THE CD PLAYER PLUS - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

under his tutelage Arthur makes rapid
progress. Under the agreement with
Joachim, Barth receives no remuneration,
and indeed looks after the young
boy’s expenses. To avoid sending him to
high school, he spends two days a week
with him at home, and opens the door
to courses in theory, harmony and musical
ensemble at the Royal and Imperial
Academy.
When he turns 11 Barth seeks to
perfect his culture by getting him lessons
with Theodor Altmann, who, like
a magician, leads him into a voyage
through the centuries of human experience,
overcoming the boy’s resistance
to school texts. Arthur meets Plato, Socrates,
Aristotle, and a little later Kant
and Schopenhauer.
Though Arthur is fascinated by theatre,
it is musical life that has the strongest
attraction for him. Surrounded by
the musical and cultural elite, always
prepared to enrich his knowledge, he
continues to astonish one and all with
his precocious acquaintance with the
whole spectre of cultural flux. Joachim’s
little protégé is more and more popular.
Invitations flow, and he is treated as
though he were an adult rather than a
schoolboy. It is thus that, barely at the
threshold of puberty, he spends his
time with philosophers and learned folk
of myriad disciplines. Add to that the
countless occasions on which he is able
to hear the greatest artists of the contemporary
world: the immortal composer,
pianist, professor and conductor
Ferruccio Busoni, the great French violinist
Jacques Thibaud, the pianist and
composer Eugène d’Albert, the Belgian
violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe,
whose exuberance and sensuality captivate
him, the brilliant pianist Teresa
Careno, not to mention Edouard Risler,
Gabrilowitsch, Arthur Schnabel, and
the famous Joachim quartet.
Regularly invited to the feast tables
of the rich, Arthur always agrees with
grace to play his favorite composers. It
is his way of saying thanks, but it is also
a most enriching experience.
A first love affair
Arthur’s 13th spite his lack of enthusiasm for religion
in general, he is a willing participant
in exercises intended to make
him ready for this important step in
the life of a Jewish adolescent.
After the ceremony one of the
female guests, propelled by her emotions
and possibly a few more glasses
than she absolutely needed, kisses
him on the mouth, leaving him in a
fearful state. He even asks the bold
lady if she will accept to wait a decade
or so that he might marry her!
He lays it on thickly, playing the desperate
lover who craves her company
for the night-time. So persuasive is
he that she actually agrees to come
by regularly after the household is
asleep. But the affair ends abruptly
when his landlady catches on, and
lets the nighttime intruder know
she is no longer welcome. The lady
leaves without protest, and Arthur con- Then, one day, a miracle. Joachim
cludes that her interest was more mater- announces that he has secured an aunal
than erotic.
dience with the legendary Polish pia-
It is his first heartbreak.
nist Ignacy Paderewski at his villa in
But let us not dismiss too lightly this Switzer land. Joachim hopes to obtain an
youth’s yearning for a maternal pres- evaluation of the young Arthur’s artistic
ence, a yearning that will in fact never potential. Arthur, for his part, is at the
cease. Did his mother abandon him peak of excitement and spends his wak-
when he was too young? What we know ing time at the piano, hoping to erase in
is that he will have a voracious appetite
Not just for hardware…
members of the opposite sex, and
just a few days the result of a long period
of indolence.
he will be eternally vulnerable to their Finding himself before the great
What long-time advances, readers tell no us matter they most their like age about or their UHF man, is that after it a long trip and a few wor-
does more than review social amplifiers rank. and speakers.
risome incidents, he is stunned by Pa-
In every issue, we discuss ideas.
derewski’s handsomeness, by his el-
We try to tell you Paderewski what you need to know, besides what CD egance, player to and especially by his charm and
buy.
A series of untoward events begin to his smile. Arthur compares him to the
It’s one of the features affect Arthur: that makes a concert UHF he Magazine himself con- unlike any sun. other A long chat with the master results
audio magazine.
siders a flop, increasingly tense relations in an intimate confidence by Paderewski.
with the severe Barth, and Barth’s great His only son, born with a congenital
pettiness toward Rubinstein père. Worse malformation, has just died. Though
yet are Barth’s jealous rages against the Paderewski may not wish to minimize
wonderful Altmann, whom he fires sum- the young musician’s problems, he says,
marily to be replaced by someone of his “Don’t take your problems too much to
choosing. Above all there is his mother’s heart. As you can see, there can be even
fierce determination to come share his greater grief in the life of an artist.”
life, the better to run it. It requires no It is a moment that will remain en-
more to break down the resistance of graved in the adolescent’s memory. Also
this hypersensitive boy who has passed unforgettable, of course, is his private
from puberty to adult life far from those recital for Paderewski, followed by the
he loves. He has no appetite, and sleep famous pianist’s advice on fingering,
does not come. Pale, thin and depressed, complex pedal work and other impor-
birthday falls January he tumbles into serious inertia which tant pianistic matters. The young Ar-
28, 1900. Preparing for his bar-mitzvah, touches anything and everything to do thur is invited to return during his sum-
he studies Hebrew, to be sure, and de- with music.
mer vacation.
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 65
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