memoirs, 1933–77 ❧ 21
coming off and what was not. Her own performances, heard through the haze
of cigarette smoke in nightclubs, gave heart-rending glimpses of a raw and
bleeding sensibility condemned to exploitation on every side, unsustained by
the protective bulwarks that education and privilege might have given her, and
destined, as I knew from the day I fi rst saw her, to end in the gutter.
One memorable encounter in the early 1940s was with Sir Thomas
Beecham, with whom I played two concertos at the Museum of Modern Art in
March 1943, the Falla and the Bach D minor. Sir Thomas hated the Falla con-
certo, and I can still see his expression of distaste as he sat perched on a stool
in my living room on Lexington Avenue conducting a preliminary rehearsal.
Actually, Sir Thomas hated rehearsing. He was a born improviser and quite
lacking in analytical instincts or in profundity; but with a fl ick of the wrist, he
could galvanize an orchestra into dazzling performances. I have always thought
that he was the most talented musical amateur I ever knew in the sense, simply,
that he was not only more talented than most professional musicians, but was
also gifted with an ability to wear his talents lightly.
In the same year I was engaged for the fi rst of several times to collaborate in
Bruno Walter’s performances of the St. Matthew Passion. I was assigned only the
recitatives of the Evangelist and of the secular protagonists. All other recitatives
and the arias were confi ned to the wheezy old Carnegie Hall organ. Since this
was in no way an improvised performance, I wrote out my part on the terms
of Bruno Walter’s wishes. No arpeggiations were allowed! Bruno Walter always
gave the impression of great tenderness, yet he only barely succeeded in mov-
ing the stony hearts of those demoralized and hostile members of an orches-
tra that, since Toscanini’s departure, had greatly suffered from the stupidity
and crassness of its management and board of directors. Only a few players
responded with any real devotion. At one rehearsal, when the fi rst appearance
of the Passion Chorale had only barely dislodged the newspaper sporting pages
from the music stands, he laid down his baton and asked the useless question,
“Gentlemen, have you no souls?” Of course, he was much tougher than he
seemed. Otherwise, he could never have attained such eminence. He managed
always to spread a certain aura around his performances, and although he was
a fi ne opera conductor, I always felt that his conducting technique was limited
and that he was a top-part conductor, letting the all-essential and all-determin-
ing basses shift for themselves in a way that someone like Szell would never
have done. Nothing, however, in actual performance approached the beauty of
what happened in rehearsals with singers at his apartment, when he played on
the piano the orchestra parts, mostly from memory. I think of him with great
affection.
In 1944, I went almost straight from Walter’s St. Matthew Passion to a B-minor
Mass with Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I had only been
able to buy a full score at the last minute, and since the bass lacks fi gures
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rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
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