Rudolf Serkin : A Life, and: Lost in the Stars: The Forgotten Musical Life of Alexander Siloti, and: Vladimir de Pachmann: A Piano Virtuoso's Life and Art (review)

Peter Grahame Woolf

Music and Letters, Volume 85, Number 3, August 2004, pp. 480-483 (Review)

Published by Oxford University Press

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/178712

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] Rudolf Serkin: A Life. By Stephen Lehmann and his devotion to his senior partner and their Marion Faber. pp. xiv + 344; CD. Oxford unique collaboration; their recordings together University Press,New York,2003,£20. ISBN are still venerated. In 1938 Serkin moved to 0-19-513046-4.) Switzerland,and the following year to the Lost in the Stars: The Forgotten Musical Life of USA,where he became `an American ', Alexander Siloti. By Charles F. Barber. pp. xix and was closely involved in creating the Leven- + 429; CD. Scarecrow Press,Lanham,Md., tritt Competition. 2002,$49.95. ISBN 0-8108-4108-8.) We learn that Serkin needed to practise Vladimir de Pachmann: A Piano Virtuoso's Life and harder and longer than many and an Art. By Mark Mitchell. pp. 231. Indiana element of struggle,both technical and against University Press,Bloomington,2002,£26.95. pervasive nervousness,communicated itself in ISBN 0-253-34169-8.) his performances. There are substantial accounts of his performing,teaching and forty `Accounts of the lives of performing musicians years' association with Marlboro,`a gathering of are not necessarily engrossing',say Stephen professional musicians for the purpose of study- Lehmann and Marion Faber,throwing down ing chamber music',which had been relatively the gauntlet; and,quoting their subject,Rudolf unappreciated in America before the 1950s. The Serkin 1903±91),they add: `Why should programmes of fifty years of Carnegie Hall anyone write about me?Ðall I did was practice, recitals are followed by forty pages of discog- practice,practice.' Serkin was unquestionably a raphy,listing Serkin's recordingsÐboth official great pianist,but his biography is not one that I and otherÐon 78s,LPs,and CD,but not the would have read were I not reviewing it. many preserved on 45s,tapes,cassettes,laser Serkin's LPs,cassette tapes,and CDs are still discs,and video-cassettes. There is no evalu- in circulation and valued for their sobriety and ation here of those recorded performances,or intellectual strength. By contrast,Alexander of the numerous re-recordings of Serkin's core Siloti 1863±1945) never recorded,and is only repertoryÐthere is scope for much future writ- mentioned occasionally for his arrangements ing on a famous pianist who is so thoroughly and published editions. Vladimir de Pachmann documented in sound. 1852±1933) is known now more for his eccen- Lehmann and Faber offer,however,a flat tricities than for his playing in the early days of style of writing that fails to take wing to pene- recording. It can prove serendipitous to be trate the inner world of this private man. Nor do pointed in unwonted directions,according well his friends and colleagues,whose edited contri- with my exploratory philosophy for Musical butions and tributes form a large part of the Pointers http://www.musicalpointers.co.uk/). book,come through as vital personalities. So, A fascinating musico-social history emerges while reading this book it was a relief to turn to from following the vicissitudes of these three some of Serkin's recordings: Beethoven concer- distinctive personalities,whose lives spanned tos and,from less central repertory,Schumann's collectively a century and a half,and who by Introduction and Allegro appassionato and Strauss's political necessity and by choice were wanderers Burlesque. Lastly,I listened with considerable around the globe. pleasure to the CD that comes with the book, Because this is a review of three books,not of presenting live recordings of Bach,Mendels- three pianists,I prefer to consider them in sohn,and Chopin's Op. 25 EÂ tudes, selected reverse chronological order,for reasons that from recitals at the ; it will become apparent. The authors of these brings Serkin vividly alive in a way that the substantial books are all diligent collectors of book may not do for those who did not know facts. Those about Rudolf Serkin are compre- him. hensive he retained every trivial scrap of paper) Lost in the Stars is an admirable attempt to and will be a valuable source for future genera- recover from the past a shadowy figure whose tions. But his joint biographers have been historical importance in the musical life of hampered by a subject who avoided inter- Russia and later America is not to be under- viewers and resisted biographers. estimated. Accounts of Alexander Siloti attest In their first hundred pages or so,Lehmann that as a pianist he was relatively close to Serkin, and Faber take us through Serkin's early years and poles away from the personality cult culti- in Eger Bohemia) and Vienna,his study with vated and enjoyed by his flamboyant contem- Schoenberg and immersion in contemporary porary Pachmann. music 1918±20) and the later rift,leading him The procession of great names in Charles F. to move on to Berlin and form the enduring Barber's biography owes nothing to mere name- `venerable firm of Busch and Serkin',recalling dropping,for Siloti became a central figure in St

