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Pearl River makes THE WORST concert grand in the world. No joke.

Friedheim's piano roll recordings of works by Liszt are very interesting. He launches, without the usual deliberation, straight into the "Friska" of the 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody up to tempo...which I find is a very exciting way of performing the piece. It seems that Emil Von Sauer, another Liszt pupil, was in a state of despair with his own technique after first hearing Friedheim play.
I shall seek out the book which you recommend.

Re Wanda:

Mozart was an awful billiard player, he lost lot of his money with billiard bets.

:p

You enjoy rocking the boat, don't you?

Tell that to Wanda - she'd probably say: "What the heck does he know - he's JustAnotherPianist"!

Regards, JF

P.S. you might need a special medium for this exchange.

[ ]

Tell that to Wolfie.

Cziffra was a bouncer, reportedly. Horowitz just liked to watch (both as a boxing fan and probably for other...ulterior motives).

Cziffra was a bouncer? Seems that job might be pretty tough on the hands as well.

Being interred at a concentration camp, and forced to carry stones for hours a day was much worse.

(note the wristband, a reminder of those days)

Absolutely.

Thanks for the picture. Pretty big guy, I guess.

Yeah, Cziffra's memoirs, "Cannons and Flowers" is a great read and it proves that his life was much more unbelievable and exciting as many Hollywood Blockbusters (lame as they are these days, especially...). His student days at the Liszt Academy were arranged by a traveling merchant who tricked his family into hiking for hours to get into town, only to find out Dohnanyi had never heard of him--he fought in the war, was the only man in his squadron to survive, after hijacking a train and spending quite a long time in an underground POW camp--and after the war he did indeed serve as a pianist/bouncer for bars until slowly working his way up to jazz clubs and eventually, concert halls. A lot of what we know of as being the "pros/cons" of Cziffra's artistry and life was born out of necessity, especially when it came to knowing the improvisational art and being able to defend himself and bar patrons.

One story relates how one of his employers, the owner of a bar in Budapest, went crazy in the times of post-war depression and murdered his mistress and her other lover with an axe. One night, while Cziffra was playing the piano, a group of police officers stormed in and took his employer away, explaining to Cziffra what had happened. I think he mentioned in his memoirs that this sort of thing didn't at all surprise him, and he found work elsewhere!

Richter broke his pinky in a barroom brawl by punching somebody else, though I don't believe he was in the general habit of frequently brawling with others.

- Silence

On that topic, I've heard that Bernstein was known to go to parties with a woman on each arm and return home with a man on each arm.

I think chess is a much more wholesome interest for a musician!

I'm surprised Saint-Saëns hasn't been mentioned yet. Here's an excerpt from his wikipedia article :

I suppose being a composer, pianist, organist, and conductor wasn't enough!

Chess is more wholesome than what - watching boxing or coming home with a man on each arm? Granted chess is a challenge, but can you stand the excitement? Now, if the two men were from Central Europe it might be a case of "Czech mating" instead of "check mating" (although a draw was more likely, especially with 2 "queens" in the game) But enough about wholesomeness . . .

Regards, JF

Perhaps Horowitz picked up his enthusiasm for the sport from his father-in-law, Toscanini, who used to enjoy watching both boxing and wrestling matches on television. Maybe Toscanini developed his poor eyesight from squinting at those tiny screens