Word: pianistics
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Scoffing at the recent defection of Novelist Anatoly Kuznetsov, the Soviet government pointed to Vladimir Ashkenazy, 32, one of the world's great pianists, as an example of a Soviet artist who travels happily in and out of his homeland. "A travesty of truth," replied Ashkenazy from Greece, where he was vacationing. Indeed, the pianist has not set foot on Russian soil since 1963, when he fled Moscow in fear and disgust. Ashkenazy explained that he had been forbidden to travel for three years after his U.S. tour in 1958, and was later granted an exit visa only...
...York are consistent Reardon admirers-which is fairly remarkable for a Manhattan-born boy who started out to be a bank president. After studying business administration in college for three days, Reardon switched to music, "because those kids were much more fun. I tried to be a pianist," he recalls, "but my hands sweat when I'm nervous, and when your hands sweat as a pianist, forget it. It's like Niagara Falls." He also experimented with composition, but was swiftly urged by his teacher to take up singing instead...
...black sheep. He showed a distinct preference for baseball, slang and jazz-all alien to the cultural traditions of his European-emigrant parents. His German father was an eminent New York piano teacher, his Czech mother a lecturer and translator of books. Brother Arthur was a well-known concert pianist, critic and teacher until his death last January. As for Frank, he lasted out the early days of the Depression on hustle and odd jobs, then began singing his own songs for his supper at an East Side night spot. That led to the Broadway revue, The Illustrators...
...sonata is unplayable today. He says that is can be played on a harpsichord and a violin with loosened bow to bring out the full flavor of the double-stopping. Wagner felt that the timber of the violin and the piano are naturally incompatible. Madame Carmirelli's accompanying pianist, Luis Battle, solved the problem by playing inconspicuously in the background, allowing the violin to dominate the sonata...
...time, both tempo and dynamics were much less varied than they have been since. Then, the slow movements and thew allegros more closely resembed each other in speed. In dynamics, Bach conceived of his works as built of solid, steady blocks of sound. Madame Carmirelli constantly shifted from pianist to forte and from slow to fast. It is true Bach wrote the sonatas as little "soul-states" as Schweitzer says, but he writes with polyphone rather than her extremes of performance...