Classical Court

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RE: Gunnar Johansen? Wow!

Posted by pbarach on February 25, 2021 at 12:27:51:
Below is a YouTube link to a 1979 interview with Johansen in which he plays that Godowski paraphrase (with some missed notes) at the 9:40 mark.

Some other Johansen tidbits: Christopher Taylor, on the U. Wisc. faculty, now owns the two-keyboard piano that you see in the still photo that plays with the YouTube video (here's Taylor and that piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXxyf6NHXmw). Like Johansen, he's used it to perform the Goldberg Variations (which is the only Johansen recording I've heard that was completely dull and disappointing).

Johansen recorded perhaps 50 discs or cassettes of his Liszt performances on his own Artist Direct label. They are way more interesting than Leslie Howard's performances. I first learned about Johansen as a teenager when I saw some of these LPs in my local library. More than a decade ago, I saw some messages in a usenet group from Gordon Rumson, a Canadian musician who was disposing of the remaining LPs and cassettes from the estate of Johansen's wife. I bought a lot of them, including several LPs of all of the Bach-Busoni transcriptions, the aforementioned Goldbergs, Liszt Sonata (which is also on YouTube), the Transcendental Etudes, Mephisto Waltzes (including Busoni cadenza in #1), Reminescences de Don Juan, Wagner and Verdi transcriptions, and Liszt odds and ends. Some of these were sold to me as 256 kbps mp3 copies of the cassettes, while others were LPs that I ripped to FLAC or WAV files.

Johansen was a good friend of Harry Partch, of all people...