Reviews

Mr Blok 

Gregor Piatigorsky

246PP ISBN 9781951214661 

ADELAIDE BOOKS $27.40

The Speed of Dark: A Memoir 

Joram Piatigorsky

ISBN 9781732074231 

ADELAIDE BOOKS $22.30

It was recently discovered that Gregor Piatigorsky was born in 1904, one year later than his previously official birthdate. I learnt this from The Speed of Dark, a memoir by his son Joram Piatigorsky, one of two recently published books connected with the most charismatic of the 20th century’s great cellists.

The other is Mr Blok, a seriocomic surreal novel written by Piatigorsky in the late 1940s and early 50s and now finally published with a beautifully written introduction by Joram. It completes the current Piatigorsky prose canon (some short stories, essays and poems still remain unpublished) and is, for sure, an odd book that some will like and others not. This would not have bothered its author, given his declaration in the foreword that ‘readers will find Mr Blok a likeable fellow, who will not mind in the slightest being put aside, should he not succeed in holding your attention’. The titular Mr Blok is a controversial New York artist who vacillates between self-confident artistic vision and alienated despair. The book was originally entitled The Ditch, referring to the muddy channel that he ends up falling into – and indeed in which he finds himself at the opening. In between, the loosely connected narrative follows him through love affairs, encounters with the police, near panic that he might have contracted leprosy, and lecturing on his art for the Teyton Women’s Committee for Promoting Geniuses. It culminates in a chaotic Assembly of the Aristocrats of Mind Society, who honour him as their ‘Idol #49’.

I reacted to the book much as I did to actor David Niven’s 1981 novel, Go Slowly, Come Back Quickly, in that I most liked the parts that seem to be autobiographical, as well as the passages in which the protagonist serves as Piatigorsky’s surrogate, voicing his innermost beliefs and philosophies. Indeed he told Doris Stevenson, the long-time pianist for his masterclasses, that ‘he portrayed his real self in Mr Blok.’ Violinist Paul Rosenthal, who (playing viola) recorded Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence with Piatigorsky and Jascha Heifetz in 1968, noted to me ‘that in busying himself with the composition of a work of fiction when not performing is already a statement of some sort. His wonderful imagination never stopped being active and his charm is as evident in his book as it was in his conversation.’

Gregor Piatigorsky

I first read Mr Blok in a bootlegged photocopy when I was studying with Piatigorsky many years ago. Revisiting it after reading Th e Speed of Dark I appreciated it much more. Retired after a 50-year career as a molecular biologist heading his own laboratory at the US National Institutes of Health, Joram Piatigorsky has now embarked on a second career as a writer. As one would expect, he offers an intimate view of Piatigorsky as a person and a personality (and in so doing, illuminates and contextualises Mr Blok) and, being a scientist, he relates and reflects on his own career and research. But most of all he addresses the challenge of finding oneself. Each of us must meet that challenge, but with Piatigorsky as a father and Jacqueline de Rothschild (of the banking dynasty) as his mother, ‘from birth, the extraordinary was ordinary in my family’. Joram is a spectacular writer; his memoir is not only skilfully and elegantly composed, but honest, insightful and poignant. Joram’s achievement encompasses reflections on creativity in both art and science, giving and accepting feedback and criticism, the qualities of leadership, and most of all, the joy and fulfilment of living one’s own life on one’s own terms.

JEFFREY SOLOW

Nineteenth Century Musical Autographs: the Niçois Album of the Count of Cessole Robert Adelson

320PP ISBN 9782919156047 

ACADEMIA NISSARDA €40

The musical riches contained in this unique collection go way beyond the normal parameters of popular memorabilia. This is due entirely to the astute thinking of the noted 19th-century collector of Cremonese violins, Eugène de Cessole (1805– 76), whose autograph album is the focus of this handsomely produced tome. His distinguished guest list reads like a veritable Who’s Who of Romantic music – violinists especially – who were not only asked to sign their moniker in the normal way, but also invited to add a handwritten musical souvenir. These range from tantalising musical fragments lasting just a few bars – in the case of celebrated tenor Jean-Alexandre de Talazac, simply his trademark high C, annotated to be sung ‘with a real chest voice’ – to complete pieces.

The roll call of composers alone is reason enough to invest in this lavishly illustrated collection. Liszt signs himself off in style with a musical flourish from his chromatically rampant Omnitonic Prelude – virtually every note carries an accidental – Verdi a few bars from Act II of La traviata, and Berlioz a meticulously inscribed excerpt from his symphony Roméo et Juliette. Other featured composers include Donizetti, Glinka, Gounod, Mendelssohn (whose musical autograph Cessole obtained through an intermediary), Meyerbeer, Offenbach and Rossini.

However, it is the long list of string players that makes this volume of essential interest to readers of The Strad. Violinist Charles de Bériot contributes ten bars for violin and piano that turn the seven letters of Cessole’s name into a repeated G motif; Louis Spohr a canon in two voices; Camillo Sivori 24 bars in march style for solo violin that is almost entirely triple-stopped; Antonio Bazzini eleven bars of Allegro vivace for the G and D strings (involving some precariously high-wire broken octaves); Henry Vieuxtemps four bars of an Andante Preludio inscribed to Cessole as ‘tender souvenirs’; Heinrich Ernst an unpublished variation on the Carnival of Venice; Ole Bull an excerpt from his Polacca guerrira, and Nicolò Paganini (a close friend of the family) two full pages of manuscript featuring the only surviving copy in the composer’s hand of his fingercrippling Introduction and Variations on ‘Non più mesta’ from Rossini’s La Cenerentola.

The first manuscript page of Paganini’s Introduction and Variations on ‘Non più mesta’

There are also contributions from violinists Charles Philippe Lafont, Jean Becker, Vasily Bezekirsky, Jean-Delphin Alard (an unpublished variation characterised by rapid leaps), Guido Papini, Hubert Léonard, Alexei Lvov (a palindromic canon), Alexandre Artôt (twelve bars of solo violin agitato entitled The Storm), and the prodigy sisters Julia and Juliette Delepierre. There are cellists Alexandre Batta, Auguste Franchomme (sixteen bars of an easy flowing, triple-time Andante for cello and piano) and Prosper Seligmann, and legendary double bassist Giovanni Bottesini (the theme from his infamous Tarantella in A minor). 

In addition to the 108 musical autographs, the volume is generously illustrated throughout, accompanied by meticulously researched annotations by Robert Adelson (presented in French and English). It also includes a fascinating essay outlining the background to Cessole’s volume of autographs and his priceless collection of instruments, most notably the 1716 ‘Cessole’ Stradivari, and two by Guarneri ‘del Gesù’: the 1732 ‘Ferni’ and the 1736 ‘Comte de Cessole’.

JULIAN HAYLOCK