Abram Chasins plays Mendelssohn's Variations Sérieuses (1931)

Felix Mendelssohn's Variations sérieuses in D minor, Opus 54, played by Abram Chasins.
Please buy the Marston 2 CD-set "Landmarks of Recorded Pianism, Vol. 1".
https://www.marstonrecords.com/collections/piano/products/landmarks1
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From the liner notes:
Abram Chasins, a forgotten pianist
Abram Chasins (1903–1987) and Shura Cherkassky were the two most prominent students of Josef Hofmann at the Curtis Institute of Music. Chasins was perhaps even more talented, for he was also a composer, a scholar, and a gifted writer, as well as a masterful pianist as this recording proves. He was better known as a composer in the early years of his amazing career. His Three Chinese Pieces became the first work by an American to be performed by Arturo Toscanini and the New York Philharmonic. His detailed descriptions of his lessons are among the most valuable documents concerning Hofmann’s ideas on music and piano playing (found in Chasins’s 1958 book, Speaking of Pianists.) Mendelssohn’s Variations Sérieuses was one of the compositions Chasins studied with Hofmann. Decades later Jorge Bolet described Chasins’s piano playing when they were students together at the Curtis Institute as “colossal,” while Abby Simon’s 2017 memoir Inner Voices states “Abram was one of Hofmann’s great students.” His Master’s Voice asked Chasins to record the solo piano version of his Three Chinese Pieces, and that record was issued, but the Mendelssohn Variations, recorded three days later, remained unissued. It is taken here from Chasins’s set of test pressings. Three months after the recording, on 29 February 1932, Chasins included the Variations Sérieuses at his first recital at Carnegie Hall. The New York Times found his performance of the Mendelssohn “… in his happiest vein …” while Musical America reported: “… Though the program was not marked by exceptional novelty, the artist endowed it with rare sincerity …” Hofmann, Godowsky, Lhevinne, Levitzki, Cherkassky, and Saperton were in the audience. Now we can hear what a colossal pianist Chasins was, which makes his 1946 decision to abandon his career as a pianist all the more puzzling. Chasins subsequently concentrated on developing New York’s radio station WQXR into the premiere classical music station, as well as writing several books. Chasins made some early stereo LPs, but they are poorly recorded and his years of not practicing show. This is Chasins’s true legacy as a pianist.

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