Two hours of this beautiful weather day was spent indoors, at the piano, inhaling Aracdi Volodos’ arrangement for solo piano of the slow movement from Rachmaninoff’s ‘Cello Sonata. I knew of this ‘Cello Sonata, of course, but had never heard or even heard of Volodos’ solo arrangement. It is extraordinarily difficult but in the ways I like for piano omusic to be difficult. It is almost Godowskian with itsmultiple lines and counterpoints, even as Volodos is merely trying to combine two instruments’ voices into one. Godowsky’s treatements of Chopin and Schubert, among others, has been described as sounding like “ants” by Claudio Arrau. But he was not simply transcribing pieces so much as metamorphosizing them. Volodos’ arrangement rivals Godowsky’s on technical difficulty but it remains nottomlessly beautiful. I think about the years I spent practicing 10 hours a day and how thankful I should be for those years if, in the end, I can basically just sit down and plkay something like this. This is the sort of stuff a lot of pianists cannot even read, much less make mental orrections of the various typographical errors found in this score. I’m not blowing sunshine up my ass. Just saying that for all those years in the practice room gulag I fucking well should be able to play this kind of stuff.
I cannot hear that piece without thinking of Horowitz, who was a major influence in my desire to continue with the piano. I possess a personally written and signed letter from Horowitz, which he wrote to me in response to a letter I sent to him I was just writing to thank him for everything. The Rachmaninoff ‘Cello Sonata reminds me of Horowitz on account of the story I’d heard from New York when I was a kid growing up in Tampa. There was a concert at Carnegie Hall to celebrate the venue’s anniversay, maybe it’s 75th? 100th? Doesn’t matter but it was a star-studded affair featuring all the most famous calssical players of the day. Except fo Horowitz. The story told as gospel was that he couldn’t perform for some reason, but that at the last minute he appeared back stage and coaxed Mstislav Rostropovich into performing the slow movement from the Rachmaninoff Sonata. The two walked on stage, unannounced, leaving the audience in tears as the music ended.
It seems the story may be apocryphal. I’ll look it up later but I remember looking it up years ago and finding nothing to verify the details. The two musicians did record that piece but I don’t know that the famed walk-on appearance at Carnegie Hall actually occurred. Sometimes it’s nice to believe the fantasy.
I am back at teh Trump Tower, somewhat annoyed that the Public Garden is not open today. Why? All they have to do to make the space available is open a door. There are counterterrorism police forces here today.
I think I am convinced now more than ever that playing piano for some hours a day directly correlates to lowering my blood pressure. I woke up slightly high on the BP today but played piano for a couple of hours and felt infinitely OK afterward. The richness of the piano literature pageant is such that I could play to the day I die and never get through half of the music that is out there. That’s the sort of observation that could make one feel like a speck of dust in the universe of things but I’m not feeling that way today.
I also like knowing the the neighbors passing by sometimes stop for a minute to listen. Or so they tell me. This Rachmaninoff/Volodos thing is so beautiful I think you’d have to have no soul to want to listen at least for a little bit.
I can see my reflection about 30 feet in front of me, in the Trump Tower gold reflective material that some describe as gaudy. I am in a corner of this building which many visitors seem to assume has a bathroom. They walk over here, they turn around. I’m leaving now, huge family just took over this table.
