BERNARD HOLLAND A Cavalcade Of Pianists, And You Are There ARTURO BENEDETTI MICHELANGELI ARTHUR RUBINSTEIN VLADIMIR HOROWITZ WILHELM KEMPFF ALFRED CORTOT • (Krmpff); Oeult.-licGramnx^.'nr : Jwy RcKhirlt (M«Mangc:i) USIC lovers rarely have a cameras at every opportunity. have a hard time with music criticism and ing sense of continuity. Kapell was magnetic chance to be voyeurs. But We should be grateful for what Lincoln In a series ol‘¡archival ‘ Great Pianists of the 20th Cen­ insist on translating musical thought into lit­ for the excitement he generated in up-tempo Center and its curator Allan Evans have erary thought. music, and then there was the sad romance tury on Film,” a Lincoln Center turned up. Historians did them no favors. films, the re|lertory may Mseries that has run for the last month and It was certainly the right place to ask of his early death at the beginning of a suc­ Getting the films here took sweat and seren­ such questions. The series, by definition ends today, has given audiences at the sold- be familiar, Ijut the cessful career. Public reputation can be dipity; obtaining the rights was a gargan­ more about musicians than about music, vague: Kapell on so many lips; NovaBs, infi­ out Walter Reade Theater a glimpse of what tuan effort, played out many times in many begged them In terms of repertory, there performers look like up close and has on oc­ vantage poiiit is not. nitely more talented and also well recorded places. We may never see some of these was little to amaze the ear. Chopin showed in her time, virtually forgotten. casion let the same audiences overhear itemsagain. up 44 times, Beethoven 20, including 4 con­ What pianists say about what they do. There have been delightful appearances curious, for here was often a live audience certos (rhe Fourth twice) and 14 sonatas ID weever attain Arrau's "50 per- \ Sixteen programs and, by my count. 59 pi­ from pianists on the margin of fame : (the "Appassionata” three times). anists have offered interviews, musical witnessing a ftlmcdaudience witnessing a | cent solution"? We came close in I Yvonne Lefébure, the teacher of choice in No explorations here ; rather, well-trav­ ' Lefèbure’s masterly organization i snippets, sometimes complete pieces, even my days at the Paris Conservatory, and performance. The ifaturc of public playing, Claudio Arrau said In an interview, is the eled repertory used to to demonstrate the pi­ of Bach’s A minor Organ Fugue complete sonatas or concertos. Briefly, peo­ Guiomar NovaBs, a Brazilian who’in the anist’s acumen. No surprises either. The ple were able to watch Paul Wittgenstein one-time nature of Die exchange between '(RWV 54.3, in the Liszt arrangement). Ar- / postwar years played Schumann as grace player and audiencl. Yet here was unrepea­ culture of recordings has already turned us thur Rubinstein may have done it outrighr’ I butcher Ravel’s Left-Hand Concerto In si­ fully as anyone who ever lived. (Her ex­ away from discovery and toward compara­ lence; butcher, at any rate. In the opinion of table spontaneity Ming repeated spontane­ when he played the Chopin Barcarolle for an \ cerpts here were mostly Chopin.) One rel­ ously again Noonejat least, seemed to in­ tive shopping. It was hard not to overhear audience in St. Petersburg Rubinstein ' the composer, who, helpless before the pian­ ished bedrocks of German style like Wil­ ardent cognisccnti in the lobby arguing the ist’s contractual rights as commissioner of sist on sitting at thefeft of the hall to watch raised his hands, and all the silliness of 'ex- helm Kempff, Edwin Fischer and Wilhelm the pianist's hands. merits of Myra Hess’s Opus 110 versus Le- ëoMkxi" versus * interpretation'’ faded - the piece, could do nothing to stop the blood­ Backhaus. Clifford Curzon, Solomon and the Mr. Arrau at one (Joint addressed the ever fébure’s. (Not a word about Beethoven’s away Œ ( shed. Die conductorial hands seen in the disgraced collaborator Alfred Cortot have Opus 110.) film were Ravel’s own. enigmatic question of composer and inter­ For the playing of a piece of music is not appeared. also. Benno Moiselwitsch and preter. and how mutt of each should go into The idea of composer as prop was abetted the superimposition of an artist’s personal . Lincoln Center's inclusions have been as Mieczyslaw Horszowski. by some strong performing personalities. remarkable as the several prominent ab­ what the audience hears. Fifty-fifty was his ty on the composer's ; nor is it a balancing . | The post-Liszt school of virtuosity was answer: an unsatisfactory one, but then,so Richter’s enormous assets, grimly applied, act between the two. It is the executant's re­ sences. Searches of film and television ar­ represented by Ignaz Friedman. Vladimir is every other. Perhips the pianist was talk­ were a powerful presence: uniformly men­ sponse to the music's concrete statement of chives turned up no Rachmaninoff. Nothing, de Pachmann, Josef Hofmann and Josef ing more to himselfkaan to us. acing, always deserving of respect, hardly needs. f either, from Walter Gieseking or Dinu Li- Lhevinnc. There have been exotic birds like Bernard Gavoty,Ms. Lefèbure’s televi­ lovable. Richter seemed to crush music with How naturally, indeed how amorously, pattL Sviatoslav Richter and Vladimir Hor­ Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Samson sion interviewer, toôk up the argument with his Integrity. Rubinstein bent to the harmony’s gravita- / owitz, on the other hand, are everywhere. François; also, the eminent Soviet-era words like "exécution'' and "Interpréta­ I wish I could speak more lovingly of Wil­ Horowitz became a virtual one-man media tional pull; how naturally he felt the end of a( teacher Heinrich Neuhaus, Add to them an tion.” But such verted delicacies seemed liam Kapell’s appearances. I remember his I phrase when he was at its beginning. Wit- £ \ industry in the 197ü’sand8O’s; Richter, de­ evening of jazz, including the 20th century’s less an explanationof musical performance electric energy, but electricity could not res­ spite protestât ions of puritan reclusiveness, nessed here was something simple, divineljr ( master of omission. Count Basie. than a descent into Intellectual self-abuse. cue performances of Scarlatti and Chopin so: a song without words and a musician ui)- \ seems to have placed himself in front of The ground rules for these events were Languagc-obscsseclas they are, the French that had little grace or color and only a hall- i der Its spell. Mr. Gavoty, go home. □/.