Word: pianistics
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Labelled the "musical highlight of Winterfest," Tuesday's Boston Symphony concert marked the first appearance of a Harvard undergraduate as soloist, pianist Eugene Indjic '69. His performance certainly justified the honor; an achievement even more impressive considering the piece, the hall, and the conductor. Indjic chose to play Brahm's Piano Concerto No. 2, one of the largest and most formidable of piano works. Aside from its extreme technical demands, the concerto presents a challenge of organization; most critically, of pacing and uniting the sprawling first movement, a problem of drama as well as form. The last three movements, while...
...inspirational. While visibly concerned with keeping orchestra and soloist together, he allowed them repeatedly to part company, primarily in the second movement. Orchestral climaxes seemed halfhearted, and the solo playing (that of cellist Jules Eskin) almost mediocre. For all his apparent courtesy, Leinsdorf did little to assist the pianist in matters of detail, and in several instances appeared to intimidate Indjic into hasty exits...
...sharp eye of Josef Joachim, who soon brought the Wunderkind to Barth. At eleven, he played Mozart's Concerto in A Major with the Berlin Symphony. In 1906, thanks to the influence of a U.S. music critic who had heard him play at Paderewski's Swiss villa, the young pianist was signed for a tour of the U.S. It was a dud. At his debut in Carnegie Hall, the critics dismissed Rubinstein for being, as one put it, "half-baked?not a prodigy, not an adult." Those were the days when he was playing with more fire than accuracy...
...made up to Nela, and after a persistent courtship married her in London in 1932. A year later they had their first child, Eva.* That started Rubinstein thinking about the future. Says he: "I didn't want people telling my child after I died, 'What a pianist your father might have been!' " In 1934, he took his family to a mountain cottage in southeastern France, rented an old upright piano and set it up in a nearby stable. Often playing by candlelight, Rubinstein labored for three months, working as much as nine hours a day, polishing his technique and repertory...
...Debussy's old home, as well as a summer place on the Costa del Sol. Still, he rarely gets a chance to stay in one place for long. He has never stopped living well, and indeed, next to his music, he loves traveling best. "If I were not a pianist," he says, "I would be a travel agent." He could also be a professional connoisseur. He owns a fine collection of paintings and 2,000 rare books ("I could cry over a book with a fine binding"). His ties come from Turnbull's in London, his handmade shirts from Barclay...