42 ❧ chapter one
afforded me an opportunity to depart from the prevailing character of my
recital programs.
I have never liked to mix ancient and modern music on recital programs,
such is the discrepancy of quality. But many a piece of twentieth-century harp-
sichord music deserves a fair hearing, away from the proximity of consummate
masterpieces. But few auspices are likely to tolerate an all-modern harpsichord
recital, and I have only performed one such program, at Berkeley in 1961.
Except by the Italian radio in 1948, I was never engaged after 1939 in a com-
plete program of modern music involving harpsichord, but between 1960 and
1965 I played the fi rst performance of a number of contemporary works.
Despite all the time spent in Paris, I never played a public concert in France
until 1963. My memories of Paris musical life of thirty years before and of the
unmusicality that long prevailed among the French middle class led me to
doubt the cordiality of the reception I might receive. I was completely wrong.
For my fi rst two concerts in the Salle Gaveau in May 1963, the reception was
warm, enthusiastic, and differed in no way from that to which I was accustomed
in Germany and Austria. The hall was crowded with young people leaning in
festoons over balconies. Indeed, musical life in France had changed, and the
activities of the Jeunesses Musicales^18 and the propagation of phonograph
records had accomplished much among the generation that grew up since the
last war. Most of my continuing experience in France, also in the provinces, has
been similar. The playing of chamber music by nonprofessionals, now on the
decline in Germany, has augmented enormously in France. In the provinces, I
found that many of the concert societies for which I played were organized by
groups of young doctors, and more than once in Paris, when obliged to consult
for one reason or another, I found doctors who knew my playing and who were
unwilling to accept a fee.
A household which I saw only once and which has been abundantly described
by those who knew it better than I was that of Marie-Laure de Noialles. The
bizarreries of this establishment hardly merit another account, except for the
fact that they are associated with a chance encounter which produced some very
happy consequences. Alix de Rothschild had invited me to accompany her to a
party celebrating the opening of the Salon de Mai. When I asked what I should
wear, she replied with a smile that at the time I did not understand, “Anything.”
The fi rst sight that presented itself when we arrived at this vast eighteenth-cen-
tury-style house was a crushed automobile by César at the foot of a long monu-
mental staircase landing to a gallery lined with magnifi cent Goyas.
- Jeunesses Musicales International was founded in 1945 to provide opportuni-
ties for young people to participate in music. It is the largest nongovernmen-
tal youth musical organization in the world and has member organizations in
forty-five countries.
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