Uploaded April 2024 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
Fred Elizalde plays his own forward-looking composition "Harmonising".
This piece, as with his other compositions, shows the influence of the impressionists (he studied under Ravel as a child and again as an adult) on his piano playing. Tempo variation, use of 'modernistic' chord progressions, and a general expressiveness and sensitivity of touch are other notable characteristics of Elizalde's piano style. As H. G. Penniket observes in his notes for the Brunswick Elizalde album of 1936: "The feeling for musical expression was ever uppermost, so that playing in strict tempo for any length of time was next to impossible with him".
A rather melancholic atmosphere pervades the performance, and indeed another of Elizalde's compositions is entitled "Melancholy Weeps".
These early British Brunswick electrical recordings are of quite poor quality, due to the primitive equipment used in Brunswick's make-shift studio above a restaurant in London's West End, as well as the grainy material the records are pressed from.
FRED ELIZALDE
Piano solos
Recorded London, c. January 22, 1928
Harmonising…....Brunswick 146 (matrix and take number unknown)
Fred Elizalde plays his own forward-looking composition "Harmonising".
This piece, as with his other compositions, shows the influence of the impressionists (he studied under Ravel as a child and again as an adult) on his piano playing. Tempo variation, use of 'modernistic' chord progressions, and a general expressiveness and sensitivity of touch are other notable characteristics of Elizalde's piano style. As H. G. Penniket observes in his notes for the Brunswick Elizalde album of 1936: "The feeling for musical expression was ever uppermost, so that playing in strict tempo for any length of time was next to impossible with him".
A rather melancholic atmosphere pervades the performance, and indeed another of Elizalde's compositions is entitled "Melancholy Weeps".
These early British Brunswick electrical recordings are of quite poor quality, due to the primitive equipment used in Brunswick's make-shift studio above a restaurant in London's West End, as well as the grainy material the records are pressed from.
FRED ELIZALDE
Piano solos
Recorded London, c. January 22, 1928
Harmonising…....Brunswick 146 (matrix and take number unknown)
