The Busy Eclectic

One of the best ways to spot the im portance of a musical event is by the number of musicians in the audience.

Last week a vast panoply of pianistic tal ent sat in Manhattan's Philharmonic Hall to hear one of their number, Gary Graff man, play Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms. Afterward, led by the formidable Artur Rubinstein, they went back to the Green Room to shake hands.

"I was so overwhelmed to see Rubin stein there," says Graffman, "that I never gave him a chance to say any thing. I just kept talking the whole time."

There were, of course, other ways to measure the importance of Graffman's concert. Now at 39, he has slowly but persistently emerged as the top American pianist in his age group. His plat form manner is nononsense, but at the peak of his form he stirs poetry, fire and steel into whatever he plays. At a time when most younger American per formers make their loudest noise in the flashier side of the repertory --Prokofiev, Bartok, Liszt and the more extroverted Chopin -- Graffman has matured into a musician able to challenge Europe's best in the more substantial classical and early romantic repertory.

Good Listeners. Before World War II, critics customarily spoke of two major pianistic schools: the dynamic, aloof virtuosity of the Russians (Rachmani noff, Horowitz) and the poetic, relaxed, scholarly Austro-Germans (Schnabel, Serkin). Graffman typifies what may some day be known as the American school, but isn't yet: a synthesis of the best pianists from prewar Russia and Germany, with a range of styles that adapt to any music. "Rachmaninoff," he says, "approached everything the same way. But I approach Prokofiev totally differently from Beethoven, and Beethoven differently from Bach. The difference in approach has to do with many things: rhythm, phrasing, even the tone of a single note."

This eclectic American approach was partly conditioned by circumstances. "When I was growing up," Graffman says, "we could hear almost all the great Europeans in concert regularly, because the war had forced them to mi grate to the United States. Then, we had recordings. In other words, the pianistic world was at our fingertips." Even today, Graffman often refers to recordings by other pianists in developing his own musical outlook. "When I first work on a piece, I deliberately avoid hearing other performances. Then, when it is respectably well along, I listen to all recordings, because every great artist will have something to say."

Down to Eight. Graffman's first major achievement came in 1949, when he won the Leventritt Award. It was an important step up, but it did not bring instant success. The next few years were spent doing the town-to-town Community Concert circuit. In 1964, he refused to play before a segregated audience in Jackson, Miss., and that temporarily knocked the props from under his career: the following season he was able to pull down a mere eight bookings. This season, Graffman's schedule calls for 100 appearances. "That's too many by 25," he says. "With all those concerts, there is no time to learn anything new."

Nevertheless, he finds time to fill a handsome New York apartment with Oriental art, and to work out some of the most complex cordon bleu recipes with his wife Naomi. At this point of unmistakable arrival in the musical pantheon, he has but one regret. "If I had my life to live over," he says, "I would spend less time polishing pieces and learn more repertory." Most listeners would at least agree that what he has learned so far, he has learned very well.

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