PIANIST’S PIANISTS

Part 3 (part one, two)
EP: Do I get paid for these gems? If so, I charge by the word!!!
TR: You sound like a writer.
EP: In my estimation Horowitz recorded better due to his being a more sound oriented pianist. Also his virtuosity was more electrifying than Serkin’s. I heard Horowitz live only once and Serkin many times. I was able to hear Horowitz’s color in his recordings. Serkin was not a colorist and his impact was so much due to his power that it was rare for a recording to capture that.
> “…Ormandy refused to allow me to play the Brahms because I was too
> “young”.
TR: I find this just appalling!
EP: Ormandy was well known for “putting down” young performers who he thought needed to be put in their place. Vladimir Sokoloff told me that he accompanied Jaime Laredo in three different violin concerts when Jaime was 16 or 17 years old in an audition for Ormandy. Jaime went on to win the Queen Elizabeth competition when he was 18. After hearing excerpts from all three concertos, Ormandy asked for three or four other concertos that Jaime did not have prepared. When hearing this, Ormandy lambasted him for his arrogance, and limited repertoire, telling him “that’s the problem with you young people these days. In my day we could play fifteen concerts at any given time.” According to Sokoloff, Jaime was quite upset over these comments. In my experience, he said “what made you think that you are able to play the Brahms D minor at your age”? I answered that I had played it for five years and with both Maurice Abravanel in California, and with Howard Mitchell and the National Symphony Orchestra, and that Serkin thought it was a good piece for me. He responded that “you will not play it with my orchestra”. After eliminating every virtuosic concerto that a twenty-year-old wanted to perform, he agreed to the Beethoven 2nd as his way of putting me down. Fortunately, he was unable to conduct my concert and William Smith agreed to the Tschaikovsky as I mentioned in a previous email.
> “…Interestingly, Peter has become very associated with performing
> the Brahms D minor concerto, and that was RS’s signature piece. I
> heard Peter play this about 20 years ago and then again about three
> or four years ago. His playing had changed remarkably and the most
> recent rendition was more introspective and reserved, particularly
> in the 2nd movement. For whatever reason, Peter does not allow the
> passion to explode or even flow freely in the way that RS did.”
TR: I’ve always wanted to read an informed essay comparing father and son
in just this way, through the various pieces they became known for and
how they differed in their approaches… my sense was that Peter was a
VERY strong, rebellious personality when he was younger, but that he
has tended towards a more conservative groove later on… Very
interesting that the Brahms D minor has become one of his big
pieces… do you care to speculate on the psychological implications
of that?
EP: Honestly, this is a huge issue in my estimation and I can only comment on the difference in performances, not why he ended up playing the piece so much. In my estimation, Peter has become very gentle and introspective as he has gotten older, and perhaps avoids expressing such music in the passionate outgoing way that his father did. Peter had a very conflicted relationship with his father and I recall a quote in the NY Times where he said that his relationship with his father improved when he realized and accepted the fact that RS was not capable of loving him in the way that he had always wanted. I don’t remember the exact words, but it was something like that. It might be that a piece like the Brahms D minor would recall too much pain if he let himself go with it. This is purely speculation on my part and I really don’t know for certain.
> I don’t really have a person who comes to mind who was an unlikely
> RS student…
TR: I think of Richard Goode’s Beethoven set as carrying that Serkin
“torch,” he’s settled into the same “basic” performing repertoire etc.
I guess I’m wondering if there’s anybody out there who studied under
Serkin who turned into a WHIZBANG Chopin figure or something… I
really like that “Rudy should play more Chopin” quote… to my
knowledge there’s no recording of Serkin’s Barcarolle… am I mistaken?
