Last night, Evgeny Kissin played a recital at the Salzburg Festival. (For my review, go here.) Kissin, as you know, is a leading pianist, born in Moscow in 1971. The second half of his recital was all-Rachmaninoff. So were his three encores. The last of them was the Prelude in C-sharp minor. Which made me think of Bill Buckley (more formally, William F. Buckley Jr., and, in capsule form, WFB). I’ll explain . . .
WFB said and wrote a million things in his life. Two were repeated back to him, endlessly. “I am obliged to confess that I should sooner live in a society governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the 2,000 faculty members of Harvard University.” (That’s the way he wrote it; it was not repeated back to him that way.) And “Demand a recount.”
The first, he wrote in an exchange about American education with Robert Hutchins, the famous philosopher of education (dean of Yale Law School, chancellor of the University of Chicago, etc.). The second, he quipped when asked what he would first do if he were elected mayor of New York.
For reasons we could explore, WFB did not like to hear these very much. He would smile or wince and change the subject. What would make him change the subject faster than anything was mention of his fight with Gore Vidal on television. Over and over, his fans brought it up to him, enthusiastically. He, however, wished the episode could be forgotten.
(For a post of mine on this subject, go here.)
Okay, back to Rachmaninoff. Rachmaninoff wrote lots and lots of piano pieces. What people liked, and learned at home, was the Prelude in C-sharp minor. It was hard for Rachmaninoff to play a recital without giving the public that prelude as an encore. (Rachmaninoff was not only a composer, remember: He was a great pianist. And he wrote for himself, as well as posterity.) He grew tired of the C-sharp–minor prelude. It became almost an albatross around his neck.
Those WFB lines? About the Boston telephone directory and the mayoral election? He would refer to one or the other as “my Prelude in C-sharp minor.” (Most of us never get one; WFB had two.)
WFB’s boyhood hero was Toscanini. Toscanini was also a hero of Horowitz’s. Horowitz’s No. 1 hero was Rachmaninoff. Horowitz married Toscanini’s daughter Wanda (a piece of work, like Horowitz). WFB knew them. And had stories about them.
But I am now too far down Memory Lane . . .
Let me paste the final two paragraphs of my Kissin review:
And he ended with the most hackneyed Rachmaninoff piece there is: the Prelude in C-sharp minor. Kissin did not play it as though it were hackneyed. He played it as though it were a superb piece, which it is. He played it with all respect and love. The prelude was monumental, cathedral-like.
What a tribute, both to Kissin and to Rachmaninoff.