Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] 83

Friedlein, Rudolf Fryderyk

(b Kraków, 7 Aug 1811; d Warsaw, 20 July 1873). Polish bookseller and music publisher. He worked in the bookshop run, by his father, Jan Jerzy Fryderyk Friedlein, in Kraków, then from 1834 with E. Günther in Leszno. In 1839 he entered into partnership with F. Spiess’s Warsaw firm, which he bought in 1848 and managed from 1851 under his own name. Friedlein’s became one of the leading bookshops in Warsaw, being well stocked and providing a lending service. Soon after 1840 he also began to publish music, maintaining a high musical standard in the compositions he issued. His printing works were technically advanced: he was the first Warsaw publisher to number his plates, and he was also the first to print Moniuszko’s works. In about 1860 Friedlein was in financial difficulties and sold some of his editions to the firm newly established by Gebethner and Wolff, both of whom had been his pupils. After the January Insurrection (1863) he was arrested by tsarist authorities and sent into exile in Tver'. He was released in 1870, but his firm had been liquidated in 1865.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

K. Mazur: Pierwodruki Stanisława Moniuszki [The first editions of Moniuszko] (Warsaw, 1970), 37–52

F. Pieczątkowski: ‘Friedlein Rudolf’, Słownik pracowników książki polskiej [Dictionary of the Polish book trade], ed. I. Treichel (Warsaw, 1972)

W. Tomaszewski: Bibliografia warszawskich druków muzycznych 1801–1850 [Bibliography of Warsaw music prints, 1801–50] (Warsaw, 1992)

W. Tomaszewski: Warszawskie edytorstwo muzyczne w latach 1772–1865 [Music publishing in Warsaw, 1772–1865] (Warsaw, 1992)

KORNEL MICHAŁOWSKI

Friedman, Ignacy [Ignaz]

(b Podgórze, nr Kraków, 13 Feb 1882; d Sydney, 26 Jan 1948). Polish pianist and composer. After piano lessons with Flora Grzywińska in Kraków, he studied composition with Hugo Riemann in Leipzig. In 1901 he began a four-year period of study in Vienna with Leschetizky, serving as his assistant; he also studied musicology with Adler and attended masterclasses given by Busoni. After a Vienna début in 1904 he performed throughout the world until 1943, giving some 2800 concerts. He appeared with such conductors as Nikisch, Weingartner, Mengelberg and Saint-Saëns, and in chamber music with Auer, Hubay, Huberman, Telmányi and Feuermann, among others; together with Huberman and Casals he played Beethoven sonatas and the ‘Archduke’ Trio for the composer's centennial festival in Vienna in 1927. Until 1917 he lived in Berlin, then in Copenhagen, then in Siusi, Italy (1919–39) and in 1940 settled in Sydney.

Friedman possessed a formidable technique – even Horowitz acknowledged it as superior to his own – coupled with a profound imagination. His repertory emphasized the major works of Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt and Brahms, but also included new scores by Novák, Palmgren, Karl Weigl, Kodály and Glazunov. He played the Chopin Mazurkas with the same kind of rhythmic nuance that, by all accounts, characterized the composer's own playing of these pieces. In addition to his career as a performer, he was also an effective teacher: Ignace Tiegerman, Victor Schiøler, Leon Pommers and Bruce Hungerford were among his pupils. He published more than 100 compositions, mainly for piano, including transcriptions and two volumes of exercises; his finest work is the Piano Quintet (Leipzig, 1918). He edited the complete piano works of Chopin, and major works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Liszt. His recordings include much Chopin, music by Liszt, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, among other composers, and a few of his own compositions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F. Martens: Little Biography: Ignaz Friedman (New York, 1922)

J. Kanski: ‘Wspomnienia o Ignacym Friedmanie’ [Memories of Ignacy Friedman], Ruch muzyczny, vi/23 (1962), 9–10

J. Kanski: ‘Ignacy Friedman w 25 rocznice smierci’ [Ignacy Friedman on the 25th anniversary of his death], Ruch muzyczny, xvii/5 (1973), 14 only

M. Jost: Practice, Interpretation, Performance (West Melbourne, 1984)

A. Evans: disc notes, Ignaz Friedman: the Complete Solo Recordings, Pearl CD IF 2000 (1992)

ALLAN EVANS

Friedman(-Gramatté), Sonia.

