Word: slenczynska
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Pianists: Jacques Abram, Gary Graffman, Eugene Istomin, Lillian Kallir, Rudolf Serkin, Ruth Slenczynska...
FORBIDDEN CHILDHOOD (263 pp.)-Ruth Slenczynska and Louis Biancolli-Doubleday...
...Ruth Slenczynska was different. Before she was even born, her Polish immigrant father knew she would be a musician, and when he first saw her in a Sacramento hospital two hours after birth, he sobbed ecstatically over her sturdy wrists and padded fingertips. Twelve days later he confidently announced that she would "be one of the world's greatest musicians." He meant...
...Since Mozart." In Forbidden Childhood (written with New York World-Telegram and Sun Music Critic Louis Biancolli), Ruth Slenczynska recalls how her father cursed her, kept her hungry and beat her into being a genius. Nine hours a day, seven days a week, she sat practicing in her slip at the keyboard, never wearing a dress because the sweat would have ruined it. Her mother's protests were useless. In all things the terrified child obeyed the man who, after saving her from drowning, told her: "I just saved your life. Your life belongs to me and me alone...
...divorced (because her husband, like her father before him, began directing her musical career), Ruth Slenczynska is in the midst of a powerful comeback. After one false start, she returned to concertizing six years ago, has since played more than 600 concerts in Europe and the U.S., recently recorded three LPs for Decca. With a measure of success she has risen to a measure of compassion, and though in Forbidden Childhood she condemns her father (he died six years ago) for what he was, she forgives him for what he did. Perhaps through his own fault, her father...