Pianist with a Bible

In Brussels last week, the big (2,300 seats) Palais des Beaux-Arts was sold out three nights in a row. Belgians were flocking to hear a series of concerts by a topflight old pianist who is known to U.S. music lovers chiefly through imported records. His name: Edwin Fischer.

White-maned and sturdy, at 65, Pianist Fischer gave a program that few living pianists would either care or dare to present. On each night he performed four concertos of Bach, conducting members of the National Orchestra of Belgium and assisting soloists from his seat at the piano. Nodding his big head, or gesturing slightly with a momentarily free hand to indicate the tempo, he kept superb command of the ensemble, while producing immaculate music from his own piano. Characteristically, it was Bach of uncommon serenity in the slow passages, of robust vigor in the strong ones. (Fischer on Bach: "Good phrasing, a moderate tempo and a clear head are the three requisites.") At the end of the third concert, the musicians joined in the applause, tapped their bows against their violins and cellos in compliment.

Swiss-born Edwin Fischer has built his reputation as an exponent of the classics. For him, The Well-Tempered Clavier of Bach, which he recorded years ago, is the "Old Testament," and Beethoven's sonatas are the "New Testament." He is also at his best with the music of Mozart, which he plays on a grander scale than that favored by the tinkly music-box school of Mozart interpreters. Composers such as Chopin seem to elude Fischer, but when he sticks to Bach and Mozart, few pianists anywhere can match him. Wrote a Paris-Presse critic last year: "After a concert by Horowitz, the audience, stunned by so much virtuosity, goes home satisfied. Some of the people may think of the fabulous sums such an artist gets paid. After Fischer's concert, the audience goes home happy. Nobody wonders whether Fischer earns big fees, but everybody feels an urge to tell him 'Thank you.' "

A pupil of famed Pianist-Composer Eugene d'Albert, Fischer made his home in Berlin until 1943, when he moved to a small house on Switzerland's Lake Lucerne. Now, when he is not touring Western Europe, he spends his time there gardening or painting. A warm, genial man, he tells visitors: "You don't have to praise the pictures you see here. They are not masterpieces. I painted them myself."

He has never been in the U.S. Why? "There are so many things to do over here."

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