34 ❧ chapter one
confi rmed my feeling that it is infi nitely more gratifying to play Scarlatti’s
music than to write about it.
In the autumn of 1954, I embarked on the fi rst of what would become for
the next twenty years my annual European tours (with the exception of 1961).
Before my fi rst concert in Vienna on November 2, I had no way of knowing how
postwar Austrians would react to the pre-Mozart that in my days in Salzburg
was defi nitely not yet fashionable. I played Scarlatti and, from the moment I
began the concert, I knew that the musical miracles that take place in Scarlatti
were not falling on deaf ears. The reception could hardly have been more grat-
ifying. Two days later, however, I played the same program in Milan and felt at
the end of it as if I had walked out of a refrigerator. This was the fi rst of many
Scarlatti performances I have given in Italy. While the quality of the reception
has often risen to considerably greater public success than in my fi rst Milan
concert, its character has always remained the same. Something in Scarlatti
escapes the Italians. They have been taught to regard it as light and frivolous
like Galuppi; they resent its Hispanicisms; it is not dinner music like Vivaldi,
nor is it solemnly profound enough to resemble the portentous transcriptions
of Monteverdi or those indigestible quantities of Bach to which they have now
become addicted.
My return to Italy in 1956 is recorded in some letters of which I transcribed
excerpts from the French in which I wrote them:
The day after Easter I departed with the harpsichord and one of the employ-
ees of the Neupert fi rm (the tuner at the last minute had failed his examina-
tion for a driver’s license) in an enormous tomato-red Volkswagen luxury
bus. Although the chauffeur drives well, the trip is very tiring. We stopped
at Spittal, and next day I tackled the complications and the stupidity of the
Italian customs. Finally the Amici della Musica of Udine had to bail me out in
order to make sure of getting their concert. But after this fourth time bring-
ing a harpsichord into Italy, always with increasing diffi culty, I do not know if
it is worth it. (I did not return to Italy for concerts for thirteen years).
But the concert at Vicenza was worth it. The beautiful Palladio theatre was
lit with candles, and since it was cold, it had to be warmed up by portable gas
heaters, which in turn necessitated the presence of a whole squadron of fi re-
men and of lines of hose ready to reach any part of the building. They were
on duty from two in the afternoon until eleven at night!
I leave Italy without having profi ted by it very much. Except in Rome, the
weather has been bad and, furthermore, I was too busy with concerts and
rehearsals. In Florence, however, I saw quite a few people. I went for tea with
Berenson, who is now ninety-one years old. He has aged since I saw him in
1934 but he is still full of wit. He said that he felt life withdrawing from him
like the waters from Noah’s Ark.
After twenty years, many of my Florentine friends seem to have shrunk. I
must say that I do not much care for the atmosphere in Florence, dominated
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rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
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