Moura Lympany's single-mindedness, courage and determination and, above all, her artistry led some years ago to an LP album suitably entitled The Lympany Legend. Born Mary Johnstone in 1916, she later, on the advice of the conductor Basil Cameron, changed her name to Moura Lympany, an ingenious alteration reflecting her ever-resourceful mother's love of all things Russian (Moura is a Russian diminutive of Mary, Lympany a re- setting of Limpenny, here mother's Cornish maiden name). Sent to a Belgian convent school at the age of six, Lympany countered feelings of alienation With a growing awareness of her talent. Cherished, if occasionally chided, by the nuns (her exuberance occasionally seen as "the sin of pride"), she read through every piece of music she could find and astonished her early listeners with a performance of Liszt's ultra-virtuoso E major Polonaise. Her return to England was marked by her debut when, aged twelve, she played the Mendelssohn G minor Concerto, music for which she retained a life-long affection. Her studies at London's Royal Academy of Music continued in Vienna with Paul Weingarten, later Mathilde Verne and, most importantly, Tobias Matthay whose influence was at the very heart of her fluency and musicianship. Maxims such as "never play faster than you can think", a quiet but firm insistence on an alternating tension and relaxation and, above all, on a naturalness of line, impetus and phrasing, became central to her outlook. As she herself put it, "I never went in for chi-chi phrasing or powdered rubato", and long after Matthay's death and in the later part of her career she would pause to Wonder what her beloved "Uncle Tobs" would have thought. A triumphant Wigmore Hall recital was followed by international acclaim when she won second prize to Emil Gilels in Belgium's 1938 Queen Elisabeth Competition, a time when competitions were few and far between and mattered supremely. Her Proms debut quickly followed in 1940, and she commenced her long association with the Khachaturian Concerto, an exotic showpiece she later recorded with Anatole Fistoulari. The first of three recordings of the complete Rachmaninov Preludes was begun (for Decca) in 1941 and this also marked her debut in the recording studio. That composer's first three Concertos and his "Paganini Rhapsody" and Second Sonata also became part of her Russian stock-in-trade. But so, too, Were her performances of English music With premieres and appearances in Works by Benjamin Dale, Richard Arnell, Benjamin Britten, Frederick Delius, John Ireland and Cyril Scott...
Bryce Morrison, 2013 (from the booklet)
Moura Lympany
The HMV Recordings
(1947-1952)
Tracks
Cd. 1
Frédéric Chopin
(1810-1849)
1 Fantasy Impromptu, Op. 66 4:53
Robert Schumann
(1810-1856)
Etudes Symphoniques, Op. 13
2 Thema. Andante 1:29
3 Var. 1. Un più vivo 1:23
4 Var. 2 1:44
5 Etude 3. Vivace 0:56
6 Var. 3 0:41
7 Var. 4 1:00
8 Var. 5 0:55
9 Var. 6. Allegro molto 0:44
10 Var. 7 1:17
11 Etude 9. Presto possibile 0:40
12 Var. 8 0:38
13 Var. 9 2:05
14 Finale. Allegro brillante 6:17
15 Vogel als Prophet (from Waldszenen, Op. 82, n° 7) 3:23
Johannes Brahms
(1833-1897)
16 Variations on a theme by Paganini, Op. 35 (book II) 9:37
17 Intermezzo in B-Flat minor, Op. 117, n° 2 4:51
Franz Liszt
(1811-1886)
18 Feux follets (from Transcendental Etudes, S. 139) 3:55
19 Les Jeux d'eaux à la Villa d'Este (from Années de pèlerinage III, S. 163) 7:54
20 Polonaise n° 2 in E major, S. 223, n° 2 8:16
21 Mephisto Walte n° 1, S. 514 10:46
Claude Debussy
(1862-1918)
22 Clair de lune (from Suite Bergamasque) 4:48
*
Cd. 2
Maurice Ravel
(1875-1937)
1 Toccata (from Le Tombeau de Couperin) 3:49
Enrique Granados
(1867-1916)
2 The Maiden and the Nightingale (from Goyescas) 5:57
Isaac Albéniz
(1860-1909)
3 Tango in D major, Op. 165, n° 2 3:07
(arr. Godowsky)
Serguei Prokofiev
(1891-1953)
4 Toccata, Op. 11 4:16
Dmitri Shostakovitch
(1906-1975)
Three Fantastic Danses, Op. 5
5 N° 1. March (Allegretto) 1:02
6 N° 2. Waltz (Andantino) 1:02
7 N° 3. Polka (Allegretto) 0:49
Felix Mendelssohn
(1809-1847)
Piano Concerto n° 1 in G minor, Op. 25
8 I. Molto allegro con fuoco 6:59
9 II. Andante 5:11
10 III. Presto 6:13
11 Rondo brillant in E-Flat major, Op. 29 8:28
César Franck
(1822-1890)
12 Variations symphoniques 15:36
Joaquín Turina
(1842-1949)
13 Rapsodia sinfónica, Op. 66 8:24
Henry Litolff
(1818-1891)
14 Scherzo (from Concerto symphonique n° 4) 6:56
*
Moura Lympany - p
Philharmonia Orchestra/Rafael Kubelík [Cd. 2, # 8-10]/Walter Susskind - dir. [Cd. 2, # 12-14]
London Symphony Orchestra/Herbert Menges - dir. [Cd. 2, # 11]
Recorded in various locations ; between 1948 & 1952