Word: graffman
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...prize includes a series of solo engagements with such orchestras as the Cleveland, Chicago and New York Philharmonic, so it is no wonder that the piano and violin competitions sponsored by Manhattan's Edgar M. Leventritt Foundation have helped launch many an illustrious career. Pianists Eugene Istomin, Gary Graffman and Van Cliburn and Violinists David Nadien and Itzhak Perlman are among the performers who got an early boost from the award. Since the stakes and standards are so high, the judges occasionally pick no winner when they feel that the candidates are not ripe for major concert appearances...
...GARY GRAFFMAN: PROKOFIEV PIANO CONCERTOS NOS. 1 AND 3 (Columbia). Some performers create, some dominate, some execute and others merely recite. Gary Graffman executes, and Prokofiev is his perfect victim. Dazzling fireworks abound in this recording of two percussive concertos, and connoisseurs of pyrotechnics will find nothing missing in Graffman's display; others may hunger for heart in this admittedly impressive recording...
Leading performers get terribly emo tional about their instruments (which the manufacturers lend out for concert use in exchange for the prestige that the pianists bring). Glenn Gould always played Steinway's No. 174; when it collapsed some years back, he was thrown into a deep depression. Gary Graffman, Eugene Istomin, Jacob Lateiner and Leon Fleisher at one time all craved Old 199, and they passed it around among themselves so that each could have it for major concerts. Dame Myra Hess used to think of her pianos as so many husbands, once cabled Steinway...
...self-promotion, never even tried to get his recording contract renewed. For several years he seemed merely to hover on the fringes of the select circle of U.S. pianists; he never quite won the measure of popular acclaim that went to others of his generation, such as Gary Graffman and Leon Fleisher. Last month, when he called his manager's Los Angeles office, a new switchboard operator asked curtly: "Who are you and what do you play?" It was typical of Lateiner that he was wryly amused rather than offended...
RACHMANINOFF: SECOND PIANO CONCERTO (Columbia). In 1947 an 18-year-old student with a penchant for Rachmaninoff was chosen to play the Second Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Gary Graffman has never stopped reworking the ultraromantic piece and by now, as shown by this rich and seasoned performance, his formidable steel fingers are entirely in the service of the Russian's melancholy rhapsodies. With the New York Philharmonic, under Bernstein...