{"id":5202,"date":"2016-09-17T09:52:40","date_gmt":"2016-09-16T23:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emotemuse.com\/g\/?p=5202"},"modified":"2016-09-17T09:52:40","modified_gmt":"2016-09-16T23:52:40","slug":"playing-by-the-mood-of-the-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/?p=5202","title":{"rendered":"Playing by the mood of the audience"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\tRachmaninoff sent fellow composer\/pianist Medtner his <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Corelli Variations<\/span>.&nbsp; He wrote:\n<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n\tI played them here about fifteen times, but of these fifteen performances, only one was good.&nbsp; The others were sloppy.&nbsp; I can&#39;t play my own compositions!&nbsp; And it&#39;s so boring! Not once have I played these all in continuity.&nbsp; I was guided by the coughing of the audience.&nbsp; Whenever the coughing increased, I would skip to the next variation.&nbsp; When there was no coughing, I would play them in proper order.&nbsp; In one concert, I don&#39;t remember where &#8211; some small town &#8211; the coughing was so violent that I played only 10 variations (out of 20).&nbsp; My best record was set in New York, where I played 18 Variations.*&nbsp; However, I hope that <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">you <\/span>will play all of them, and won&#39;t &quot;cough.&quot;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\n\t<br \/>\n\t* In Washington, Ruth Howell of the <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Daily News <\/span>wrote: &quot;There were, perhaps, too many variations.&nbsp; The piece grew long, boring, and the theme thickened so that even Corelli couldn&#39;t have found it.&nbsp; If the finale had been put in five minutes before, it would have been perfect.&nbsp; When it was finished, even Rachmaninoff looked a little disgusted.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>\tCited in: Bertensson, Sergei &amp; Leyda, Jay (2001) <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music<\/span>. &nbsp;Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p.280-81.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rachmaninoff sent fellow composer\/pianist Medtner his Corelli Variations.&nbsp; He wrote: I played them here about fifteen times, but of these fifteen performances, only one was good.&nbsp; The others were sloppy.&nbsp; I can&#39;t play my own compositions!&nbsp; And it&#39;s so boring! Not once have I played these all in continuity.&nbsp; I was guided by the coughing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[701],"tags":[1390,76],"class_list":["post-5202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-works","tag-corelli-variations","tag-rachmaninoff"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5203,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5202\/revisions\/5203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}