480 Petersburg until the October Revolution. His in London. Reviews of his appearances at the activities are documented in the fullest detail, Wigmore Hall there emphasized his apparent with rounded pictures of the famous per- effortlessness,controlled rhythm,and tonal gra- sonalities encountered along the way. He stud- dations,and `deeply musical restraint'. Tendo- ied with Liszt,who remained his champion,and nitis in his right hand,relieved only by rest and he developed an interest in . He was restraint,led to his aversion to excessive practis- close to Tchaikovsky,premiered his First Piano ing. He was clearly a superb player,but his Concerto,and was entrusted with editing it for platform manner was studiedly economical, publication,with his own alterations,which the undemonstrative,and free of eccentricitiesÐtoo composer welcomed; more controversially,he much so for the American public later in his life. revised the Second Piano Concerto in an edition Barber analyses why Siloti's career was that always played. eclipsed by `lesser pianists and less-daring con- We learn about Siloti's incompatibility with ductors' and why,until this book,he had Vasily Il'ich Safonov,director of the Moscow become virtually forgotten. Marketing favoured Conservatoire from 1889,his departure in 1891, `the vastly entertaining foolishness of Vladimir and how the following year he began to estab- de Pachmann' and the growing importance of lish his European and American reputation as a recording. Siloti's post-1917 career never gained virtuoso pianistÐin Richard Taruskin's words, lasting momentumÐhis modest demeanour, `the greatest pianist who could have made rec- uncompromising stance,and reluctance to ords but didn't'. He introduced to the USA his record at a time when `a great artist could be young cousin Sergei Rachmaninov's C sharp in 100,000 homes at once' all told against him, minor Prelude: `two reputations were born'. despite some perceptive reviews,which Barber He was crucial in making Rachmaninov's quotes at length. career possible,saving his life by paying for From 1922 until his death in 1945,Siloti's medical treatment and afterwards for composi- home base was New York,where he taught at tion tuition. Later Siloti supported him during the of Music,and enjoyed the crisis following the disastrous premiere of critical acclaim,documented by Barber in the the latter's First Symphony and continued to do fullest detail,especially during three `golden so during the composition of the Second Piano years' from 1929 until 1931,when he gave his Concerto,which,as is well known,Rachmani- last public recital at Carnegie Hall. His come- nov was able to complete only after treatment by back ultimately collapsed because of his failure a hypnotherapist. Together,the two men pre- to sustain complete public acceptance,for the miered Rachmaninov's Second Suite for two reasons mentioned above. pianos. Siloti's teaching methods are described by his Back in St Petersburg,Siloti dominated an pupils,notably his emphasis on restraint and era as conductor and pianist and as impresario avoidance of `body rhetoric'. He came so to of the Siloti Concerts 1903±17),in which he resemble Liszt physically that a legend about introduced Casals and composers including his `father' actually started circulating; but that notion had already been scotched long before Stravinsky crucial for his early success),Proko- by Liszt himself,who,having done the neces- fiev,Skryabin,Elgar `Enigma' Variations, sary calculations about time and place,con- 1904),and Schoenberg  Pelleas und Melisande, cluded: `My dear Alexander,to my great 1912). All,however,was disrupted by the Octo- regret it is not possible.' ber Revolution: Siloti was jailed briefly,and his The book ends with seventy pages of appen- apartment ransacked; most of his belongings dices,including concert programmes,lists of and music library were never recovered some publishers and editions,a full bibliography, of his important music manuscripts survived and a necessarily limited discography piano because his daughter spotted them being used rolls and recordings by other artists),preceded to wrap meat and bought the butcher's entire by an examination in detail of one of Siloti's stock of wrapping paper!). Barber graphically Bach transcriptions,which are still sometimes describes the privations of this period. played. However,as an indication of his near In 1919 Siloti was briefly rehabilitated by the total eclipse,none of them has been included by Soviet regime,taught the piano at the Petrograd Angela Hewitt in her recent performances and Conservatory,opined that the 13-year-old Shos- recordings of Bach transcriptions,and the ill- takovich had `no musical abilities' Glazunov fated CD of fourteen of them,inserted into the came to his rescue),and was helped by an cover of Barber's book,is less than persuasive: extraordinary British spy to flee to Finland the pianist,James Barbagallo,died just before with his family,and later on to Berlin,Antwerp, and Paris. In 1920 the Silotis established a home

