Word: childing
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Splash in Mexico. A child painter who won her first prize when she was twelve, Marcia Bennett bucked parental objections ("My father thought I would wind up barefooted living with a gigolo in some basement") to follow through with an art career after studying at Columbia and Yale. Married to a Washington, D.C. businessman, Marcia fell in love with Mexico on a vacation trip, persuaded her husband to go into business there as a mining engineer. She soon managed to become a friend of such conflicting personalities as Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, David Siqueiros. Her splashy, arresting style is strong...
...hungry and beat her into being a genius. Nine hours a day, seven days a week, she sat practicing in her slip at the keyboard, never wearing a dress because the sweat would have ruined it. Her mother's protests were useless. In all things the terrified child obeyed the man who, after saving her from drowning, told her: "I just saved your life. Your life belongs to me and me alone." Then, while she was still trembling with fear, he made her repeat ten times: "My life is yours. I must...
...that what they heard came from what they saw. In Berlin distinguished critics got down on all fours to examine her piano for the mechanical contraption that might explain the miracle. In Copenhagen the Danish press had her examined by a doctor to certify that she was really a child and not a midget; but New York critics wildly reached for their superlatives after her Town Hall debut at eight...
...child had been making more than $75,000 a year for three years when she heard her father say in an unguarded moment; "There is only one thing in this world that counts and that is money, and I teach Ruth to play Beethoven because it brings in the dollars." She was old enough to know that he was not the musician he claimed to be. When her father took over her training completely, she started to play music she did not understand with false phrasing, exaggerated rhythms, distorted emotions. A Town Hall concert climaxed the tension between father...
...what he did. Perhaps through his own fault, her father's prophecy that she would be one of the world's greatest musicians has not been fulfilled. But her present highly skillful work shows that in spite of the pain the piano caused her as a child, Ruth Slenczynska has matured enough to turn it into an instrument of pleasure for herself and her listeners...