Mtt

! Ì7y ¿ en^et&yx . Mu5(£ ¿bJt? Mvsiaflb/S

gradually works into a very expressive climax. You are absolutely gripped by the gradual unfolding of the melodic lines. It is twelve-tone music, but it is very lyrical. It is really quite simple in many ways, although anything but simple to do. I would have thought that anyone who isn’t terrified of an opera that isn’t in straightforward C major would find it totally approachable.People shouldn’t be frightened of the music. Anybody who loves really expressive, beautiful, emotional melody will find it in this opera.’ Both men are concerned that his and Osiris should be performed as Lutyens has written it. ’Doing a major piece for the first time necessitates a fidelity to the composer’s conception,' remarks Ashman, it’s all right to play around with Wagner because everyone knows Wagner, but nobody knows Isis and Osiris. If this production leads to anything further for the opera, it will be because the opera is good, not because of what we have done with it.’ Isis and Osiris will be given three performances, on November 26 and 29 and December 1, all at 7.30 at Morley College, 61 Westminster Bridge Road. SEI, which is close to the South Bank and Waterloo and Lambeth North tube stations. RF

Piatigorsky

WHFN I VfSTTPn st hk • Prades on the French side of the Pyrenees, he talked of his younger colleagues. Of one distinguished cellist Casals said, ‘He is a bom musician.’ Of another he said, 'He is a born virtuoso.’ When I mentioned Piatigorsky, Casals declared, 'He is the rarest of them all. He is a bom artist.' New that Piatigorsky is dead, one wonders which half of the dual personality who seemed to inhabit his tall, handsome physique (as he carried his on to the platform, he made it seem not much larger than a ) will be missed most. He was first of all an entirely dedicated musician, to whom the cello was sacred and music an art to be served with religious fervour. His musical friends and partners were the elect of the world of music — Schnabel, Horowitz, Artur Rubinstein, Toscanini, Stravinsky and Rachmaninov and what he called the ‘youngsters’ — the generation of Daniel Barenboim. His playing and personality led many a contemporary composer to write for his instrument and among the last works he inspired was the Walton Concerto, which he first played at a concert of the Royal Philharmonic Society. The other Piatigorsky was a compulsive talker, never silent, prefering, as it seemed, people to places and talking to eating. Much of his taik was verbal clowning governed by a wildly active fantasy. On one occasion, when he had arrived tired after an overnight flight, an interviewer hoped that Piatigorsky haG

Gregor Piatigorsky. aged 30 in 1933. at the time of his first 'International Celebrity Tour 'with .

slept well on the plane. ‘Sleep!’ he said tragically, ’I haven't slept for years!’ His room in a luxury hotel, he said, reminded I him of his lodgings when he was starving in Warsaw. He was over 50 before he learned to drive a car, a skill which, he realised, was necessary when living in . I was often surprised to hear of the exotic adventures he imagined for me. ‘Was it in Rio? No, it must have been Budapest, or. perhaps, Venice. No. I’m wrong. It was in Manchester.’ Only those with no sense of fantasy took his inexhaustible flow of witty nonsense seriously or failed to be delighted. He took great interest and pride in his collection of bows and , one of which he called ‘my sleeping beauty'. It was a Strad. acquired from a collector and had not been played on for many years. ‘I had to woo this instrument with the ardour of a lover to awaken it to its full beauty,’ he said. In his last letter to me, at the end of his life, he wrote: ‘I am enclosing a cheque for £500 for your Musicians' Benevolent Fund.’ That I played for Piatigorsky throughout Europe and America will always be one of my most happy memories. He served with love and reverence the profession he adorned. To be his friend was a joy; to be his colleague was a privilege. IN |i