Look Who it Was Random video

Rudolf Friml: A Chinese Love Song

819 views · Published 11 May 2016 · 2:21 · Indexed 12 November 2026

Channel: PSearPianist · 2016 · Music

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#2 from 'Po Ling and Ming Toy: A Chinese Suite' (1924)
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Phillip Sear plays an exotically coloured love song by the Czech composer Rudolf Friml (1879–1972).
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Friml is remembered today for his hugely successful operettas 'The Vagabond King' and 'Rose Marie'. However, he started his professional life as a pianist, having studied piano and composition with Dvorak in Prague—and was still performing as a pianist into his nineties. He moved to the USA in the early 1900s and published several light piano suites there. It is fascinating to trace through them changes in his style from the early Dvorak influences towards the cosmopolitan Hollywood composer he became.  I believe that, although published in 1924 as a piano suite, this work may have had orchestral origins (as orchestrations are suggested in another of the pieces).  It was dedicated to Nanette Guilford (1903–90), a youthful Metropolitan Opera singer at the time.

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----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------- Played by Phillip Sear
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