Great Minds of Another Time - How Fortunate I Am!

When I recall, in my formative years, the power of spectacular luck, simply by being with a teacher who passed on to me countless aspects of musical and pianistic thinking from two giants born in the 19th century; well, I consider myself anointed with good fortune.
This teacher, with whom I studied for several years, was himself a student of one of the last teaching icons who straddled two centuries; namely Isidor Phillip. Phillip was a giant, especially in his vaunted development and implementation of particularized finger strength, which my teacher passed along to me. Eminent pianists sought out Phillip in order to add to their ways of dealing with the piano.
My teacher also studied with the legendary pianist Josef Lhevinne. Even the great Vladimir Horowitz, in his earlier career, was an open admirer of Lhevinne, who one may argue was the equal, and something more at times, of any of the great post-Lisztian giants of the keyboard. There are recordings of this titan, and one will quickly recognize the nature of Lhevinne's genius. I have a Vorsetzer recording of Czerny's Octave study, which Lhevinne absolutely overwhelms. I have always, in my mind, challenged any of the great pianists of the past century to perform this challenging etude with more elan and ease than does Lhevinne, which he recorded in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Luckily for me, my teacher imparted countless ways of Lhevinne's thought processes endemic to the playing of the piano, which parted many curtains for me.
All in all, I consider myself most fortunate in having become a spoke, however small, in the Wheel of History.

Two Giants Who Made Only ONE Recording...

In 1950, two of the most powerful musicians in the world came together to make one recording. They chose the third Sonata of Johannes Brahms.
They were good friends, born only months apart, in Mother Russia.
Both of these great musicians did not especially like Brahms that much - both professed publicly that they pretty much shied away from recording the great composer, as they much preferred the offerings of the other great composers. Actually, the violinist decried the way Brahms wrote in Concerto form. And even though the pianist recorded very little Brahms, his legendary recording of the "B" flat Concerto with his father-in-law Arturo Toscanini is considered of the truly history-making concerto recordings of the twentieth century.
These two men, thankfully, collaborate here in a riveting reading of a composer they generally preferred not to perform in public.
The pianist is Vladimir Horowitz, arguably the most powerful pianistic entity of the twentieth century.
The violinist is Nathan Milstein, a violinist who, sadly, is not given as much recognition today as he deserves - actually, he was, during his career, a violinist at the same level as Heifetz and Kreisler, and one only needs to listen to the recordings available in order to know that he was indeed a giant among other giants of the violin.
What a shame that these two did not record more than this one most revealing document...

Genius and Mischief - The Pianist and the Singer

The young Artur Rubinstein, who later became one of the most celebrated pianists of the 20th century, and the young Feodor Chaliapin, perhaps the most renown singer to have ever come out of Mother Russia, encountered one another in, I believe, Moscow. As the two musicians walked down one of the streets, a woman and her teen-age daughter (probably around 17 or 18 years of age), strolled by the two in the opposite direction. According to Rubinstein, in his memoir, Chaliapin immediately wheeled around and pursued the two women, and disappeared around a corner.
Now; to interject- both Rubinstein (before he settled down in his late thirties) and Chaliapin were known as, shall we say, "active admirers of feminine beauty", especially Chaliapin, whose reputations both as artist and womanizer were well-known.
At a later date, Rubinstein and Chaliapin met, and Rubinstein asked, arguably, the greatest Basso in the history of singing, what the outcome of that encounter on the street turned out to be.
Chaliapin answered "the mother was wonderful, but the daughter was fantastic."
I cannot inform you as to whether this story is apocryphal, but it IS in Rubinstein's memoir.
At any rate, the amorous exploits of these two giants were without denial by both. As a matter of fact, Rubinstein unabashedly relates some of his escapades in his memoir.