Word: liszt
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Heard But Not Noticed. The U.S., many critics feel, is now producing the best accompanists in the world. "Pianists here are getting better and better," says Rupp. "I'm sure we all play better than Liszt." Nevertheless, most of the accompanists agree that their art is still low-rated in the U.S., while the situation is changing in Europe. English programs often avoid the word "accompanist" entirely, substituting the more palatable word "piano." In Paris the old program phrase "accompanied by" is replaced by the phrase "with the collaboration...
...From Liszt to Lehar. Frederick Loewe grew up in a musical-comedy world. His father, Edmund Loewe, a Vienna-born operetta tenor, was the first Prince Danilo in the Berlin production of Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow, the Fair Lady of its day, was also Berlin's first Chocolate Soldier. Fritz's mother Rosa was the daughter of a Viennese Baumeister (builder) and a sometime actress who used lipstick and cigarettes in a never-never age when young ladies only pinched their cheeks for color, also added color to her life with a swift and exotic imagination...
Aging into his late teens, Fritz burned out his evening hours moving from party to party, playing everything from Liszt to Lehar. Slender, handsome, with dark blond curly hair, he was cocky, arrogant, and popular with girls, all sorts of girls. He declares that he had his first sexual experience at 2 and his first affair at nine with his governess ("I thought I was abnormally precocious until I read Kinsey"). By 17, in the words of a conservatory friend, he was a "sexual democrat." Once, having outrun his credit at a brothel, he paid off his debt by entertaining...
...Meeting. During the Depression, Fritz recalls, he was so broke that he could not pay $12 due on his rented piano. When three moving men appeared at his furnished room to take the piano away, Fritz sat down to play for the last time Herbert, then Liszt. Beethoven. "Finally I was covered with sweat and I looked around. It was dark out. The three men were sitting on the floor. One called the others aside, and they talked for a few minutes. Then each man took out $2 and gave it to me. This could only happen in America...
Hailed as "the new Liszt" at 19, Michelangeli has toured erratically and temperamentally, but today, at 40, is known chiefiy among other leading pianists. Perhaps his most important work: his year-round classes for hand-picked students from all over the world. At his summer home in Arezzo near Florence last week, Michelangeli was presiding over his latest international class of 34, enforcing iron discipline but treating musical problems with immense patience. He can dismiss a student at a moment's notice if he fails to show the "talent and good will"; yet he never takes fees from those...