My Early Years: Geneva, New York, Cleveland
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Chapter 1 My Early Years: Geneva, New York, Cleveland RA: Let’s begin with you saying something about your early years with your family, especially with regard to the historical context within which your early development took place, and how that affected your eventual musical, philo- sophical, and artistic pursuits. Michael: My life began on a hopeful note. I mean that literally. I was born on September 13, 1942, in Geneva, Switzerland, which was the second day of Rosh Hashanah—the second day of the Jewish New Year. My father was fond of tell- ing the story about it. While my mother and I were still in the hospital, my father came to visit us. After the visit, he went to Victoria Hall, the home of L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, where he was the principal violist at the time. The orchestra was already in rehearsal when he arrived. As he walked down the aisle toward the stage, the venerable conductor, Ernest Ansermet, turned around. After recognizing my father, he stopped the orchestra and asked the musicians to play a D major fanfare in honor of my birth! My father would tell that story as if a great good omen had been bestowed upon me and my family. I’ve internalized that story so much that I have always been partial to the key of D major! Still, it was a difficult time for my parents. The War was on. It would be three more years before it would come to an end, and anoth- er two years after that before our family could immigrate to America. In the meantime, during my very early years in Geneva, I became aware of serious problems. I can’t recall how old I was, but while playing on the floor, I would hear hushed voices talking about death. Later, I became aware that our family was in dan- ger—more particularly, my father’s parents, still in Hungary, were in danger. Eventually, I learned that, with many others, they had been killed in a gas chamber. RA: How did you handle that awareness? Michael: I now know that very young children go through an egocentric stage, during which they think that the whole world is their creation. Looking back, that appears to have been true with me. I thought that I had created this © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:�0.��63/97890043880�7_003 <UN> 10 Chapter 1 terrible world. I recall blaming myself for creating a world of death. I recall that already from a very early age, I employed a strategy to withdraw from all the talk about war and death. I would look up at the ceiling to the furthest point in the room. I would focus my attention at the spot where the two contiguous walls met the ceiling, and imagine that I was there, or, I projected myself as being there. In that way, I tried to remove myself from what was going on in the conversations around me—to remove myself from the horrible things people were talking about. I would do that again and again. In retrospect, you could say I tried to detach myself. RA: Did your parents notice that you were doing this? Michael: I can’t recall that they did. It was a kind of private habit. RA: What were your parents like? I understand you also had a brother. Michael: Yes, Peter. But first, let me start with my mother, although it was with my father with whom I eventually identified more strongly. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to appreciate how exceptional my mother was—as a student, musician, wife, mother, pianist, composer, and confidante to her friends and neighbors. My mother was born Susan (Suzi) Strauss in 1914, in Stuttgart, Germany. She died quietly in her sleep at the age of ninety-three, in Cleveland. An only child, she was extraordinarily talented and had a single-mindedness about her piano playing. By the time she was ten years old, she knew she was going to be a professional pianist. She entered the Stuttgart Musikhochschule—a college of music—in her early teens, where she worked with some extraordinary people, including pianist, Walter Rehberg. My mother graduated in 1933, at the age of eighteen, being one of the youngest graduates in the school’s history. Original- ly, she had been in touch with Artur Schnabel, in Berlin, and she had intended to go to Berlin to study with him. However, Hitler had come to power in 1933, and Rehberg cautioned her to get out of Germany as soon as possible, because Jews had no future there anymore. Fortunately, she was able to get out of the country right before Hitler’s madness began. When Rehberg himself emigrated from Germany to Switzerland to avoid the Nazis, my mother followed him to Lucerne, so that she could continue her piano studies with him. Once there, she also attended master classes under Edwin Fischer, and she studied with Dinu Lipatti in Geneva. <UN>.