Word: virtuoso
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Hulking Gregor Piatigorsky, topflight cello virtuoso, would like to see younger musicians get ahead, too. But last week in San Diego, where he paused between concert tours, Cellist Piatigorsky took a swipe at an old method of helping young artists-musical competitions. Said he: "I shall never again be a contest judge. Too often they are downright absurd. Why insult and discourage 14, let us say, to honor or help one?" The last time he judged a contest. Piatigorsky said, he and his fellow judge, Violinist Jascha Heifetz, heard a singer, a flutist, a clarinetist and a composer...
...cannot be improved. In a concert, you feel you can always do it better next time." Studio sessions are so painful to Serkin that he has been known to forget, conveniently, to take his music with him. As a result, the record people do everything possible to make their virtuoso comfortable, once even lugged their heavy equipment to Vermont, to immortalize Serkin's performance of the "Moonlight" Sonata...
...vacuum cleaners in Kenya ("Hut to hut?" somebody asks), but actually they are off to swing a big uranium swindle. Stranded at a small Italian port while their steamer makes repairs, the six fall in with a discreetly bogus British peer Edward Underdown) and his wife (Jennifer Jones), a virtuoso liar who spends nost of the picture in a state of cadenza...
...best of all pianists living today. Last month, after listening to him in a program of Beethoven, including the difficult 55-minute "Diabelli" Variations, the London Times granted him the full range of pianistic talents: "Demoniac violence . . . ethereal cantabile . . . the phenomenal technique of a virtuoso and the vision of a seer." Amsterdam's Het Parool called his playing "sublime ... an overwhelming experience...
Digging Deeper. Periodically Pianist Katchen returned to his homeland for a recital. "My technique," says Katchen. "caused many critics to classify me as strictly a virtuoso; a technician who is able to race brilliantly through Liszt Rhapsodies and Chopin Etudes." As recently as 1951, Manhattan critics felt that he had plenty of speed but not enough depth, and Julius returned to his Left Bank apartment in Paris and more Euro pean appearances...