Word: pianist
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Beethoven: "Emperor" Concerto (Rudolf Serkin, pianist, with New York Philharmonic-Symphony conducted by Bruno Walter; Columbia; 10 sides). This noble old warhorse, often recorded before, is freshly revealed in its full grandeur, thanks to a finely conceived performance, a finely balanced recording...
Audiences of the early days nocked to hear the Polish pianist Volovsky "play 400 notes in one measure"; to watch jullien, famed French-English conductor of the 18505, lift a pair of kid gloves from a gold platter and carefully draw them on his fingers before conducting Beethoven; to hear & see 100 red-shirted firemen at the Boston Peace Jubilee of 1869 clanking 100 anvils to Verdi's Anvil Chorus...
Chopin: Fifteen Waltzes (Alexander Brailowsky, pianist; Victor; 14 sides). Russian-born Brailowsky, who has given marathon performances of every note of Chopin's 169 pieces, plays these nervous, undanceable dances with great dash and glitter...
Schumann: Dichterliebe (Poet's Love) (Lotte Lehmann, soprano, and Bruno Walter, pianist; Columbia; 8 sides). Two fine musicians in their first recorded collaboration. But Mme. Lehmann's voice, often breathy, sounds queer in these songs of strictly masculine love...
...periodic crescendos of rage (against jazz, hot dogs, flash bulbs, etc.), makes a point of being nearly late at concerts. He plays a Baldwin piano, and wherever he goes he is attended by a sort of caddy, supplied by the Baldwin people to look after the piano, piano stool, pianist. Plaintively the caddy says: "It don't seem right." Nor does the caddy ever get the piano stool adjusted to suit Iturbi: "Wherever I put it, he don't like it. I have even measured the thing with a yardstick-bought the yardstick to do it-but still...