jeudi, février 17, 2005

inspired by precision-blogger

http://precision-blogging.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_precision-blogging_archive.html#110840757461968236

It reminds me of the things people would tell me in the music camps when I would stay with my sister as a child.

Dora Short, a quite good violinist and a contemporary of Dorothy Delay though neither so successful nor so mean, told me a story once as I waited in a large concert hall waiting for my sister to finish packing up after a nice master class... my other sister had studied with a eccentrically classy pianist whose last name only I remember now Hertzer.. He was a dandy man, with this great concert grand and a baby grand in his living room, which was decorated in this very New York old style music school. (Mr. Hertzer was an amazing man.. quite old when I met him and has died since, but he reminded me a lot of Horowitz in that he too wore a classic bowtie always had a dapper suited look.) Anyway, Dora and Hertzer were playing a trio with some unnamed cellist and at one point the coach/maestro who was working with them, got very angry, because Mr.Hertzer liked to do his own thing.. rather an individual one could say.. anyway, he so infuriated the maestro that, the man vigiorously took his cane shouted for the last time, you will play it as I say! He then motioned that the group should start again and the maestro began pounding the ebat out with his cane and chanted as the piece went on... "Hertzer go to hell, Hertzer go to hell..." in this very punctuated and unmistakably forceful rhythm.

When she finished telling me the story, I remembered once seeing Mr. Hertzer smiling this boyish impish grin and sat down at the piano to play a trilling and tappity berceuse on the piano when we stood joking around after one lesson. What memories!