See Eckhardt-Gramatté, S.-C.

Friedrich.

See Friderici family.

Friedrich II.

See Frederick ii.

Friedrich, Götz

(b Naumburg, 4 Aug 1930). German director. After studying at the Deutsches Theaterinstitut in Weimar (1949–53) he joined the Komische Oper, Berlin, as assistant to and later collaborator with Felsenstein (1953–72). He also taught dramaturgy in Berlin and, from 1973, in Hamburg, where he was Oberspielleiter (1973–7) and Chefregisseur (1977–81). He was simultaneously director of productions at Covent Garden (1977–81), before moving back to Berlin, where he became Generalintendant and principal director of the Deutsche Oper in 1981 (see Berlin, §3), as well as artistic director of the Theater des Westens in 1984.

Particularly notable productions, in a long list staged at many of the leading international houses, include Fidelio (1978, Munich), Lulu (1981) and Elektra (1990) at Covent Garden, and the world première of Berio’s Un re in ascolto at Salzburg (1984). But the central pillar of Friedrich’s work remains his series of Wagner productions. His first Ring, at Covent Garden (1974–6), emphasized perceived differences of mode between the four dramas: Rheingold as a mystery play viewed ironically through modern eyes, Walküre as typical 19th-century psychological theatre, Siegfried as black comedy and Götterdämmerung as the last stage of a glittering civilization doomed to decline. The purpose of the hydraulic platform on which the action took place (see illustration) was thus not to achieve optical unity but to suggest a space – the stage representing the world – on which an epic drama, open-ended and disparate in its styles, could be unfolded. Adopting Brechtian alienation techniques, Friedrich caused Loge, Alberich and Wotan to address the audience directly, outside the framework of the drama. His second Ring, which originated in Berlin (1984–5) before transferring to Tokyo, Washington, DC, and Covent Garden, located the action in a tunnel, inspired by the Washington Metro, but intended to provide a performing space non-specific in chronology and place. The monochrome severity of Peter Sykora’s sets, and the images of warlike aggression and destruction, reflected a bleakly pessimistic view of the work as an apocalyptic endgame. A third cycle was staged in Helsinki in 2000.

Of Friedrich’s productions for Bayreuth – Tannhäuser (1972), Lohengrin (1978) and Parsifal (1982) – the first caused the greatest controversy with its brutal, militaristic representation of Wartburg society and its final chorus with the singers, in everyday clothes, making a clenched-fist salute (abandoned after the first performances). He has remained prolific on the international scene, with, for example, a spectacular but socially critical Porgy and Bess on the lake at Bregenz (1998).

WRITINGS

Die humanistische Idee der Zauberflöte (Berlin, 1954)

Die Zauberflöte in der Inszenierung Walter Felsensteins an der Komischen Oper Berlin (Berlin, 1958)

Walter Felsenstein: Weg und Werk (Berlin, 1961)

Musiktheater: Ansichten – Einsichten (Berlin, 1986)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D. Kranz: Der Regisseur Götz Friedrich (Berlin, 1972)

P. Barz: Götz Friedrich: Abenteuer Musiktheater (Bonn, 1978)

S. Jaeger, ed.: Götz Friedrich: Wagner-Regie (Zürich, 1983)

N. Ely and S. Jaeger, eds.: Regie heute: Musiktheater in unserer Zeit (Berlin, 1984), 135–60

J.H. Sutcliffe: ‘Götz Friedrich’, Opera, xxxvi (1985), 28–35

N. Ely: Richard Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen in der Inszenierung von Götz Friedrich: Deutsche Oper Berlin (Vienna, 1987)

M. Remus: ‘Das Schöpferische Grundgesetz der “Handlung”: Götz Friedrichs Erweiterung und Neubestimmung des Handlungsbegriffs im Musiktheater – Aspekte und Beispiele’, Musik, Musiktheater, Musiktheater-Regie: Festschrift anlässlich des 60. Geburtstages von Götz Friedrich, ed. J. Krogoll and D. Steinbeck (Frankfurt, 1994)

F.W. Christians, ed.: Opern-Zeiten: Entwürfe, Erfahrungen, Begegnungen mit Götz Friedrich – eine Künstlerbiographie in 107 Beiträgen zum 65. Geburtstag (Berlin, 1995)

BARRY MILLINGTON