EP: I do not know of anyone who studied with him who became known for “different” repertoire, but do not pretend to know what everyone is playing. Tony Querti is still active and I don’t know his repertoire. Eugene Istomin, Seymour Lipkin, Teddy Lettvin, Susan Starr, Richard Goode, Steven DeGroote, Christina Ortiz, Andre Michel Schubb, Cecile Licad, are the ones who come to mind. I play a reasonable amount of Chopin (the Baracarolle, Fantasie, 4th Ballade, all the Etudes) and am comfortable playing this music in a very un-Serkinesque manner. His approach was physically too tight to be able to do justice to the myriad changes of color. However, he taught this music wonderfully.
> I cannot say that I have ever “gotten into” Rachmaninoff’s
> recordings, but have heard some that stand out such as the Bb Minor
> Chopin Sonata. Overall, I still have to rate Artur Rubinstein as my
> favorite pianist, but not for everything.
>
TR: Favorite Rubinstein story: Joseph Schwartz recollected purchasing a
new Steinway for the Oberlin’s Finney Chapel, the big concert hall,
and coordinating its installation, tuning and voicing the week
Rubinstein was scheduled to play a solo recital. Everybody was very
excited because they’d been suffering with a truck of a piano in there
for years and had finally broken through the red tape and installed a
fine new instrument. Rubinstein shows up, plays the first half, and
some piano faculty are chatting at the break about how great the new
piano sounds. The technician overhears them and tells them he had to
swap out the new piano for the old one at the last minute due to a
broken key he couldn’t fix. Rubinstein was making the old piano sound
so good they mistook it for the new one they had just bought…
More questions:
Favorite recording by a pianist you don’t particularly like:
EP: That’s a tough question because a great performance of anything is persuasive for me to then like a pianist who I might not have liked. I hated Berman’s Tchaikovsky Bb when I first heard it, but in later years came to love it. In general I dislike Arrau’s recordings, but did hear a very fine 4th Beethoven in a telecast performance. He apparently believed that recordings were different and you were obligated to a give ‘blueprint” of what the piece is when it’s a recording. James Tocco studied with him and told me this. I love most of Berman’s recordings–Liszt Transcendental, Dante Sonata, Liszt Sonata, Beethoven Op. 57, and yes that 3rd Rachmaninoff is fantastic–maybe the best out there.

TR: For me that’s Lazar Berman’s Rach 3 with Abbado, most persuasive
rendering of that monster and I REALLY dislike a lot of Berman’s
stuff. Is there a Serkin recording you find not to your liking? A
Rubinstein? Is there a Horowitz interpretation of something you
studied under Serkin that you find captivating despite its
waywardness? I sort of get off now on all that eccentric flailing
about, except in his Mozart.
Are there any pianists you used to abhor but find yourself like as you
get older?
EP: Van Cliburn was a pianist I did not like after hearing him in the years after he won the Tchaikovsky Competition. I thought his Tchaikovsky Bb was too tame after growing up with Horowitz’s rendition, likewise with the 3rd Rachmaninoff. But now when I hear those recordings, I really love them. It was amazing playing for someone so young.
TR: If you had to take 5 recordings by different pianists to a desert
island, which would they be?
EP: Serkin’s Brahms 1st, Berman’s Rachmaninoff 3rd, Horowitz’s Tchaikovsky Bb, Brendel’s Schumann Symphonic Etudes, Serkin’s Op. 111 and “Emperor” Concerto, Berman’s Rachmaninoff Etudes and Preludes, to name a few.
TR: What are your five favorite piano recitals ever… Concertos? Which
pianists do you wish you could have heard live?
EP: Richter in 1960 or 61 playing in Los Angeles, Serkin in Curtis Hall in 1962 playing 109.110. and 111 Beethoven Sonatas, Rubinstein playing at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia in the early 60’s, Horowitz in 1978 in Tempe, Arizona, Chura Cherkassky playing in Cincinnati in 1980 or 81. I never heard Gilels live. I would have wanted to heard Hoffman and Josef Lhevinne. Serkin’s Beethoven “Emperor” was unforgettable with the Philadelphia, perhaps the most electrifying piano and orchestra performance I ever heard…