The because is because I was looking on the blessedly available Internet for a notice of Sviatoslav Richter. I was trying to remember his name, annoyed that covid-brain put it temporarily out of reach. So I keyed in Great Russian Pianists of the 20th Century, quite a list. Of course I found him listed, and a bit of browsing led me to the essentially incredible listing of over a thousand CDs of the century’s great pianists, last century, my century. So of course I had to take a look. I agreed with most, almost all, of the choices, only about six I didn’t know yet. I say yet, because, you know, now-a-days you can find most anything and listen to it too. So, no surprise, I saw a series of chain responses to the request to list your top ten and maybe tell why.
That went on for pages, and pages, and on and on, and I read the chatty in-crowd judgments which I could understand and sometimes agree with. But not always. And I started to re-arrange my memories, and started to reminisce and ramble.

I took exception in some instances to some people’s choices. I was surprised to find Victor Borge on so many lists of the top ten. I loved him, and knew him as a competent pianist, had seen him live, but never took him seriously as a competitive pianist. I don’t think he did either.
I looked at the lists and noticed some of the listeners were trying to divide their attention between those they had heard in performance, and those only on records. That made me divide my own thinking, because I don’t get out enough, but I had a lot of records. Thousands. And thousands.

I know I’m judgmental. I guess most people are. I tend to overdo it. I usually begin by saying that I know nothing, or very little. I can’t claim authority or the justifications of experience, or training, or research, or credentials. I don’t play the piano. I never learned to read notes. I could pick them out, one by one, with the fewest sharps or flats, at a speed no flow of music would not leave behind.

That’s why I never pursued a musical career. I joke that I could have become one of the three best baritones, but modesty compels me to expand that to ten. I briefly took lessons from a teacher of some renown, who spelled her name in different ways, whichever was written on the check.

The first lesson she said, “You realize you’re starting too late…” By the third lesson she said, “Maybe not too late.” But I was poor, so I didn’t have any money (a re-play of Borge’s joke), and had to drop everything to get on with life and teaching English, which was my way of earning a living.

I knew what the world had lost, me, the world didn’t know, but what can you do? The world goes on ignorantly without you.

But I was talking about pianists, and listening. And judgments. And seeing some live. And I know that my limited experience influenced my judgments. That, and the experience and judgment of others, many or most who knew better than I, and record jacket labels which distilled and condensed the cognoscenti into quotability. I listened, I read, I pronounced.
I remember when Shirley and I were just starting out at college at UCR. The school was taking good care of us. They brought the best of the available world on a limited budget, and we both bought student tickets, separately, because we were not yet together and I was still pursuing her but she was accompanied by someone else who I thought was even less worthy than I was. It was a concert appearance by the Soviet pianist on the circuit, Shura Cherkassky, who was making the rounds in the days of détente and anything remotely Russian was de rigeur, the days when we sent Van Cliburn to Russia in exchange. We hadn’t heard of Shura Cherkassky, but Shirley, who played the piano and was taking lessons and played beautifully and I loved watching her at the keyboard for hours and nothing else mattered, she announced from her superior knowledge that she was looking forward to the concert of Shura, the daughter of a much more famous pianist father whose name she was unsure of, as was I.

And after the performance, walking back to the dorms, ears still ringing from the satisfying concert by Shura, who turned out to be a man, the son of anybody we didn’t know, and I tried to elbow my way between Shirley and her unworthy escort, and teased, “How did you like her technique?”

I was trying to elbow away the competition and stake a claim. It worked, and she and I listened to records together from our own collections, traded judgments, let music take a direction in our lives.

She loved Rubinstein. Partly because she played a recorded performance of his Rachmaninoff every morning before starting her day. Partly because she heard in him the joy of music and the richness of life.

I felt it too, started by her guidance, because she had more of his records, and then able to continue on my own, though I suspect I would have anyway because he really was that good. I loved the way he was in the world, not pedantic, the way he found and championed contemporary composers and brought them to us and expanded the repertoire. He was never in an ivory tower, and I imagined him sitting at a bar or table, a cigar in one hand, a glass or beer mug in the other, laughing, as I reveled in a democratized audience around him and life was good because it can be.

