Word: steinways
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Astoria neighborhood of Queens is just across the East River from Manhattan, but an ocean away in tempo and texture. Things move a bit slower here; pedestrians wait for the signal light before crossing. Steinway, a commercial street in the working-class area, could pass for the main avenue of a decaying Middle West town. On this stage, all parts of the overture sound simultaneously: an ersatz locomotive clangs and toots; an accordionist squeezes out The Sidewalks of New York; a sound truck emits the appropriately upbeat Buckle Down Winsocki...
This cozy quality, alas, has never done the stomach-Steinway much good with serious classical musicians. Its tone, they say, is too wheezily domineering for accompaniment and too monotonous for anything else...
...finally mass departure. What is music coming to...?" Only to renewal. The pianist, by refusing to "play," gave rhetorical expression to one of the dramatic esthetics of musical avant-garde composer John Cage. Our matronly subscriber almost certainly goes to ten concerts, sits on the left, prefers the Steinway, adores podium gymnastics "if not excessive" (meaning horizontal and unconscious), parades at intermission. She listens with equal stolidity to Scheherezade and Mahler's Sixth Symphony, gazes transfixed at the flashing brass, and probably harbors an unbreakable, unreflective, reactionary, insensate detestation of all "modern music" which neither celebrates horses and streams...
Tuesday, 9 a.m.: Johansen arrives at Philharmonic Hall to check the piano, decides that he needs a different one. He goes to the nearby Steinway building, chooses a piano, has it sent to the hall, then settles down for five solid hours of furious practicing. Then back to Philharmonic Hall for rehearsal, on the way gulping down a luncheon of carrot juice at a health-food store...
...those moments that every performer dreads. Pianist Vladimir Horowitz was halfway through Rachmaninoff's Sonata in B-Flat at Manhattan's Carnegie Hall. And then-poing!-the sound of string #17 (bass A-note) giving way on the Steinway concert grand. An embarrassed unease settled over the hall while a technician frantically made repairs. Finally, Horowitz completed the piece and responded to the thunderous ovation with four encores. Said the famed firm's president, Henry Z. Steinway: "Each time this happens I want to crawl into the woodwork." Soothed Horowitz: "It's like a flat tire...