About the Website and the Site Owner

About Making the Discography and Concertography

March 14, 2014, I decided to make a discography for Annie Fischer as a birthday gift and also a special tribute to Annie's 100th Anniversary of Birth. The project seemed to me a relatively easy job as I expected Annie should not have lots recordings at all and especially after the Warner box-set of her complete Columbia/EMI studio recordings came out that the major part of the discography should be established quickly. It went on so smoothly at the beginning but much more difficult later on when I decided to include unreleased recording materials and concertography as well. The discography part, although rather short, was not just a simple listing but included as much information as possible such as recording date, venue, different reissues on LP and CDs and unreleased materials.

The concertography part was mainly done with resources found online, including Newspaper archives, Concert Hall Archives, Orchestra Archives etc. I read many articles and marked it down to the concertography whenever it mentioned a concert event by Annie Fischer, even if it was only about a conductor who worked with her. Many such information I found was minimal and it took me much more time to verify the details, sometimes for weeks and also many cases with no results at all. I continuously searched for online auctions of her concert programs, autographs to see if any of those would also give me hints of concerts. Authorities like Farhan Malik, Donald Manildi and Jonathan Summers also gave me much help and advice for additional information and improvements. Historical recording label Melo Classic kindly provided to me several radio broadcast company's recording archive lists. Some other private collector friends sent me unreleased materials as a support to my project. There were actually much more actions I had done, such as reading youtube comments of her recordings to see if people mentioned anything; sending out emails to concert halls and music festivals for her concert appearances; also reading hungarian articles about her (by using the almost useless google translation). It is now a list with more than 300 concerts and radio recording sessions. Although far from a complete concertography but I believe this is the one and only, and the most comprehensive version ever compiled (unless maybe someone from Hungary could have done it better). The project was then extended to include repertoire list and selected cover arts, and around Auguest it was further developed to include concert programs and rare photo sections. It took me a lot of work to finish it as a final version of more than 260 pages word documents of more than 33,000 words, including a biography article and a brief introduction to the recording legacy article of almost 4000 words.

In November, although this project was virtually finished, I noticed a book from Hungary dedicated to Annie Fischer which released a lot of unpublished photos (which I uploaded some of them on this webpage), critical reviews and many articles about her whole life. It is a very good book on Annie Fischer however it is only available in Hungarian except two articles in English. I barely able to read the whole book and also no longer need it for the discography as my own work contains more recording materials and more details. Even though, it did give me help in some entries of the concertography. Their repertoire part was much wider than what I compiled before, which presented to me a better picture of what music pieces Annie Fischer was really capable for. Unfortunately, their repertoire list was poorly arranged with little details and lots of errors.

Publishing the discography and concertography is not realistic and thus making this website is the most convenient way to share my work. It is a Special Christmas Gift and also the last thing I could do to celebrate Annie Fischer's 100th Anniversary. The discography, concertography and cover arts section was abriged with less information here but the repertoire and concert program sections were offered with full details. At last, I would also wish to thank many pianists who kindly replied to my abrupt message asking for their short comments on Annie Fischer. The home page would not be more wonderful without these recollections.

There were so many great pianists from the past, but only a number of them has a dedicated webpage for memorial. I think if you really like somebody, you should at least try your best to do something for him or her. This is the reason I made everthing here. I wish people who like Annie Fischer would enjoy her website and I wish there will be more people know about this great pianist from Hungary.

Yuan Huang

Dec.22, 2014

About Yuan Huang

A.k.a the Chopin Etudes Collector among pianophiles, Yuan Huang has an exeptional collection of the complete Chopin Etudes recordings. His Chopin Etudes Archive has more than 300 complete sets of the 24 Etudes, Op.10&Op.25 (including around 200 sets of the commercial releases), there are also about 70 individual sets of 12 Etudes, Op.10 and 90 sets of the Op.25. Although not commonly known, Yuan also collects recordings of Liszt's Transcendental Etudes and Paganini Etudes and owns most of the commercially released versions as well as many non-commercial ones. He maintains discographies of them and webpages dedicated to these etudes are currently under construction.

Born in China, Yuan Huang studied piano since five and showed great interest in pianists from the golden age when he was still in high school. He loves to research and study the history of piano performance and started to collect historical piano recordings extensively since age 20. He admires legendary pianist like: Wilhelm Backhaus, Alfred Cortot, Gyorgy Cziffra, Jeane-Marie Darre, Annie Fischer, Yakov Flier, Ignaz Friedman, Samson Francois, Grigory Ginzburg, Monique Haas, Josef Hofmann, Yvonne Lefebure, Yvonne Loriod, John Ogdon, Nikolai Petrov, Rudolf Serkin, Anatoly Vedernikov, Earl Wild, just to name a few. There are many other neglected and now-forgotten pianists are also among his favorite names.

Yuan Huang contributed record reviews, concert reviews and piano related articles on internet and megazines. He has special favor in Piano Transcriptions and was probably the first one in China to published articles about Godowsky and his extremely difficult Studies after Chopin Etudes.

Credits and References

Thanks to:
Clive Allen

Koji Attwood

Michael Grey

Farhan Malik

Yuen (CVX) Lee

Donald Manildi

Jonathan Summers

Michael Waiblinger

Olga Radvilovitch

and Other Individuals

Research References:

Canberra Theatre

Concertgebouworkest

St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts in Toronto

South Bank Centre

Societa del Quartetto di Milano

Teatro alla Scala

Teatro Communale di Monfalcone
Theatre des Champs-Elysees

Vancouver Recital Society

Wiener Konzerthaus

Berliner Philharmoniker

London Philharmonic Orchestra
London Symphony Orchestra

Wiener Philharmoniker

Wiener Symphoniker

Salzburg Festival

Edinburgh International Festival
Adelaide Festival in Australia

Swiss National Library
British Library
Boston Celebrity Series
Karl Ancerl Concertography
Dinu Ciani Concert Chronology

<<The Piano in Concert>> by George Kehler
<<Annie Fischer>> by Gramofon

<<The San Bernardino County Sun>>

<<de Telegraaf>>
<<Ottawa Journal>>

<<Te Sydney Morning Herald>>
<<de tijd>>

<<New York Megazine>>

<<New York Times>>
Norddeutscher Rundfund (NDR) Archive
Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) Archive

Sudwestrundfun (SWR) Archive

Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) Archive

INA (French) Archive
Melo Classic Archive

Photo Credits (unauthorized):

Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition in Brussels

Leeds Piano Competition in England

Budapest Liszt Piano Competition in Hungary

Emil Gilels Foundation

Willem Mengelberg Society
MTI fotóarchívum

<<Annie Fischer>> by Gramofon

Maria Torley (Sculptor)

Google Map

Wikipedia

and Various Internet Sources

(The following photographers)

Auerbach, Erich

Farkas, Tamas

Fejer, Gabor

Jarai, Rudolf
Kalman, Kata

Kotnyek, Antal

MacDomnic, Godfrey
Meitner-Graf, Lotte

Molnar, Edit

Reismann, Janos

Reismann, Marian

Varkonyi, Laszlo

and other unidentified photographers

Jan.29, 1959, Performing Mozart Concerto at the Royal Festival Hall, London, England
with William Steinberg and the London Philharmonic Orchestra

A stamp issued by Magyar Posta
in honour of the centenary of the birth of Annie Fischer

The original photo of Annie Fischer with Steinberg (shown above) is used for the design of the stamp
Date of Issue: Mar.5, 2014