I would have liked to have known Tilly Fleischmann. Even as a child in Dublin I knew of her, and she was a legendary figure in the musical life of Cork. But she died in 1967 when I was only 20, so the opportunity never arose. Reading her book Tradition and Craft in Piano-Playing has brought me closer to her than ever before.
Tilly Fleischmann was born Tilly Swertz, in Cork, in 1882, the daughter of Hans Conrad Swertz, who had come to Ireland to take up an appointment as organist and choirmaster in Cork. From the age of 12 she practised the piano three to four hours a day, and her father was sufficiently confident of a musical career for her that he sent her to study at the Royal Academy of Music in Munich, in 1901. There she was fortunate to be accepted into the class of the renowned pianist and pedagogue and director of the academy, Bernhard Stavenhagen, until he retired in 1904 when she studied with another famous teacher, Berthold Kellermann. Both were students and associates of Franz Liszt in his later years, when he taught extensively and they carried on the traditions and aspirations of the world-renowned virtuoso, who had died in 1886.
Tilly became a favoured student in Munich playing at many concerts and became so well-known that she was even invited to play for the family of the kaiser at Nymphenburg Palace. In 1905 she married a fellow student, Aloys Fleischmann, and, in 1906, she brought her husband back to Cork where he took up the position her father had just vacated at the Cathedral of St Mary and St Anne. They became intensely involved in the musical life of the city and Tilly Fleischmann played many recitals, becoming the first Irish pianist to broadcast on the BBC. She was much sought after as a piano teacher and taught at the School of Music in Cork from 1919 to 1937. She was a close friend of many composers, including Arnold Bax, to whom this book is dedicated, and EJ Moeran.
It was Herbert Hughes, who wrote so many wonderful Irish folk-song arrangements, who suggested she write this book, allowing us to learn from the experiences and traditions that she absorbed during her training in Munich. She started writing the book in 1940 and, with the help of her son, Aloys jnr, who was himself such an important figure in the musical life of Cork all through his life, she completed it about 10 years later.
Leon Fleisher was the most famous American pianist of the 1950s and 1960s but in 1964 developed focal dystonia in his right hand, which prevented him continuing his career as a two-handed pianist. He has played most of the left-hand repertoire since then but also became one of the most famous piano teachers in the world, as well as starting a career as a conductor.
In 1990, I was invited to be soloist with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra – with Leon Fleisher – conducting for concerts in Germany and a major American tour ending up with concerts in the Lincoln Centre in New York and the Kennedy Centre in Washington. Spending four weeks together, Leon and I developed such a good friendship that I was emboldened to ask what the cause of his right-hand ailment was. He replied that when he was a student the advice was that piano practice should be the same as weight-lifting: “No pain, no gain!”
As it turned out, this was the worst possible advice, which is why I recoiled when Fleischmann advises to play arm-octaves “without any relaxation of the wrist”.
I was also rather shocked when she advises that before a performance a cup of hot milk or tea is a good beverage, but then goes on to add “with a dash of whiskey for those who can withstand it”. Having been offered a few glasses of wine by the charming Willie Watt before a recital in Waterford in my late teens and then discovering on stage an alarming blurring of distinction between the black and white notes of the keyboard, I have never taken an alcoholic beverage in the day of a performance ever since, and advise my students accordingly.
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