Music: Prodigies

The infant: prodigy entered. The hall became quiet. . . . He looked as though he were nine years old but was really eight and given out for seven.—Thomas Mann, The Infant Prodigy.

All great musicians were prodigies, but not all prodigies grow up to be great musicians. Nevertheless, last week the U. S. was teeming with precocious moppets of seven, eight, nine and up who were practicing or performing with more than common ability:

During rests in the graceful Mozart D Minor Concerto, a curly-haired blond boy with chubby knees sat at his piano one night last week so impatient for the Philadelphia Symphony to give him his cues that he beat time with clenched fists. When his cues came, he played with such sympathy and taste that the audience stormed applause, the gentle critics went home to praise unreservedly an outstanding young wonder, Julius (“Buddy”) Katchen, II. Prodigy Katchen had been “discovered” by Conductor Eugene Ormandy (who himself made his debut at 7), had been given a preliminary hearing before the Philadelphia Orchestra Club, recently organized to stimulate youthful interest in the city’s music.

Since the given age of six. Pianist Ruth Slenczynski, now 12, whose garrulous father has been her only teacher, has been prodigious; critics now think she may play through to greatness, as have Menuhin, Kreisler, Hofmann, Heifetz.

Youngest, most eccentric in the year’s rash of musical moppets is Chicago’s David (“Dudy”) Davis, 6, a violinist being kept under cover for later, safer release. A raw-vegetarian and nudist, Dudy is taken to school bundled in a large cape, stripped down to a loin cloth when he practices. Even so, he is sometimes too hot, and cries: “I’m sweating bullets.”

Due for a Manhattan debut this year is Sybil Goldberg, 14, pianist, daughter of a stage hand in Chicago’s Balaban & Katz theatres. She has already played with the Cincinnati and Kansas City Symphonies.

Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute is grooming Cuban Margot Ros, 12, soft-eyed pianist-prodigy who played in Havana concerts at three. Maestro Leopold Stokowski, introducing her at a Philadelphia children’s concert two years ago, called her “one of the greatest products of Cuba.” She loves Shirley Temple, ”would dearly love to skate in the snow.”

Peter Paul Loyanich, 10, was brought up to pianism by a San Franciscan who scraped a living as violinist for Hearst’s radio station KYA, saw talent in his tot at two. Peter Paul learned to play on an old oaken pianola, has been huddled under the tutorial wing of Virtuoso José Iturbi, who has said of him: “He is extraordinary —Santa Maria!”

Talented son of a Manhattan clothing worker, black-eyed Giuseppi Cusimano, 11, violinist, has not played in as many concerts as he might have, because he was last year injured by falling plate glass. After a concert in Oakland, Calif., Conductor Ernest Schelling ventured: ”Young Giuseppi should go very far.”