Frederic Lamond

Tchaikovsky Research
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Frederic Lamond (1868-1948)

Scottish pianist and composer (b. 28 January 1868 [N.S.] in Glasgow; d. 21 February 1948 in Stirling), born Frederic Archibald Lamond.

At the age of 14 he enrolled in the Raff Conservatory at Frankfurt, studying the piano, violin and composition, where his tutors included Hans von Bülow. He studied with Franz Liszt at Weimar and Rome in 1885, and in that year he made his debut as a soloist in Berlin. He then lived in Germany until the outbreak of the Second World War, while touring as far afield as Russia, the United States, and South America.

During the late 1880s, Lamond lived and worked in Frankfurt am Main, where he met Tchaikovsky during his conducting tour in February 1889. Lamond also went to London shortly afterwards and heard Tchaikovsky conduct a performance of his Piano Concerto No. 1 at the St. James's Hall on 30 March/11 April 1889, with Vasily Sapelnikov as the soloist. Lamond was so impressed by the work that he added it to his own repertoire and subsequently performed it all over Great Britain, as well as the Piano Concerto No. 2 and the Concert Fantasia for piano and orchestra. He told Tchaikovsky about this in a letter from Frankfurt on 30 April 1892 [N.S.] and asked the composer if he could secure a concert engagement for him in Russia where he very much wanted to play the Piano Concerto No. 1. Tchaikovsky duly replied on 5/17 May 1892 [1], informing Lamond that he had spoken with Vasily Safonov about the possibility of inviting him to Russia. However, as the Russian Musical Society's schedule of concerts for the 1892/93 season was already booked up, it was not until 1896 that Lamond received a telegram from the late Tchaikovsky's Berlin-based concert agent Hermann Wolff, offering him an opportunity to perform in Moscow. At a Russian Musical Society concert there, on 19/31 October 1896, Lamond played the Piano Concerto No. 1 with the orchestra conducted by Safonov, but sadly not in front of Tchaikovsky as he had so hoped back in 1892 [2].

Correspondence with Tchaikovsky

One letter from Tchaikovsky to Frederic Lamond has survived, dating from 1892, and has been translated into English on this website:

Two letters from Lamond to Tchaikovsky, dating from 1889 and 1892, are preserved in the Tchaikovsky State Memorial Musical Museum-Reserve at Klin (a4, Nos. 2036–2037).

Bibliography

External Links

Notes and References

  1. Letter 4681a to Frederic Lamond, 5/17 May 1892.
  2. Lamond's letter to Tchaikovsky is included (in a Russian translation only) in Чайковский и зарубежные музыканты (1970), p.23-24. The Scotsman's memoirs of Tchaikovsky are included in Tchaikovsky remembered (1993), p. 127 and p. 148–149, as well as (in Russian) in Воспоминания о П. И. Чайковском (1980), p. 253.