I remember, so many memories, when I scrounged enough money together for two tickets, to Rubinstein the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion, and Shirley couldn’t go because her father was grounding her, probably for seeing me, and I had to go alone and sold her ticket to a hopeful stranger in the stand-by line for the sold-out performance, and he was lucky to buy, and I was lucky to sell. And sitting higher up in the to me barely affordable seats, and hearing this loved so long idol now in his later years, playing the Waldstein Sonata with the touch that made every note warm and clear and resonant. I told Shirley all about it to try to bridge the gap of missing each other. And in the LA Times the next day when a reporter was interviewing Ingmar Bergman in town for the release of his latest film, all Bergman could talk about was the Rubinstein performance the night before, about the man whose fingers didn’t age, the music created present and alive and that was the real story the paper should cover. And Bergman and I had been there in the same audience. Those near-brushes with greatness where neither is aware of the other but that doesn’t matter because it is the experience shared, the music.
And that later time toward the very end of Rubinstein’s career, but before that last filmed performance at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, a setting like a jewel, but we had seen him I don’t remember where, or what he played, before he told the world that his failing eyesight required him to stop performing. But we knew we’d better see him while we can, and he probably played Chopin, because he had become the world go-to for Chopin, brought from the source, he knew it wasn’t a gymnastic competition, today’s steel fingers playing faster and faster before machines could dominate them all, and we would hear them and say, “So? Where’s the music?” and wished they would listen to Rubinstein to know how the music goes.
And after his performance we raced backstage for an autograph to prolong contact, and he met us all at his dressing room door and said, “I’m sorry, but I’ve just played a long and hard performance, with encores, and my fingers are tired, but come to my hotel room (and he gave us the name and number) and I’ll be happy to sign all your programs there.” And we didn’t because we were shy and didn’t know where to park.

And Horowitz. Vladimir, who established and cultivated his reputation for playing fast and accurate, pianistic terrors like Rachmaninoff 3, who appeared infrequently in public because apparently he was uncomfortable. He was respectful to the music, but too often played by the stopwatch. Our dear friend who played the piano himself, accompanied recitals at his famous house, even accompanied me, and when they moved to Santa Fe he accompanied the Opera when they needed an extra piano, he made a pronouncement that wounded me in many directions. He said, “Rubinstein has no technique. Now Horowitz, there…” which prompted me to my famous dictum, a little unjust, but not inaccurate: “Horowitz plays the notes. Rubinstein plays the music.”

I told you I was judgmental.

This shows where I draw some lines.

And Shirley and I let so much music into our lives, she especially, where her dancing in ballet manifested music in her entire body and gave music a new dimension. We crossed over from outer to more and more inner circles, with Ossie’s help. Ossie. Oswald Jonas. Revered by the music world and snagged by UCR as a coup they continually surprised themselves with. A musicologist absolutely par excellence, he was the custodian of the Schenker collection which I think he was donating to UCR and which I helped him catalog.

He was Old Vienna. He brought their deep knowledge and their sense of humor. He introduced us to Max and Rudi, that infamous duo. Example: Max and Rudi were sitting opposite each other on the public transportation, and Max said to Rudi, “I’m sick of looking at your face!” And Rudi stood and said, “Let’s change places.”

Or the time on one street in Vienna. There’s a famous cheese shop known for stinky cheese and you could smell it for blocks away. Max was walking down the street and thought he saw Rudi looking lovingly through the window.

Max called out, “Rudi, is that you?”

And Rudi replied sheepishly, “No, it’s the cheese.”

This was part of the repertoire of Oswald Jonas, in his substantial eighties, who entertained us with modern music, plumping his bottom down on the piano keys.

This was the Oswald Jonas who explained what happened to his eyebrows and hair, saying, “The oven didn’t light, so I stuck my head in and struck a match to see…”

This was the Ossie who chased Shirley around the table, trying to pinch her, his wife Edit rolled her eyes, and Shirley got away because she was just too quick.

This was the Oswald Jonas who took Shirley in to L.A., she was driving, to hear his old friend Rudolph Serkin, and any other great who came through town, and he took Shirley backstage where he and Serkin rushed to each other with open arms and Serkin said, “Ossie! I’ve missed you!”

This is the Ossie who brought Ruly Schnabel home, son of Artur Schnabel who dominated the early 20th Century piano.

This was the Oswald Jonas we joked knew Brahms, and then we checked the dates, and said maybe…

Ossie’s wife Edit was the other half of the Viennese power couple. Shirley studied piano with her. She was like a Yoda Troll Doll, and would meet Shirley at the door, still in her nightgown, cigarette dangling from her fingers, Kaffee mit schlag in the other hand, and say, “Come in, meine Engel, but first we sit. Kaffee, then piano.” And she and Shirley would go to the keyboard of the magnificent Bosendorfer piano transported from Vienna, and sit together and play Schubert Four Hands, and sometimes I could sit at their feet and listen.

Good times.

Formative for me.

So I learned some things by osmosis, some tangential.

I knew right away that Alicia de la Rocha was the greatest interpreter of Spanish piano music. How did I know? Just listen to her. Others may be good, even very good, but she has it right, the soul of the music, the rhythm, the color. She is the sound board and gives it back to us. She should be on all the lists.

And Ashkenazy. Shirley was lucky enough to get tickets when she was younger, and he came to town starting his career, a young boy at the keyboard, and she was entranced, not just because he was young and good looking, but he had the music and she knew it. And we watched with enthusiasm as he included a career in conducting, joining all those others preeminent on an instrument but expanding to conduct because the world has room for multiple greatness, and needs more.

Like Daniel Barenboim whose career on the piano would have been enough, but included conducting because he can, and then took on World Peace because we’re not there yet, and he juggles them all. I’m glad to see him on so many lists.