481 the Naxos recording could be completed,and so to Paris,to London in 1882 as `Chopin apostle it will not be released commercially. but not enough of a man for Beethoven'; back Charles Barber marshals his information two there in 1883 `he executes as he feels'. He was in full pages of acknowledgements indicate the the USA in 1888,and he toured back and forth magnitude of the task) persuasively,and his between there and Europe thereafter; his first writing style carries one forwardÐas satisfyingly recital at the Royal Albert Hall took place in for the general reader as for academics. The 1903. His playing,which divided opinion,came book is a pleasure to handle,there are conve- to be `representative of its historical momentÐ niently placed chapter-by-chapter footnotes,and defined by fin-de-sieÁ cle literature and the 1897 key personages are brought to life in some thirty Secessionist exhibition in Vienna'; indeed, evocative photographs and illustrations,includ- many aspects of his life and his art correspond ing splendid cartoons of Casals with Siloti,and to the preoccupations of those writers and of Liszt presenting to the piano-maker Julius artists. BluÈ thner on a plate his pupil Alexander Siloti. Mitchell places his narrative in the social Close acquaintance with Vladimir de context of Pachmann's varying surroundings, Pachmann's life has proved to be a most deals sensitively with his difficult relationship rewarding and enjoyable experience,right with his pianist wife,their foundering marriage, from the first sentence of Mark Mitchell's his homosexual tendency,and,crucially,his engrossing book. He introduces Pachmann by gullibility. This left him in thrall to an exploita- quoting `a young journalist' who was to tive chancer,Cesco Pallottelli,an Italian waiter become the great novelist Willa Cather) being perhaps) who became his `secretary',later told before a concert to expect to `fall under the manager,and gradually took over his life and enchantment of the manÐa mystic cultÐbut fortune,in a me nage aÁ trois after Pallottelli listen!' This encapsulates the contradictions of a married. Mitchell draws his references widely, famously eccentric pianist. Mitchell regales us and likens this set-up to E. M. Forster's with with anecdotes,both familiar and unfamiliar, Bob and Mary Buckingham. Immensely rich about his outrageous behaviour,but never loses from his concert-giving,Pachmann had one sight of the quality of the musician behind the particular self-indulgence: he could not resist mask. That is vouched for in many lengthy and seeking out and purchasing the most precious thoughtful accounts of Pachmann's perform- jewels,and he amassed a fabulous collection ances by the best critics of the period,some of worth millions of dollars which he named after them as eloquent as Cather; he was ranked composers and compositions `My love for gems among the finest pianists during his long is idealÐI have named them,Bach my best career and was the best-known Chopin special- diamond,Brahms a dusky emerald',p. 110). ist. He anticipated what has become commoner He treated them recklessly,carrying priceless nowadays: recitalists talking to their audiences. stones loose in his pockets. In his final illness He annotated the music as he played,teased with prostate cancer his collection `disappeared' and clowned,amused his audiences and into the hands of Pallottelli and/or a relative annoyed the more strait-laced,and congratu- whom Pallottelli engaged to nurse him. When lated himself `who will play like that when I am he died in 1933,he had virtually no personal gone?'). Thus his reputation grew,so that he possessions. filled the largest venues all over the world, By the time he was about 70,playing had routinely selling out London's Royal Albert become difficult for Pachmann,with tired and Hall. Chopin was central to his wide repertory, stiff muscles,and he devoted himself to a self- but not the fashionably effete,sickly,and emas- invented `new method' of playing,which devel- culated composer: he incorporated,to quote oped into an obsession. The quirks of his Edward Said,`the compelling role of tension, `obsessive,paranoid and self-dramatizing' char- occasionally even sadism' in Chopin's music. acter increased beyond eccentricity to frank Born in Odessa in 1852,Pachmann `invented mental illness,with bizarre compulsions that himself'Ð`My father is a Rabbi,my mother a showed up in concerts and alienated his audi- Turkey,and I am a pianist.' In childhood he ences; latterly `he gave abundantly of all that practised long and assiduously; assigned two was most intolerable in him and sparingly of Bach fugues for his first lessons in Vienna,he that which seduced and charmed'. returned to show that he could play all of the There is much to enjoy and amaze on every `48' from memory,and transposed into any key, page of Mitchell's book,and,as with Barber's and by the next lesson he had memorized all biography of Siloti,his selection of illustrations twenty-four of the Chopin E tudes! Any key and adds a vivid dimension to reading about a every country. . . We are taken with Pachmann larger-than-life character. Of the critics whom

