[Harp-L] Larry Adler stories

[Venky Ramakrishna]

Maybe these images say something about Larry reading music.

On Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 7:05 AM Richard Hunter <rhunter377 at xxxxx> wrote:

> 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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