memoirs, 1933–77 ❧ 35
as it is by pretentions based on that dried-up Renaissance of three hundred
years ago.
The concert in Florence had a most equivocal success. At its end the par-
terre was completely empty, but I was obliged to play four encores and to
reappear I don’t know how many times because of a crowd of young people
who were applauding and shouting from the upper balconies. Very beautiful
eighteenth-century theatre in white and gold, but with acoustics that are not
particularly favorable for the harpsichord. In Rome I played better, and the
Frescobaldi-Scarlatti program had a great success. However, these Italians are
dreadful in concerts. They are continually making noise and moving around
the hall. One is obliged to battle incessantly in order to make oneself heard.
It is like the opera in the eighteenth century or like a nightclub in our time.
My German chauffeur was so indignant at the behavior of these Italians that I
feared he might make a real scandal.
In Florence, I had found half of the Italian translation of my Scarlatti book
already in galley proofs but riddled with innumerable errors which the transla-
tor was unwilling and, above all, unable to correct. In fl agrant ingratitude to
the proprietors of the publishing house that was to issue it, and knowing my
Florentines, I used the splendid party they gave for me after my concert to
broadcast every comment that might make it impossible further to consider
publication of my translator’s lamentable handiwork. The book has never yet
been issued in Italian, with the result that when I play Scarlatti in Italy, I fi nd in
program notes written by hack commenters (they throw away the ones I send)
the same old legends that I demolished more than twenty years ago.
I arrived home in the middle of the August dog days, and at the same time
my vision deteriorated rapidly. When one day, at a very slow rate of speed, I
had demolished two roadblocks and sunk to the hubcaps in some fresh-poured
concrete, I stopped driving. In January of 1957, I submitted to my fi rst opera-
tion for cataract. It was fortunate that I was able to resume concerts in less than
six weeks. I had a well-stocked memory and was almost entirely occupied with
solo performances which did not require me to read music. This capacity I
later reconstructed, but not for the last time.
By the middle of March, I was in London. But I must have been irritable,
for when a critic referred to one of my programs at the Victoria and Albert
Museum as “schoolmasterly Bach,” I responded in the following concert by
affi xing to the cheek-piece of the harpsichord a cardboard sign on which was
inscribed in red letters the words required in England of a neophyte driver or
motorcyclist, “Learner.”
For August and September of 1957, I was invited to South Africa by the com-
bined Universities of Cape Town and Witwatersrand as visiting lecturer. From
Ansbach, where the harpsichord I was using was packed for shipment to Cape
Town, I proceeded southward. I had about a week’s time to stop on the way
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rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
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