with Flesch, a "descendant" of Joachim via Marsick.
For the sake of completeness we should add Valentin Härtl, a viola
player who was sometimes co-opted and whose "genealogy" of teachers
goes back to Hellmesberger, a contemporary of Joachim.
It is not just by chance, therefore, that this chain of associations,
presumably the result of pure chance in the first place, led to a very
remarkable and observable stylistic phenomenon, nor that this close interlinking
of generations of artists resulted in an organic whole whose shared characteristic
is a style all their own, and an authoritative artistic, aesthetic and
intellectual tradition with which they were all deeply conversant. They
saw it as their great and onerous task to continue this tradition. Despite
differences of personality and technique, their shared perception of the
essence and value of music became their guiding aesthetic principle, the
classical roots of which were to be found in an increasingly rare virtue:
the freedom to subordinate the individual's own artistic personality.
They were not concerned with self-indulgent displays of brilliance but
with straightforward creative integrity: their concern was quite simply
to make music, underpinned by consummate technical proficiency.
Absolute fidelity to the works themselves was always a sine qua non, as
was technical mastery, but, unlike nowadays, they were not obsessed by
total perfectionism, in the sense that they were not unduly troubled if
the occasional wrong note crept in, as can happen at any time to anyone.
At the start of last century it was very much easier than it is today
to win the appreciation of contemporary audiences and critics. In those
days people were not saturated with music, nor was it so easy for them
to listen to whatever they wanted whenever they wanted to. Little value
was attached to great speed or clockwork regularity of rhythm. The secret
of success lay mainly in the creation of suspense and tension and in the
unfolding of long lines and arcs of sound in slower tempi. Of course this
is still equally valid today, and remains the reason why it is much more
difficult to play slowly than fast.
Elly Ney began to acquire her technical mastery of this type of playing
in 1892 under a succession of teachers: Franz Wüllner and Isidor
Seiss in Cologne and Theodor Leschititzky and Emil von Sauer in Vienna,
himself a pupil of Liszt. With this solid training behind her she was
able by the turn of the century to play highly complicated and extremely
passionate music not only competently but with effortless mastery. As
still sometimes happens today, there were moments which sent even blasé
and seasoned listeners and connoisseurs, as well as music-lovers, into
transports of delight and amazement. Such moments were occasioned by her
choice of works, from classicism to high and late romanticism: music closely
bound up with its locality, whether Vienna, Salzburg or Munich. Bubbling
cascades of notes, exquisite slow movements, eloquent melodies or indeed
restrained hints of melody (without their final syllables being truncated)
- this was the sort of music celebrated by Joachim's successors and with
them Elly Ney.
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In the early days her programmes included composers who are relatively
unfamiliar to us today such as Moscheles, Paderewski and Ernst Toch.
At the height of her career her repertoire embraced Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven,
Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Chopin, Pfitzner, Strauss,
Balakirev, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak (the Dumky Trio and other
delights). And it was with a piano concerto by Stojowski that she won
the Ibach Prize, much coveted in the early years of the 20th century.
Elly Ney was a child of romanticism, and always remained so. With art
as with religion the question arises: should one pass it on to others
as one received it oneself, or should one move with the times and adapt
it to suit the present? But the essential point for performers is to
show themselves as their training has shaped them, revealing what they
found compelling and what has contributed to their inner self. To adhere
to this principle does not betray a reluctance to adapt or face challenges:
it is the essential quality. There is no need to change this approach
unless the performer wants to experiment in line with contemporary fashion.
Even then he must reserve the right to distinguish himself from others
and remain true to his own personal style, displaying it in an ever
more inward way. For if the artist's physical powers diminish, as is
natural with advancing years, this process can be counterbalanced by
an increased inner maturity and clarity. Old wine is precious and to
be savoured.
Crashingly loud playing was never Elly Ney's style; she was fond of
a saying by the German romantic writer, Jean Paul: "After power
there is nothing greater than the control of power." From the very
beginning she heeded the warnings against adopting a modern, exhibitionist
style of performing Beethoven, as described in Anton Schindler's letters
to his friend Franz Wüllner, and pursued the ideal of a pure interpretation
based on Beethoven's own tempo markings. Another telling quotation from
the same source reads: "The practising of technique to the exclusion
of all else leads to the destruction of creative power and the annihilation
of the imagination."
She once wrote to her chamber music partners as follows: "Creativity
is of primary importance in art; technique is merely the means to that
end. The only function of precision and dynamics is serve the spiritual
and intellectual content - where they become ends in themselves they
obstruct creativity. Respect for the work…. My concern is for spiritual
contact and harmony, for sharing the same goal, the same intentions,
for intense and reverential immersion in the music itself, and for inner
excitement and tireless devotion to the spiritual dimension of the work
in hand. My prime concern is to achieve an inspired composure, with
directness and self-effacement…." Schiller's letters on
the aesthetic education of humanity, Goethe's letters and the writings
of Novalis - great cornerstones of German classical romanticism - these
were the sources that nourished her approach to life.
Again and again she refers to "that most natural of instruments,
the human voice". The piano must sing; its song must be produced
"with love and care"… "Genuine, truly
good music must give glimpses of more exalted worlds." "The
artist must strive to complement his technical expertise with musical
intelligence, a cultivated mind and an extensive knowledge of music
and the arts; this should, it seems to me, go without saying, if art
is sacred to him and is the be-all and end-all of his life… He
must grow into a person with a fully developed set of values."
Albert Schweitzer - Elly Ney
To
conclude, a quotation from a review by a great Munich critic, Alexander
Lesch, known as Berrsche, which remains (mutatis mutandis) as
valid today as in 1917 when it was written: "At last here is another
personality in whom musicality and technique are equally balanced, a
natural performer who clearly grasps the organic nature of the compositional
process and at the same time possesses the means to translate her understanding
of it surely and unambiguously into the most delicate, minute variations
of intuitive feeling. It is the supreme achievement of such artists
that we find it impossible to concentrate our praise on their technique
in isolation. Where everything is directed towards expressing the spiritual
content of the music as clearly as possible, any attempt to focus solely
on technique is bound to fail… Never before have I witnessed piano
playing with such intuitive craftsmanship, rhythmical strength and lyrical
tenderness as Elly Ney's: she has endless subtlety of expression and
tone and yet grandeur too, and is quite free of any tricks of performing
style that might prettify the music."
Prof. Willem van Hoogstraten conducts the
"London Philharmonic"
All
those who do not know Elly Ney already but would like to get to know
her should steep themselves in her playing. State of the art technology
now makes this possible.
Hans D.
Hoffert
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