Historical Recordings
Arnold Dolmetsch, 1931
Photo by Herbert Lambert, Bath, England,
courtesy of Teri Noel Towe
• Chromatic Fantasy, BWV 903 — J.S. Bach
from Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier
— J.S. Bach
— Johann Pachelbel
Erwin Bodky (1896-1958) began his career in Europe. He emigrated to the United States before World War II and settled in the Boston area, where he was active performing and promoting early music. He was a professor of music at Brandeis University and was the founder of the Cambridge Society for Early Music. This recording was made on a clavichord built by Karl Maendler of Munich, which Bodky brought with him when he came to the U.S.
Largo
Gracioso
József Gát was born into a Jewish family in Hungary in 1913. He studied at the Academy of Music in Budapest in the 1930s. Among his teachers were Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. He earned credentials in both composition and music teaching. In 1938 he received his final degree. By the time he graduated, Jewish legislation was in place that made it impossible for him to find suitable work. During World War II he went into hiding. Some 34 members of his extended family, including his parents and his first wife, died in concentration camps during World War II. After the war Gát taught the piano. In 1949 he was offered a position at the Academy of Music, by then renamed the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music. (This is the same academy where Miklós Spányi studied in the 1980s.) In 1954 Gát published a book on piano playing that was later translated into four languages. In the 1950s he became interested in early instruments and was given a harpsichord and clavichords by the Neupert and Ammer firms. As a result he was able to introduce these instruments into Hungarian teaching and musical life. He died of a heart attack in 1967 at the age of 54. The tracks that are posted here come from a Qualiton long-playing record of works in the Kenner & Liebhaber series by C.P.E. Bach. [Thanks to Eszter Fontana, daughter of József Gát, for much of this information.]