Great Performers: Andor Földes
"Put a little smile on the face of the music," says Pianist Andor Földes as he encourages orchestra members in rehearsal to capture the jubilant atmosphere of a Mozart concerto with a smile of his own. Less known today than many of his contemporaries, Földes is fondly remembered by concertgoers and record collectors for his decades' worth of international performances and his many discs for the DG label. His repertoire was enormous, and his live and studio recordings feature a wide array of works from Bach and Mozart to newly composed contemporary works of composers he knew and worked with.
Read more…His varied recordings reveal a sense of proportion and emphasis on clarity, his individual nuances never exaggerated, his emotion gently tempered by intellect. These qualities serve him well in Bach (what a magisterial traversal of the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue), where his transparency and attention to detail clarify the structure of the music, while in Mozart – one of his greatest loves – his natural warmth shines through in every note. His first public appearance, at the age of eight, was in Mozart's Piano Concerto in B flat Major KV 450, and his recording made decades later is filled with youthful exuberance and natural elegance, qualities also found in his broadcast performance of that composer's Sonata in C Major KV 545.
Földes brought both reverence and directness to his readings of Beethoven. His 1955 account of the rarely-played Choral Fantasy Op.80 eschews bombast, and his performances of several sonatas are notable for their absence of exaggeration – the Sonata Op.78 is a fine example. His heartfelt recordings of the Andante Favori and the somewhat overlooked 32 Variations in C Minor are equally admirable for their beauty of tone and seamless phrasing. Not an overt Romantic per se, Földes nevertheless brought tenderness and elegance to this repertoire, with virtuosity never used for its own sake, even in works as technically demanding as Liszt's Mephisto Waltz.
His relationship with leading composers of his time – notably his compatriots Bartók and Kodaly – gave Földes tremendous insight into how to play their works. He delighted in telling the tale of Bartok advising a student to play one of his works "a little less Bartókish" (the tendency to bang his music was evidently already common during his lifetime). In his own performances, Földes indeed sustains tonal beauty and refinement of nuance, avoiding the aggression and harshness that is far too common in 20th-century works. The same applies in works by Stravinsky, Copland, Barber, and their contemporaries: music is music, all meant to communicate beauty and "in the service of a higher power".
An inspired messenger of music, Andor Földes puts a smile not just on the face of the music but on that of the listener as well.