I Wish They Wouldn’t Do These Things.

An ill-considered tribute to a great artist.

Ruth Slenczynska, 97, a piano great, has had a long and successful career. A child prodigy, she survived a rough childhood with a brutal paternal stage mother, who beat her with a wooden shovel handle when her playing didn’t measure up. Despite such awful treatment, she survived, seemingly unscathed. When she was only nine, and already performing in major venues, she traveled to Europe to study with three of the great pianists of the time, Alfred Corteau, Arthur Schnabel and Sergei Rachmaninoff, the latter taking her on as a pupil, his last. She would later perform around the world, in all major halls, establishing herself as a great artist.

She made a series of recordings in the 1950’s for American Decca, predominantly of Chopin, and they were well received. Your Tatler had some of those recordings once, and on them she displays a ferocious technique, as well great artistry.

With Slenczynska still alive, well and with it, a producer at English Decca (now under the same roof as its American counterpart) must have thought it a good idea to make a recording of Miss Slenczynska in her advanced years playing her favorites. It’s called My Life in Music (Decca 4852255) and it does a great disservice to the artist.

While Slenczynska’s interpretive powers remain intact, her technique has declined considerably and she plays the various pieces on the album at painfully slow tempos, yet even then still struggles in the more difficult passages. This is especially apparent in the Chopin F-Minor Fantasy (Op. 49). The pity of it is, in that gorgeous work Slenczynska plays the slow sections, like the chorale in the middle, beautifully, with tender lyricism, but it is all dispelled when she wrestles with the difficult bits, barely getting through them. So it is with most of the works on this recording, with the additional deficiency the artist can barely manage anything louder than a mezzo-forte.

Decca would have been well advised, instead of issuing this new recording, to remaster and release a complete set of Slenczynska’s earlier recordings, when she was in her dazzling prime. Those are the performances she should be remembered by. (Update: this has already been done, released on Deutsche Gramophone Eloquence, 4841302. A detailed review can be found here.)

One of the numbers in My Life in Music is a charming ditty by Samuel Barber, called, “Let’s Sit it Out. I’d Rather Watch” (played quite nicely by Slenczynska). It’s a pity artist and record company failed to heed that title.