[Harp-L] Larry Adler stories

[Richard Hunter]

Richard Hammersley wrote:
I started my career researching memory and I am sympathetic to Larry
Adler's view that recall is stories and that many people do not appreciate
that they are storytelling. But in the podcast he also says he cannot read
music. Yet he performed classical pieces written for the harmonica. How?
Did someone play the harmonica part on a piano so he could memorise it? Any
thoughts anyone? My first guess is by "not read music" the great raconteur
meant "not sight read at speed" rather than no knowledge at all.
***
About 50 years ago I bought a book in which Adler presented some of his
favorite music with comments on how to perform.  I don't have that book
now, and I wish I did.  There were lots of interesting comments in it, such
as his observation that if you can't play a piece easily, you shouldn't
play it in public, because the audience will know how hard you're working
and will not enjoy it. (It may surprise some people to learn that there was
music Adler couldn't play easily, but that's what he said.)

In that book, Adler made it clear that for most of his career to that point
he could not read a note.  He recounts at length an episode in which the
conductor of an Australian symphony orchestra trapped him into revealing
that by showing him a section of a score and asking him how he wanted it
conducted.  As we all know from recent comments on this forum, Adler's
stories are not exactly gospel, but my guess is there was more than a grain
of truth in that one.

In that book Adler claimed that he had learned to read later in his
career--remember this was 50 years ago, so it would have been long before
his death. He said that doing so had opened up new worlds for him, and he
advised his readers to do the same.  Whether that was more fabulation from
a master fabulist I don't know. If anyone has a picture of Adler reading
from a score, I'd like to see it.

Regards, Richard Hunter
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