52 ❧ chapter two
actual performance seem like child’s play. Airplane travel has only augmented
the challenges to his endurance.
One becomes accustomed to discovering that hotel reservations have not
been honored and that one must put up with lodging that is no more to
one’s taste than whatever food it is possible to obtain. Often one goes without
because access to halls is generously granted only at other people’s mealtimes
and, when one is fi nally free to seek nourishment, all available establishments
have meanwhile closed down. The maintenance of any special diet is a career
in itself. I have been fortunate in being able to sleep anywhere and at any time
if circumstances permit. I always sleep, even if only briefl y, before dressing for
the concert. Many times I have simply stretched out on a table or on top of the
Steinway that has been exiled to the wings to make room for the harpsichord.
Most musicians dislike morning concerts, but on the whole I prefer them,
especially if they begin at about 11 o’clock. I am fresher, less distracted by the
events of the day or by the effort involved in surmounting them. Late concerts
in the style of Latin countries, which begin at 9 o’clock or even later, can be a
trial to both performer and public.
I have never felt it necessary to take more than the most elementary pre-
cautions for the care of hands, other than being careful with sharp knives and
avoiding power tools altogether. Occasionally, however, I have cut a fi nger
while replacing harpsichord plectra and have been obliged to go through the
concert either wearing a band-aid or resigned to risk leaving a gory trail across
the keyboard. On one occasion when I had cut the very tip of a fi nger, there
was no way to prevent putting the entire keyboard awash with blood but the
donning of one of those devices used by probing physicians which looks dis-
concertingly like a contraceptive in miniature.
While I do not enjoy carrying baggage, I fi nd that it does little damage
other than to contribute to the general accumulation of fatigue. When at our
fi rst meeting, the pianist Glenn Gould withdrew from my proffered hand in
order, as he said, to protect his hand, I was outraged. It was too absurd that a
hard-hitting pianist should fi nd himself threatened by the sensitive hand of a
clavichord player. In the event of any future encounter, I was resolved to risk
a lawsuit by overtaking him with a veritable bone-cruncher. Unfortunately for
the annals of the courtroom, such an encounter has never since taken place,
for I am sure that in the resulting lawsuit we could have provided goings-on
that would have rivaled those of Ruskin and Whistler.^1
Much of the time one is the unwilling recipient of a great deal of hospital-
ity. Some of it is delightful and some of it is merely burdensome, like the end-
lessly repetitive tours of college campuses and unappetizing music department
- In 1877, the painter James McNeill Whistler initiated a libel suit against the
critic John Ruskin.
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