Latest Releases:
Arbiter 160: Behind the Notes
Brahms performed by colleagues and pupils
Arbiter 159: The Art of Roman Totenberg
from Bach to Webern
(2 cd set, first publication)
2 CD set: $28.99
World Arbiter 2012: Japanese Traditional Music
Koto and Shamisen
News:
A biography of Ignaz Friedman by Allan Evans was published in June 2009
Click here for a link.
Premium CD series:
Support Arbiter and receive a newly restored historic recording. Our first offering is the 1936 Beethoven 9th Symphony under Weingartner (Vienna Philharmonic). Contributions are tax-deductible.
Hear the 2nd Movement
An Ignaz Friedman chronology (more than 700 programs) has been added to the site.
Indiana University Press has published a compilation of writings by pianist Moriz Rosenthal
Co-edited by Mark Mitchell, author of a biography of Vladimir de Pachmann, and Allan Evans, Arbiter's director, who produced a CD accompanying the book. The preface is by Charles Rosen. Click here for an image.
Our Origins:
Arbiter of Cultural Traditions, Inc., a non-profit arts organization, was founded in 2002 as a means to continue the work of the former Arbiter Recording Company in order to save performances by musicians both living and from the past whose work embodies our classical music at its height. The failure of the record industry to have done so makes our efforts all the more critical, as the challenges now faced make what we once took for granted as our cultural heritage into an endangered tradition. While artists such as Horszowski and Gieseking are well-known, the artistry of Ignace Tiegerman and Michal Hambourg is at the highest musical level, as the most significant artists often do not pursue or achieve lucrative musical careers. Therefore it is important to find the great music-making wherever it survives: our searching has brought us to such places as the basement shelves of Gieseking's daughter living in Germany, a hill-town in the Italian Dolomites (Ignaz Friedman's home) and areas of Cairo where pupils of Tiegerman still live. Note that all our previous publications by the Arbiter Recording Company will remain available and publication will continue undisturbed. Please check our upcoming projects page for information on new CD projects.
A world music sublabel, World Arbiter, makes available examples of classical and traditional music from other cultures. Today's world music scene is slipping back into the "International" genre it was before such guiding lights like Teresa Sterne of Nonesuch invented the Explorer series, which took serious music from all over the globe with utmost seriousness. We offer vital examples from genuine traditions backed by scholarly analysis that expands interest rather than dulling curiosity: one living master from India's classical tradition, Ashok Pathak, maintains his family's unique tradition, which like many, barely survived the dismantling of the Maharajahs' court patronage.
Please consult our Upcoming Projects page for news and sound samples.
Hear some of our artists in performance:
- Ashok Pathak in a test of Raga Bageshri before the final recording of World Arbiter 2003. (mp3, 9'26" 4.3MB)
- Ferruccio Busoni in 1922 performing Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no.13 with SONIC DEPTH TECHNOLOGY. (mp3, 6'23", 3.0MB)
- Michal Hambourg, the living link to pianism's Golden Age, in an unpublished performance of Chopin's Etude in A-flat, Op. 25, no. 1. (mp3, 2'54", 1.3MB)
Aside from our familiar music projects (publishing CDs and maintaining reference material on historic pianists), we are expanding into other fields, which will expand our web site:
- MUSIC RESOURCE CENTER: Formerly the Museum of Historic Pianists, our new reference tool will provide extensive essays, bibliographies and download examples of great artists from all disciplines, ranging from instrumental music to World Music genres. Our aim will be to document every significant performer in these idioms and provide information and recordings which can be downloaded. This will be an ongoing project, so please check back often for updated references and added recordings.
- MUSIC INTERNS: To better preserve Western music we will be seeking interns to train in restoration technology, pedagogy so that they will continue to educate the public in hearing with a sense of history and understanding the cultural conditions which shaped the interpretive art of past and current masters. Applicants are urged to contact us via email at the address atthe page's end.
- JUDAICA: The opening of a wing dedicated to oral history, diaries, photos, and manuscripts. Our first offerings are a A 19th Century Hebrew Harvest Augury from Yemen by James Irsay and photos of Birzh (Birzhai) Lithuania, c. 1937, by Shmuel Evin. We offer excerpts from Evin's diary (1932-38) written in Birzh, documenting the cultural and political changes of a community now extinct.
- ITALIAN CULINARIA: Investigation into culinary manuscripts from aristocratic families in Italy's Marche region, dating from the 1600s to the present. Aside from seeking further documents, we will begin making available their recipes on our web site (in Italian and translated into English) with the aim of eventual publication.