482 Mitchell cites extensively,Olin Downes of the example,the very different playing of Schubert New York Times strikes a perceptive balance. At on fortepianos by Staier,Badura-Skoda,Bilson, Carnegie Hall in 1924 `it is not to be forgotten and Tverskaya. that underneath his fooling . . . lies a profound If a comparable trio of biographies of more knowledge of his art that often constitutes reve- recent and contemporary pianists comes to be lation in a single phraseÐhe gives performances written,the contentious issues of historical of a unique poetry and beauty which will die awareness will be inescapable,and a knowledge with him' pp. 169±70). Not quite so,because of the sounds earlier composers knew will be Pachmann was an enthusiast for the early axiomatic. Today's giants of the keyboard and gramophone,and in Mitchell's book there is a those of the coming generation need to address substantial discography by Allan Evans the interplay between performer and instru- pp. 195±9). Arbiter Records intends to issue ment,the acoustic situations of live and at least one recording of every work that Pach- recorded performance,and the rapidly changing mann committed to disc. Arbiter 129 confirms cultural contexts; all those considerations are Pachmann's `originality,technical command, becoming increasingly important,and to a tonal imagination,style sense and sinuous greater degree than they interested Pachmann, legato' Robert Dumm in Piano Journal,no. 70 Siloti,and Serkin. Spring 2003)). Listening to passages from Peter Grahame Woolf Chopin's Waltz Op. 64 No. 2 and four of the Nocturnes on amazon.co.uk,one finds that one's ears are quickly engaged by the lyrical beauties Portrait of Percy Grainger. Ed. by Malcolm Gillies behind the surface noise of the 1907±27 record- and David Pear. pp. xxxv + 220. Eastman ings,and the brief extracts online will surely Studies in Music,18. University of Rochester determine readers to acquire the Arbiter CD Press,Rochester,NY,2002,£40. ISBN 1- Pachmann, the Mythic Pianist as a companion to 58046-087-9.) Mark Mitchell's admirable biography. The fascination of defying the seeming limita- A glance at the select bibliography in this book tions of hammers striking strings,diametrically reminds us that the last twenty-five years have opposite to the essence of the human voice, witnessed a considerable revival of literary inter- continues to exercise the ingenuity of piano est in the life of Percy Grainger even though, makers and players. Pianists working from the judging by the curt dismissal of one London same scores are as infinitely various in their publisher,after seeing Colin Brumby's first interpretations as are human personalities. documentary study of the composer,it was Received tradition,and quests for individual believed that Grainger's contribution was expression and recognition,will long continue `rather slight' and that his appeal was one to counterpoint a debate that,in these last two restricted to the Australian market; indeed,the thought-provoking biographies,takes us back to expectation after Grainger's death in 1961 was the heyday of the grand piano and the begin- that,save for a few pot-boilers such as Handel in nings of its recorded history. the Strand, Country Gardens,and Molly on the Looking forward to the mid-2000s,will Stein- Shore,his music would quickly fall into obscur- way still dominate how we listen to keyboard ity. These predictions were wildly premature,as music of the last three centuries in concerts and the extraordinary proliferation of recordings on recordings and on the radio? Andras Schiff from Nimbus,Hyperion,and especially Chan- recently challenged audiences to his `Chopin dos have shown in recent years. There have also and his Idols' recitals each programme given been a number of musical studies,among them twice to full houses) by deploring the commonly Music by Percy Aldridge Grainger University of held assumption that `pianos should always be Melbourne,1978) and Percy Grainger's Kipling black and made by Steinway . . . Wigmore Hall Settings University of Western Australia,1980) used to be called the Bechstein HallÐwhen did by Kay Dreyfus one-time curator of the Grain- we last hear a Bechstein,BoÈ sendorfer or Ibach ger Museum in Melbourne); Lewis Foreman's here?' With a beautiful,rich brown Pleyel of edited collection of essays, The Percy Grainger 1860 on the platform to play Chopin,and his Companion London,1981); Frank Callaway's own specially commissioned Steinway/Fabbrini Grainger centennial volume,published as Stud- for Bach,Scarlatti,and Mozart,Schiff made us ies in Music,16 1982); and Wilfrid Mellers's think. Some individualistic interpreters may not Percy Grainger Oxford,1992). But perhaps the wish the focus of attention to be distracted from most significant book to raise the profile of themselves and shared with unfamiliar instru- Grainger's colourful and unconventional Wel- ments. However,they may be reassured by,for tanschauung was John Bird's Percy Grainger

