Rapid music reveals them at once. Certain composers
require almost a perfect technical equipment in order to render their
music with adequate effect. Mozart is one of these. Much of his music
looks simple, and is really quite easy to read; but to play it as it
should be played is another thing entirely. I seldom give Mozart to my
pupils. Those endless scales, arpeggios and passages, which must be
flawless, in which you dare not blur or miss a single note! To play this
music with just the right spirit, you must put yourself _en rapport_
with the epoch in which it was written--the era of crinoline, powdered
wigs, snuffboxes and mincing minuets. I don't mean to say Mozart's music
is not emotional; it is filled with it, but it is not the emotion of
to-day, but of yesterday, of more than a century back.
"For myself, I love Mozart's music. One of my greatest successes was in
a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Orchestra. I afterward remarked to
one of my colleagues that it had been one of the most difficult tasks I
had ever accomplished. 'Yes, when one plays Mozart one is so _exposed_,'
was his clever rejoinder."
(7) How do you keep repertoire in repair?
"If you mean my own, I would answer that I don't try to keep all my
pieces up, for I have hundreds and hundreds of them, and I must always
save time to study new works.
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