If I’m not careful, my music podcast could become a kind of obituary page. People are always dying. (Annoying of them.) You could spend all your time honoring them, remembering them, paying tribute to them. But, you know? That’s not so bad. And there’s plenty of time for the living as well.
My latest Music for a While is here. I begin with Simon Preston, and I end with him too. He was an English organist, one of the greatest organists in the world. As I say in my podcast, I have long had two sort of go-to organists for the standard repertory — Preston and another Englishman, Peter Hurford. (Hurford died in 2019, and Preston this month.) They set a standard in taste and ability. There is something about a British musician, as I have explored in many a piece, and as others have explored in countless pieces and books.
Alexander Toradze was an amazing personality. He was a Georgian, as his name tells you, born in the Soviet Union. But he spent most of his life as an American. In 1983, he was on tour in Spain, and he defected to the U.S. embassy. Have I said he was a pianist? He was. And a charismatic, free-wheeling figure. He died a couple of weeks ago.
He made a big, big splash at the Van Cliburn Competition in 1977. He did not win the competition — that’s why he made a splash, really. He finished second, receiving the silver medal. And many, many people — including a juror, the great Lili Kraus — thought he had gotten ripped off. His second-place finish made news worldwide. He was launched.
There would be a similar scandal three years later, at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Ivo Pogorelich, the Yugoslavian pianist (we used to say “Yugoslavian”), was eliminated before the final round. The great Argentinian, Martha Argerich, quit the jury in protest. Other jurors said, “No, he’s just a showboat.” In any event, Pogorelich was launched.
I doubt that these scandals would make international news today. Controversies at piano competitions? Are you serious? Everything is different now. High culture is ignored — even low goings-on in high culture. The drive is toward the demotic. But that is another post, or piece, or book, or 3,000 of them.
I was talking about a podcast. The other day, I had a post that touched on Mitch Miller, of Sing Along with Mitch (the popular TV show of the 1960s). He began his career, however, as an oboist — a distinguished one. In this podcast, I have him playing a movement of the Vaughan Williams concerto.
Introducing something else, I say, “Once in a while, you fall in love with a piece. You have an affair with it. You are just smitten by it. I’ve been listening to a little piece by Chopin — not very well-known.” True.
Anyway, if you’d like “a break away from the everyday” — that used to be a fast-food slogan — Music for a While may be for you. Give it a whirl — again, here.