"Grischa" & Sir William

Carrying his priceless Stradivarius cello* over his head like a toy. strapping (6 ft. 3 1/2 in.) Virtuoso Gregor Piatigorsky threaded his way through the string section of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony one evening last week, settled himself into the soloist's chair by the podium and launched into a Cello Concerto newly written for him by his old friend Sir William Walton. If the piece itself seemed to ramble like a sun-warmed cow through sprawling masses of musical foliage. Piatigorsky's playing of it was a marvel of taste and tone. Under his sensitive hands, the cello sang like a deep-throated bell, soared melodically, sank to a velvety whisper; in the more rhapsodic passages it seemed to shiver with musical delight. Cellist Piatigorsky, 54. had never seemed in better form.

Toward the Double Bass. The new concerto is a close collaboration between Piatigorsky's Russian ebullience and Walton's polite English diligence. Composer Walton started his work two years ago on the Italian island of Ischia, but he and Piatigorsky, then touring the U.S. and Asia, kept in close touch. "I would cable him, IN BAR FOUR AFTER F. IS THAT A B OR B FLAT," says Piatigorsky. "and I would get an answer: B FLAT. SORRY. LOVE, WILLIE." The cabled exchange of suggestions and corrections went on even after the Boston premiere, and up to the Concerto's performance in London. Walton was bedded in a Rome hospital recovering from an auto accident. Piatigorsky called him up from London, played the work over the telephone. "William," says Piatigorsky, "thought it was fine."

"Grischa" Piatigorsky is currently busy writing his autobiography, which traces his remarkable career from his boyhood in the Ukraine to his arrival in the U.S. in 1929. A high point of the reminiscences comes with the time Piatigorsky was a homeless young refugee in Berlin and often had to sleep on park benches; once, seeking dry shelter for the night, he slipped into an empty concert hall and out of his rain-drenched clothes, but found himself unable to sleep and spent the time till morning playing his cello nude on the stage. He has also written a novel that sounds farcical echoes of Kafka. The manuscript, which Piatigorsky used to carry about with him in his cello case wherever he went, concerns one Dr. Blok, a painter who represents the eternal outcast and misfit. Blok's misadventures begin with his falling into a ditch, lead on to a Turkish bath frequented by a couple that have leprosy, and continue with a sort of Freudian secret society that tries to honor Dr. Blok by returning him to the womb (whether literally or symbolically, Author Piatigorsky does not say). But something goes wrong, and Dr. Blok winds up not in the planned destination but in a double-bass case. "I am a little bit Blok myself," says Piatigorsky.

Also, the Bassoon. In the 1956-57 season, Piatigorsky has traveled 60,000 miles concertizing all over the world. Recently, he finished recording three Beethoven trios with Jascha Heifetz and William Primrose, and he has been invited to record Bach's six Unaccompanied Suites, long identified as a specialty of ailing Cellist Pablo Casals. Next season Piatigorsky will take a "sabbatical" to pursue two of his other interests--oceanography ("You know what oceanographers do on their vacation? They go in the water") and lizard and snake collecting ("It's extraordinary how intolerant people are about snakes"). But there will still be music. His 19-year-old daughter plays the flute, his 17-year-old son the clarinet, the nurse a flute clarinet, his wife the bassoon. "It is an odd combination," says Piatigorsky, rolling his sad, spaniel-brown eyes. "Sometimes when I come in with my cello in the little parts assigned to me, I am told to 'go over there in the corner and play.' It is not so good, really, as years ago when our butler, Dr. Wallisch, played the piano. He had once been a music critic in Vienna. With him, we were quite good sometimes."

*Made in 1714 and insured for $150,000.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.