Word: iturbi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Hollywood Bowl "Symphonies under the Stars": Gregor Piatigorsky, Yehudi Menuhin, soloists; Jose Iturbi, Alfred Wallenstein, Victor de Sabata conducting...
...Jose Iturbi, at 55, is a pianist who is regarded by a vast public as a saint of the keyboard, by critics as a fallen angel. Twenty-two years ago, when Valencia-born Jose made his U.S. debut, there were hardly enough superlatives to fit his playing. But last March, after his first Carnegie Hall recital in six years, the same judges shook their saddened heads, damned him as a perfunctory performer. They conceded that Iturbi still had his nimble technique, delicate shadings and tone colors. But, as the Herald Tribune's Jerome D. Bohm put it, that made...
What happened to Jose? So far as he is concerned, nothing. He scorns the critics as people who have decided "that a classical musician must be compatible with their ideas of what a classical musician should be." Adds Iturbi: "If I am not good enough, the audiences will not come any more and I shall give up playing...
...Million-Sized Audiences." A gay and garrulous showman, Iturbi doesn't have to worry about audiences staying away. In eight Hollywood films, he has created an Iturbi following of millions-many of whom never heard a concert pianist in their lives until they went to the neighborhood movie. His records (Victor) have earned him well over $100,000 a year. Last week he wound up his latest U.S. tour with a concert in Miami which won the shouting approval of 2,300 fans. It was a typical Iturbi crowd-pleaser. After his first number, Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata...
...Iturbi's friends, as well as his critics, agree that it was Hollywood that brought out the showman in Jose. Says Producer Joe Pasternak, the man who persuaded him to make his first movie: "At first he didn't care for audiences. But when he had appeared in a couple of pictures, he began to feel the pulsing of million-sized audiences. It excited him, and he began playing to the biggest crowds in the world-the people who watch movie screens...