Karl Miller ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

>I remember reading in one of Levant's books about a concert when Enesco
>was guest conductor.  As the story goes...the concert was to include a
>Beethoven Symphony and during the rehearsal Enesco said to the orchestra
>something like..."you know this piece better than I do." They didn't
>rehearse it.  Levant goes on to say that he thought it was a wonderful
>performance.

Which was saying something, as Enesco had a legendary memory.

Speaking of which, a favourite passage from Abram Chasins' Speaking of
Pianists, regarding Sir Donald Tovey:

   He knew by heart practically every significant composition from
   the sixteenth century through the nineteenth.  If this sounds like
   a sophomoric exaggeration, read Mary Grierson's biography of Tovey
   [right Abram, I'll nip down to Walden Books right now], wherein she
   relates that Professor Newall of Cambridge once asked Tovey how long
   it would take him to play from memory everything he knew, playing
   eight hours a day.  Tovey answered: "Oh, about four weeks." Then
   thinking it over, he corrected himself and added: "No, I think it
   would take eight weeks, seven at least."

   Pablo Casals said: "never did I mention one work of the symphonic,
   operatic, choral, chamber-music, or solo literature which Tovey didn't
   sit right down and illustrate flawlessly from memory at the piano,
   starting at the exact point under discussion." When I mentioned Tovey
   to Georges Enesco, he crossed himself.

Deryk Barker
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