Music: Mittened Pianist

The chief thing that distinguishes Henry (“Scotty”) Scott, 26, from thousands of other medium-blond, medium-sized young men is his ability to play the piano wearing mittens. As a youth at Syracuse University, he intended to be a serious concert pianist, until a winter day when he went indoors from skating with hands so freezing cold that he kept on his mittens to practice his scales.

Henry Scott, who likes best to be called “Scotty,” now wears mittens winter & summer when he plays the piano, claims that as his fingers perspire they become increasingly agile. Last week in Manhattan he set out to prove his freak point, challenged anyone to play faster than he through his own Jam on the Piano, then through Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody. Runner-up on the Jam piece was one Marjorie Otis, weeded from a week’s preliminary tryouts. While newsreels clicked, Miss Otis played some 500 notes while Scott, in his mittens, played all 700.

Famed always as a fast pianist was Ignace Jan Paderewski, a challenger to Scott last week only in his Duo-Art recordings. In the fastest section of the Hungarian Rhapsody, Paderewski plays 156 notes in six seconds, or 26 notes per second. Scott managed to outspeed the great Pole by 1½ sec. Scott’s all-time record is 44½ notes per second.