Heavenly
Updated: 3 days ago
A short while back, when writing on Facebook about how the musical Les Miserables overlapped a few classical music themes, I got a reply one of my readers Carolyn Brown about recording she always loved that performed Mozart's Turkish Rondo in different styles. This reminded me of a record album I came across and loved (and admired) long ago.
When I say "long ago," I mean in high school. My school, New Trier East (which has since reverted back to New Trier), had a fairly nice record collection in the library, and you could listen to anything in it when visiting the place. One day I discovered what was even then an old album called "Heavenly Echoes of My Fair Lady," performed by pianist George Feyer. I had no idea who George Feyer was, but there was something about the cover that intrigued me. It turned out that the first half of the album was just him playing songs from My Fair Lady, but the second half was what might the recording different.
The album had been released years earlier, in 1957, the year after My Fair Lady had opened on Broadway and the show became a phenomenon. For the first side of his recording, Feyer played the songs as written, extremely richly, though straightforward. On the second side, however, he concocted a story where the great classical composer masters in heaven -- like Bach, Rachmaninoff, Mozart and quite a few others -- are discussing how much they loved the score of My Fair Lady that they decided to rework the songs in their own, individual styles. And it was wonderful. I went back often to the listening room and played the 15-minute tale over and over -- until I graduated.
What I learned from the album's liner notes is that George Feyer was a classically trained pianist from Hungary and later came to New York City where he eventually got a permanent engagement performing nightly at Park Avenue's famous Delmonico Hotel, which this album was recorded live.
What I subsequently learned is that his music teachers at the Liszt Academy in Budapest included Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály (who wrote one of my favorite classical pieces, the Háry János Suite, from his folk opera). And one of his classmate was Sir Georg Solti, later the renowned conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He was also put into forced labor during WWII and later in the infamous Bergen-Belson concentration camp, where he was rescued by Allied Forces. It was when he came to the United States, that Feyer shifted his music to more light classical and eventually began an extremely successful recording career, many under the "Echoes of..." brand. He released over 40 albums. (The exact number is a bit hard to determine, since some discographies list as many as 80, some of which might have been re-releases in Europe or "extended play" recordings." Or -- who knows?) I was also surprised and pleased to learn that though he was born in 1908, he lived until 2001 and the ripe-old age of 93.
I tracked down the album about 15 years ago, and it was as fun and clever as I remembered it. And when decided to finally write about it, I tracked down a recording on YouTube, and edited it down to the "heavenly" part only. (I think that I posted a couple of the selections quite a few years ago, but this is the whole thing.)
By the way, though this video shows a copy of the album under the name of just "Echoes of My Fair Lady," I know -- from my memory and from the album I found at a used record store -- that it was "Heavenly Echoes of My Fair Lady." And the proof!
And here 'tis --
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