Ph.D. at the Piano

At 25, Charles Rosen is a Ph.D. in French literature (Princeton) who also plays the piano. Last week, after listening to a Rosen concert in Manhattan's Town Hall, the critics told him, in effect, to quit the literature business and concentrate on the recital business. "[He may become] a figure of real consequence on our musical landscape," said the Herald Tribune. "The type of mind that is going to grow with the years," seconded the Times.

Rosen played a program that an older man might fear to tackle. Where the usual recital contains only one or two really testing works, Rosen's had four. Moreover, he played them thoroughly his own way.

His performance of Brahms's virtuoso Variations on a Theme by Paganini swept along like a fresh breeze in a musty corridor, slamming doors on heavy-handed traditions and uncovering the fine old structure. Listeners heard more details than they believed possible, played in tones of pastel shading. Then the pianist flashed through Schoenberg's tortuous Suite, Op. 25 and surprised even hardened modern music lovers: its improbable burblings came through almost as easily as a Viennese waltz. After that came Beethoven's Sonata, Op. 110 and, for a dazzling change of pace, Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit. When it was over, the audience demanded four encores.

Manhattan-born Charles Rosen has been playing the piano since he was five, but when he went to Princeton he majored in French literature and studied music on the side. After that came graduate work, and the big academic push that the Ph.D. requires. Then about two years ago, just before he got his degree, some of his admirers raised $1,000 to pay for a Manhattan piano debut.

He had all the amateur's troubles: for the debut he rented a piano he particularly liked, but he broke a string at rehearsal and had to use an instrument with a brassier tone; then he found that the tuner had cleaned the keyboard and left it so slippery he had to claw at the keys to keep his fingers from skidding. Things went better last week (he warned the management not to clean the keys), but his powerful performance knocked all the A strings out of tune early in the program.

Most of these troubles, he thinks, are the result of professional inexperience. "If you want to play the piano well," he now says, "you have to make your living at it." He is not quite ready for that yet. After his 1951 debut, he won a Fulbright scholarship and went off to Paris to study 15th century musical manuscripts; he still has a few months' work to finish in Paris' Bibliotheque Nationale. Meanwhile, he will make some recordings (for London) and continue to practice four hours a day. After that, he will start in earnest on his piano career.

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