Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

‘Ashtray’ Annie Fischer was a piano giant. Why didn’t more people realise this?

She played with the freedom of Furtwangler, the command of Schnabel and the safety-last approach of a crazy gambler

Ashtray' Annie, 1956 [Erich Auerbach/Hulton Archive/Getty Images]

This year marks the centenary of a pianist whom London orchestral players nicknamed ‘Ashtray Annie’. Only at the keyboard did she have a cigarette out of her mouth. Annie Fischer (1914–1995) was one of those female pianists who, despite their spinsterish appearance, possessed far richer imaginations than splashy male virtuosos. Clara Haskil and Marcelle Meyer also come to mind.

Of the three, only Haskil — a physically frail Romanian celebrated for her purity of line — is today given the recognition she deserves: Pope Francis recently named her as his favourite Mozart pianist. Meyer, who as a young woman played for Debussy, had a technique of such refinement that she could liquefy trills and arpeggios without any loss of accuracy. I remember playing one of her Chabrier recordings for The Spectator’s new arts editor. ‘How is this not water?’ he asked. Her omission from Philips’s 200-CD set of 72 Great Pianists of the 20th Century was inexplicable.

Annie Fischer
Hungarian pianist Annie Fischer, 1967 Photo: Getty

Annie Fischer’s absence from the same set was more than inexplicable: it was a disgrace. What were they thinking? (André Previn made the cut, for Christ’s sake.) She doesn’t just belong in the top 72 pianists of the last century. She belongs in the top ten. Fischer was a patriotic Hungarian, though that didn’t help during the war when, as a Jew, she had to seek safety in Sweden. Afterwards she lived in Hungary with her husband Aladar Toth, director of the Budapest Opera. She also toured internationally. BBC Legends has preserved some magnificent recitals she gave in the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, and the concert hall at Broadcasting House. Snap them up. There are still far too few Annie Fischer recordings on the market.

When she died, Niel Immelman wrote in the Independent, ‘The balance she maintained between form and content, while keeping an apparently effortless freedom of expression, was reminiscent of Wilhelm Furtwängler; her command of Beethoven’s thought process was comparable to Artur Schnabel’s.’

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