As April Fool’s Day and Rachmaninoff’s birthday elide, here are two funny men in recordings that take the composer rather seriously.
Oscar Levant rode his neuroses and mordant wit to fame as a popular panelist on radio and television, the disheveled, chain-smoking second banana in motion pictures, and author of books with titles such as “A Smattering of Ignorance,” “The Memoirs of an Amnesiac,” and “The Unimportance of Being Oscar.” But he was also one of the most respected champions of the music of George Gershwin, a composer who studied with Arnold Schoenberg, and a serious pianist who performed and recorded the standard concerto repertoire with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Here, Oscar plays it straight, with Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G major, Op. 32, No. 5.
The pianist Victor Borge also displayed a genius for comedic improv, early in his career segueing from standard concert recitals to his signature cocktails of music and humor. His Broadway hit, “Comedy in Music,” entered the Guinness Book for the longest run of a one-person show (849 performances, from 1953 to 1956). In the 1960s, Borge was one of the highest-paid entertainers in the world.
Like Levant, he had his personal demons, but their source would appear to have been circumstantial rather than psychological. He attained early popularity in Scandinavia (Borge was born in Denmark), but as his extensive touring took him all over Europe, a Jew getting laughs with anti-Nazi jokes didn’t exactly endear him to Adolf Hitler. When German forces occupied Denmark, Borge hopped a U.S. Army transport out of Finland – though he would return, not long after, disguised as a sailor, to visit his dying mother.
He arrived in the United States in 1940, with 20 dollars in his pocket and no understanding of English. But he was a fast learner, and he taught himself the language by going to American movies.
Here, all jokes aside, Borge plays Rachmaninoff’s arrangement of Fritz Kreisler’s “Liebesleid” (“Love’s Sorrow”).
Kreisler was one of the world’s great violinists. A famous anecdote relates that he and Rachmaninoff were giving a concert in New York. In the middle of a performance, Kreisler suffered a memory lapse, and as he noodled around on his violin, trying to find his way back, he inched closer to his pianist and whispered, “Where are we?” To which Rachmaninoff replied, “Carnegie Hall.”
Rachmaninoff gets the last laugh on April Fool’s Day, as he performs Kreisler’s “Liebesfreud” (“Love’s Joy”).
Leave a Reply