Easy Does It

He didn't actually sport a pair of slippers and a pipe, but Violinist Zino Francescatti acted very much at home. Instead of a fireplace, however, he had the audience in Carnegie Hall in front of him last week, and the Philadelphia Orchestra behind him. When he wasn't fiddling, he lolled comfortably near the podium, gestured familiarly to Conductor Eugene Ormandy, even stage-whispered to him during the concerto. "That was pretty good;" he would say to Ormandy, or "We got it that time."

Says Francescatti, with a crinkly grin: "With Ormandy, whom I play with most, I make fun. With Bruno Walter, no; with him it is just the angelic smile." Francescatti likes to take concerts easy--but he keeps his playing clean, forthright and brilliant. A small, excitable Frenchman of 42, Francescatti has been fiddling in the U.S. ten years, and is now regarded as one of the half-dozen first-raters in this country. In his native Marseilles he learned most of his art from his mother and father, both able violinists, and could play classical concertos before he learned to read music at eight. Says he: "You do not have to know the alphabet to speak well sometimes."

Like most touring violinists, Francescatti finds U.S. orchestras slow about playing anything but the threadbare "boxoffice concertos" (Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky). Recently he wanted to play Prokofiev's Concerto No. 2 with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and was told he couldn't because it would take an extra orchestra rehearsal, an expensive proposition. But he enjoys exploring the U.S.'s musical hinterland, playing old works in towns where they are still new. Says he: "In Europe, there is always the memory of the greats before you; there is always Joachim.* In new cities, you yourself can be Joachim."

* Greatest of 19th Century violinists, for whom Brahms and Schumann wrote concertos.

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