Music: A Family Affair

Few music historians agree as to just how Bach came to write his two concertos for three pianos—a complicated, not to say cumbersome, kind of composition on the face of it. Bach Biographer Albert Schweitzer cites a tradition that Bach wrote them (actually for the light-toned clavier) to play with his two eldest sons, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel. Others believe he wrote them for his students while he was conductor of the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig.

Whatever the original idea, the grace and contrapuntal vigor of the concertos have delighted musicians ever since. Some famous performances: Chopin, playing with Liszt and Ferdinand Hiller; Clara Wieck (later Schumann) with Felix Mendelssohn and Ignaz Moscheles.

Last week a distinguished musical family made Bach’s D Minor Concerto a family affair. Famed French Pianist Robert Casadesus (rhymes with has a canoe) first broached the idea of playing the concerto with the New York Philharmonic-Symphony to Conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos last spring. Mitropoulos was “enthused.” He knew that Robert’s wife Gaby, a first-rate pianist in her own right who often performs two-piano works with her husband, would play one of the pianos. The third pianist, Casadesus announced with pride, would be his son Jean, of course.

Slender, brown-haired Jean, 23, had made a respectable splash in music with tours of both Europe and the U.S. In Paris last summer, father, mother & son had a preliminary skirmish with the D Minor Concerto on rented pianos. Later, with father & son off on tours, they practiced separately. Home in Princeton a month ago, they knuckled down on the three pianos in their living room.

On Thanksgiving Day, a Carnegie Hall audience heard the result of all the planning and practice. Conductor Mitropoulos took the podium, in front of the Philharmonic’s strings. The Casadesus family sat down to their closely banked pianos, Robert on one side, facing Gaby and Jean. Then, radiating their pleasure, they played Bach’s concerto with all of the vigor, grace, delicacy and perfect teamwork it deserves. Carnegie Hall gave them a Thanksgiving hand in return.