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forward a new way that theory can be adapted to which the author reveals his prodigious skills as a composition, by analysing music not necessarily lecturer—full of life, humour, and ingenuity. to promote composing in any particular style or What relevance do Babbitt’s essays have for method, but instead to locate ideas—structural the present world of serious music? Certainly, his principles that lie outside time or history—by theoretical writings stand now in a different light which music can evolve. than in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, when The importance and originality of many of twelve-note theory was still crucially relevant to Babbitt’s essays is hidden from readers by his the composition of new music. It no longer is, fol- sometimes complex style of writing. He intro- lowing the great redirection of musical culture of duced his theory of invariance and combinatori- the 1970s that largely swept aside the composi- ality in the early 1960s primarily in the form of tional outlook of which Babbitt was a leading mathematical propositions. These were essential representative. Babbitt did not suffer this change to his formalized theory, although few readers of gladly. He found in it another example of the musical journals could have been expected to assault of the common man on the intellectual. decipher them. But in his subsequent writings, ‘There is nothing a no-nothing resents more than even in non-theoretical essays such as ‘Past and someone who knows something; he knows plenty Present Concepts of the Nature and Limits of of nothing and nothing’s plenty for him’ (p. 434). Music’ (Congress Report of the International Musicologi- The reader is reminded of similarly pessimistic cal Society 1961) and ‘The Structure and Function thoughts expressed by other great composers of a Musical Theory’ (College Music Symposium, 5 who have stood astride periods of changing (1965)), Babbitt continued to use a literary style taste—Schoenberg in 1930 exploding with indig- ridden with run-on sentences, jargon from non- nation at being labelled ‘outmoded’, or Hindemith musical disciplines, and explanations withheld at in 1963 assessing music under the influence of crucial points. Unlike Adorno’s writing—the serialism as ‘water polluted by the industrial complexity of which forces the reader’s engage- waste of civilization’ (Sterbende Gewässer). ment with ideas—Babbitt’s style suggests affecta- At the same time, Babbitt’s ideas on the tion and more than a little disdain for the reader. twelve-note system have become indispensable He makes no secret of those whom he wants to for the analysis of the twelve-note music of scare off—music historians, critics, and cultural Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky, and Babbitt him- historians are high on the list. self. His terminology is now widely accepted and His difficult literary style is also a symptom of used by virtually all technical writers on this topic the post-war period, when complexity was the in the English language. His critique of the order of the day. Its complications were shared musical culture of the decades following the Sec- with the contemporaneous output—in both ond World War will remain a primary source for words and music—of Boulez, Stockhausen, understanding this period in musical history. Ligeti, and other composer-essayists of the BRYAN R. SIMMS 1960s. As post-war angst evaporated in the 1970s doi:10.1093/ml/gci024 and 1980s, Babbitt’s literary mannerism also subsided. His articles and lectures from the 1980s and 1990s return to the clear, forceful, and witty use of language that he had revealed so profitably CORRECTIONS. The Editors and the reviewer regret in his earliest essays and reviews. Collected Essays is three errors in the review of Mark Mitchell’s book for this reason best read from back to front. A Vladimir de Pachmann: A Piano Virtuoso’s Life and Art good place to start is ‘On Having Been and Still (Music & Letters, 85 (2004)). All are on page 482: in Being an American Composer’ (Perspectives of New column 1, the words attributed to the late Edward Music, 27 (1989)), which is an engaging and Said are in fact the author’s own, and Pachmann authoritative analysis of musical modernism in was born in 1848, not 1852; in column 2, he was in Europe and America since the 1930s. The reader the USA in 1890, not 1888. unfamiliar with Babbitt’s technical ideas might then consult the lectures in Words about Music, in doi:10.1093/ml/gci025

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