Master Cooking

The names on the program at Chicago's Ravinia Park were familiar enough; Chicagoans had heard Artur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky as brilliant, and highly individual, soloists. All summer, musical Chicago had been wondering what would happen when the three virtuosos got together in a trio for the first time.*

Tight-lipped Fiddler Heifetz, voluble little Pianist Rubinstein and hulking Cellist Piatigorsky had been wondering the same thing. Said Piatigorsky: "If you have one man who is very meticulous and precise, one who is more general and one who is ... ah ... melancholy, you must work very hard until you all feel [the music] together."

In mid-June, Piatigorsky flew to Beverly Hills and joined the others in ten days of grueling practice and argument, working ten hours a day. No outside musicians were allowed to eavesdrop. Said Rubinstein: "That was the kitchen work, and you don't cook in public." In July, Piatigorsky went to the coast for a second session. Then in Chicago, they took two sessions to test Ravinia's temperamental microphones. Said Pianist Rubinstein: "With this mike, I play what is fortissimo and drown Jascha. But what should I do? Play mouse? I go crazy if I hold back and go nibble-nibble; fortissimo is not like a mouse."

Last week, 8,000 Chicagoans crowded under Ravinia's huge tent awning (once a B-29 hangar; Ravinia's wooden pavilion burned down last May) to hear the result of all the cooking and testing.

First they heard Beethoven's noble and powerful "Archduke" trio--a perfectionist's performance, marred only slightly by an accidentally turned microphone and the nearby snort of commuter trains. By week's end, when the three had got through their program of Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Ravel (in trios, duos and solos), they had Chicago in the palms of their hands.

Said one listener: "I bought a straight pari-mutuel ticket: Heifetz to win, Piatigorsky to place and Rubinstein to show. I damn well lost. In music like this there could not be a winner or a loser." Said another: "You didn't know whether to shout or bow your head."

While Chicago was triple-billing soloists, California's Mills College double-billed the famed Budapest and Paganini String Quartets. First it was the Budapest's turn, with Darius Milhaud's new, dryly dissonant Quartet No. 14. That over, the Budapest retired, and the Paganini played Milhaud's more melodic Quartet No. 15. Then, while chamber-music lovers waited uneasily, the Budapest returned, sat down alongside the Paganini, and the eight players played the two quartets simultaneously. The result: critics found it a superb feat of musicianship, but most listeners looked as if they were hearing an important speech in a foreign language.

Composer Milhaud's tidy explanation: "A lady, an old friend of the family, brought me a little book of manuscript paper . . . from about the year 1840 . . . I like very much little antiques and I thought I shall use it ... I found there were eight staves on the paper. I thought it is not my plan to write an octet. I had thought to write quartets. And then I thought why should I not write two quartets in that little book and make an octet out of them?"

* Heifetz and Rubinstein recorded trio music with the late Cellist Emanuel Feuermann, but they never played together in public.

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