And, in no particular order, Van Cliburn, that lanky young Texan, who swept Russia when barriers were suspended and we could go both ways, and the Russians were allowed to love him not just because he was young and tall and they liked his looks, but because he knew their music and loved it and he brought it to them and they could share together. He was old school, the richness of sound, no need to impress with unwonted speed, just the full music. I mourned when later he withdrew from sight, when he halted a performance midway, when emotional imbalance and the discomfort of public kept him from us. Like so many others. Ivo Pogorelich, that young breath of fresh air, who, some say went crazy, lost balance and perspective, not just for giving in to an older woman, I have no way of knowing, but at least to keep his love of music and piano active, established an international competition where he could lead others to join the ranks, as Van Cliburn did earlier with even more renown, and gave us Kissin, who plays sometimes too fast because the world’s changing.

And Emil Gilels I discovered at the same time as Van Cliburn, and responded to his assurance, his Tchaikovsky that satisfied on so many levels, and going back and forth between him and Van Cliburn’s slower warmer richer, deciding I didn’t have to choose just one. I was learning. And I was impressed by the films of Gilels bringing his piano to the front during the War to entertain the troops, when over here we had Bob Hope and jokes, but Gilels humbled himself to music of, by, and for the people to embody and remind them what they were fighting for.

For Gilels it was art, not ego. I remember him, self-effacing, saying to an enthusiast who called him the greatest, “Wait ‘til you hear Richter!”

I’m delighted to see Giomar Novaes on some lists. Not just because we need to recognize and appreciate more women, like Marta Argerich. Shirley discovered Novaes because she had her records. She played them and we listened together, and loved her.

Shirley played a recording of Maurizio Pollini’s Petrushka and said to astonished friends, “Can you believe that’s only one pianist? Sounds like he has four hands at least!” Now everybody who can plays it to show they can.

Lists. Yes, more lists, always growing longer. Like violinists, so many young, wonderful, and more and more women.

I think of Clara Schumann who was so incredible, playing her husband’s compositions and her own, drove Brahms to distraction as an obsession for the rest of his life. I wish I could have heard her.

I think of Nadia Boulanger, a woman who influenced an entire generation, the beginning of a century. Things open up, get better toward inclusion, balance, that world we’re approaching too slowly.

I think of those artists who collaborate by choice, how the best choose the best. I think of “the world’s greatest accompanist,” Gerald Moore, who not only adjusted to each artist’s idiosyncracies, but also somehow as if by his own secret magic could adjust to each relevant musical tradition, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, British. He made Spanish music sound Spanish. Everybody wanted to perform with him. I cherish the tribute recording where everyone rushed to be a part of it. No wonder Dietrich Fischer Dieskau recorded a complete song cycle with him. No wonder that Victoria de los Angeles said, “We don’t need to rehearse. We both know what we’re doing and how the music goes. I trust him.” And Gerald Moore, like Rubinstein, loved the good life, good food and drink, a good joke, and he was humble in the comfortably secure way when you don’t have to prove anything and can make fun of yourself. Commenting on those difficult passages in Schubert, Die Winterreise, No. 5, Der Lindenbaum, where the pianist’s fingers rush trip and tangle and fall over each other and he said, “I just sort of fake it and get past…”

And like seeking like, best seeking best, I think on this side of the world Heifetz and Piatigorsky and Rubinstein collaborated on Beethoven’s Trio, and on the other side of the globe in Russia, Oistrakh and Rostropovich and Richter got together for the same trio. I was impressed by Richter’s restraint, to hold back from dominance or flash, and people who expected virtuosity found instead the balance equal to the music and said, “I didn’t realize! I never knew!” Richter could play the most difficult music at first sight with the intonation the music called for, and all musicians bowed to him. He didn’t like external restraint and freed himself to roam the world on his own terms. No wonder he and Fischer Dieskau chose each other to record Die Winterreise, when Fischer Dieskau did so many times with so many others, as if always seeking, covering all bases, and they listened to each other as they performed, saying, “If you’re going to perform it, play it for keeps.” I hardly know Richter but I like him already because he reminds me of me.

One reason I don’t like lists is because they exclude. I think for example of the Casadesus family, not unlike the Romero family on guitar, who performed together as well as separately, and knew how to collaborate like a barbershop quartet. France cherished their eminence but the rest of the world experienced it to a lesser extent and didn’t know well enough. I think of Zino Francescatti and Robert Casadesus and the Franck Sonata. Theirs was the first performance in my hearing and, as with all firsts, holds pride of place against which all others must measure, first among equals, unless another should come along to unseat it. But that hasn’t happened yet for me and this work. Each leaps to the music, unafraid, trades the themes with seamless relinquishment, and gives us the music as it was meant to be. Each belongs in respective pantheons, but not consistently take first place at the top of the pyramid. That’s why I don’t like the tyranny of lists. They exclude, they provide cracks to slip through, they make us miss alternatives.

Playing with lists can be fun. Playing with others and their lists. I can play with myself, my own lists, but I’m already tired of it for now. We all need to get out more, listen to real music in the real world. We need to let music work its magic and help us find and experience what really matters in everything.

Are you listening?

I am.