Word: iturbi
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...have short, strong legs to suit a heavy, stumpy little man like Beethoven, a comfortable back so that the player could sit relaxed and let his shoulder muscles work for him. Nowhere in New York was such a chair to be found. Pianists like Rachmaninoff and Iturbi who depend mostly on their wrists use stools without backs. Paderewski and Hofmann who play more from their shoulders use chairs with backs which tip forward a little. None of these suited Artur Schnabel, the square-headed little Austrian who was to solo with the Philharmonic-Symphony. Finally one was made...
...Manhattan the Philharmonic Symphony invited Iturbi to guest-conduct it in a concert in Lewisohn Stadium. Eagerly he agreed, for there is one musician in the world whom he idolizes: Arturo Toscanini. An audience that filled all but the extreme end seats turned out to see what this black-haired, electric little maestro of the piano bench could do with a baton in his hand...
...dabbler, Iturbi plunged into a program fit to give his hearers an honest test of his ability. He announced that he would begin with two Wagner numbers, Overture to Tannhduser and Prelude to Act i of Lohengrin, then simultaneously play the piano solo and conduct Beethoven's Third Concerto in C Minor, before winding up with the Eroica...
...pianist, Iturbi is distinguished for a fluent, unhesitating technique. Conducting, he defended himself by a slower tempo, was deliberate in his presenting of the Wagner numbers, as though coaxing the orchestra. His swifter style returned when he played and conducted the Concerto. Alternately he rippled off a solo passage, waved the baton, bobbed his head at the orchestra, beat time with a momentarily free hand. The sympathetic orchestra caught his swift mood, faithfully followed him then and later, through the formidable stretches of the Eroica. Happily convinced, the audience broke in with premature applause even more frequently than usual, twice...
Though his Mexico City Orchestra was the first he has publicly conducted, Iturbi's metamorphosis is no sudden miracle. He likes to tell how he led a music academy band in his native Valencia when he was 12, how he has prepared long and secretly for the podium. During his concert tours in the U. S. since 1929 he has spent most of his spare time in New York studying orchestra scores, watching Toscanini and others conducting the Philharmonic-Symphony. Says Jose Iturbi: "I am like Diogenes. All my life I search for an honest musician. I find Arturo...