Yesterday’s Music History Monday began with the story of the tenor Michele Molese’s call out of the critic Harold Schonberg from the stage of the New York City Opera in 1974 after Schonberg had made a snarky critical remark about Molese’s singing of a high “C”. It’s appropriate then, or so I think, to begin today’s post with another Schonberg appraisal, this one of Sergei Rachmaninoff the pianist. No snark here; Schonberg – who was the senior music critic of The New York Times for 20 years – had the opportunity to hear Rachmaninoff in concert when he (Schonberg) was a young man. Writing many years later, Schonberg was still in awe. “There was nobody like him. Rachmaninoff would come on stage stiff and severe, never smiling, with his hair cropped as close as a convict’s. With terrible dignity he would seat himself and wait for the audience to quiet. He played with a minimum of physical exertion, brooding over the keys. From his fingers came an indescribable tone: warm, projecting into every corner of the hall, capable of infinite modulation. When Rachmaninoff played, everything was perfectly planned, perfectly proportioned. Melodies were outlined with radiant authority; inner voices were brought […]
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