Beethoven Man

A hunt was on in New York last week for the kind of chair Beethoven used when he played the piano. It had to have short, strong legs to suit a heavy, stumpy little man like Beethoven, a comfortable back so that the player could sit relaxed and let his shoulder muscles work for him. Nowhere in New York was such a chair to be found. Pianists like Rachmaninoff and Iturbi who depend mostly on their wrists use stools without backs. Paderewski and Hofmann who play more from their shoulders use chairs with backs which tip forward a little. None of these suited Artur Schnabel, the square-headed little Austrian who was to solo with the Philharmonic-Symphony. Finally one was made for him.

Whether or not the Beethoven chair contributed to Artur Schnabel's performance last week there were few people in his audience who did not go away feeling that they had listened to the greatest of Beethoven pianists. Schnabel had played the difficult Fourth Concerto easily, quietly, without once tossing his head or flinging his hands ostentatiously into the air. For his audience he made Beethoven all-sufficient--with the clarity of his phrasing, the prismatic shading of his tone color, the way in the second, slow movement he carried on a dialog with the orchestra, pleading tenderly with the strings which had set themselves sternly in unison against him.

Seven times the applause brought him back to the stage to make stiff, pinched little bows. But his face was beaming. U. S. audiences had not behaved that way when he played Beethoven to them eight years ago. They had regarded him as cold, academic; his programs seemed too heavy. Back he went to his pupils in Berlin who revere him the way Elman and Heifetz revere the late great Leopold Auer.* Criticized for having no show pieces on his programs, Auer once remarked that he left all those to his pupils. Schnabel's pupils play all the modern music they like but Schnabel has stuck to Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven. Says he: "Of course, contemporary music should be heard and if there were no one else to play it, I would do so myself. But the opposite is the case. The demand for first performances has meant that many works are born and buried at the same time. They go from the cradle to the grave in a single concert."

Last spring Adolf Hitler's campaign against the Jews drove Schnabel from Berlin but when he was invited to visit the U. S. again he was as uncompromising as before about his programs. He would come but he would play only Beethoven. He would not play encores for the sake of sending any audience away with a marshmallow taste in its mouth. On no account did he want a long tour which might let him get stale. He preferred to play with orchestras, although orchestra fees are always lower than those for individual recitals.

Before he returns to Europe in December. Schnabel will play with the orchestras in Cincinnati, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Boston, Chicago. He wall give six recitals: two in New York, one each in Baltimore, Indianapolis, Boston and Waco, Tex. His friends have doubts as to whether the recital audiences will want to listen uninterruptedly to the five Beethoven Sonatas which Schnabel has planned for them. The Waco music club has already asked if he could not lighten the program a little. But Schnabel is adamant. Nor will he give away free tickets if his houses do not sell. "Whoever wants to come will come," he said last week. "I don't in the least mind playing for 100 people."

*Some Schnabel pupils: Guy Maier, Lee Pattison. Carlo Zecchi, Henri Deering, Eunice Norton, Hortense Monath.

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