Word: scorings
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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PROMISES, PROMISES is a slick, amiable and derivative musical based on the film The Apartment. Jerry Orbach is splendid as the tall, gangling antihero, but the rhythms of Burt Bacharach's score sound something like sporadic rifle fire...
...Serkin was to play with the Philadelphians in Manhattan's Philharmonic Hall the following evening. Could Johansen fill in? Johansen has never even heard the piece, a little-known transcription by Beethoven of his only violin concerto. He dashes next door to the music library, glances at the score, agrees to do it. What he does not know is that twelve other pianists have already declined...
Monday, 10 p.m.: Johansen arrives in Manhattan, barely making a 6 p.m. flight from Madison. On the plane, he has made his first real study of the score. He has had plenty of experience. Trained in Berlin by Egon Petri, he played concerts in Europe for four years before moving to the U.S. in 1929. He has made five previous New York appearances, notably a 1966 performance of Busoni's challenging Piano Concerto. But now the magnitude of what he has undertaken overwhelms him. At a hotel, he recites "a prayer to Ludwig for help," and drops...
Tuesday, 4 p.m.: Johansen and Ormandy meet each other for the first time. "Did you practice the cadenzas?" asks Ormandy. "What cadenzas?" replies Johansen. His score does not happen to include them. At this point, Ormandy says that he is having a heart attack. But the one-hour rehearsal goes on, with Ormandy concentrating on the passages where piano and orchestra play together. A messenger is dispatched to obtain a score of the cadenzas. Later Johansen practices backstage, then hurries to the hotel for his tails, which are due back from the valet. No tails. Back to Philharmonic Hall...
Tuesday, 9:30 p.m.: Johansen strides coolly onstage in a grey business suit. After the orchestral opening, his first solo entrance is firm, clean and smoothly phrased. He reads carefully from the score, but otherwise nothing in his playing betrays the tension onstage. After the first movement, Ormandy leans over to whisper: "Bravo." Johansen ripples out silvery pianissimos in the slow movement, builds the finale with structural logic and power. At the finish, the audience-which has been told only thai Peter Serkin is "indisposed" and knows nothing of what has gone on-gives Johansen a warm ovation. Ormandy...