Monday, Nov. 11, 1957

Return of the Prodigy

FORBIDDEN CHILDHOOD (263 pp.)--Ruth Slenczynska and Louis Biancolli--Doubleday ($3.95).

Ruth Slenczynska was different. Before she was even born, her Polish immigrant father knew she would be a musician, and when he first saw her in a Sacramento hospital two hours after birth, he sobbed ecstatically over her sturdy wrists and padded fingertips. Twelve days later he confidently announced that she would "be one of the world's greatest musicians." He meant it.

Ruth's father was a frustrated violinist (reduced to giving lessons), but when she rebelled against this instrument at the age of three, pleading for the piano, he gave her what she wanted. The very next morning he woke her at six, trotted her without breakfast to the piano, and her ordeal began. All day long, the metronome clicking back and forth, he taught the tot to play scales in time. It was not easy. "Father never gave up. He knew exactly how to handle the situation. Every time I made a mistake, he leaned over and, very methodically, without a word, slapped me across the face."

"Not Since Mozart." In Forbidden Childhood (written with New York World-Telegram and Sun Music Critic Louis Biancolli), Ruth Slenczynska recalls how her father cursed her, kept her hungry and beat her into being a genius. Nine hours a day, seven days a week, she sat practicing in her slip at the keyboard, never wearing a dress because the sweat would have ruined it. Her mother's protests were useless. In all things the terrified child obeyed the man who, after saving her from drowning, told her: "I just saved your life. Your life belongs to me and me alone." Then, while she was still trembling with fear, he made her repeat ten times: "My life is yours. I must do as you say."

At four, in 1929, she gave her first concert. While rehearsing for it, she asked her father what would happen if she made a mistake. He told her that people would be there ready to let fly with rotten eggs and vegetables, demonstrated when she missed a note by throwing a ripe tomato at her. Ruth played brilliantly, had critics raving. "Not since Mozart . ." one began.

On a visit to the San Francisco Bay Area, where the family had settled, the late great Pianist Josef Hofmann granted the four-year-old 20 precious minutes. Amazed, he listened to her for two hours, then got her a scholarship to Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music, offering to teach her himself. Later she was sent abroad to study and took lessons (all free) from Egon Petri, Artur Schnabel, Alfred Cortot, Wilhelm Backhaus. Said Sergei Rachmaninoff: "In one year you will be magnificent. In two years you will be unbelievable . . . Would you like some cookies?"

Miracle or Midget? As she began concertizing around Europe to cheering crowds at six, some listeners refused to believe that what they heard came from what they saw. In Berlin distinguished critics got down on all fours to examine her piano for the mechanical contraption that might explain the miracle. In Copenhagen the Danish press had her examined by a doctor to certify that she was really a child and not a midget; but New York critics wildly reached for their superlatives after her Town Hall debut at eight.

The child had been making more than $75,000 a year for three years when she heard her father say in an unguarded moment; "There is only one thing in this world that counts and that is money, and I teach Ruth to play Beethoven because it brings in the dollars." She was old enough to know that he was not the musician he claimed to be. When her father took over her training completely, she started to play music she did not understand with false phrasing, exaggerated rhythms, distorted emotions. A Town Hall concert climaxed the tension between father and daughter. The critics called her "a burned-out candle." She was 15.

After that disaster, she broke with her father, stopped playing the piano and started the long process of turning herself into a normal human being. She went to the University of California, fell in love with a fellow student, and at 19 told her father that they were getting married. He flew into a rage, threw them out of the house and shouted at her in the street as she fled: "You lousy little bitch! You'll never play two notes again without me."

Now 32 and divorced (because her husband, like her father before him, began directing her musical career), Ruth Slenczynska is in the midst of a powerful comeback. After one false start, she returned to concertizing six years ago, has since played more than 600 concerts in Europe and the U.S., recently recorded three LPs for Decca. With a measure of success she has risen to a measure of compassion, and though in Forbidden Childhood she condemns her father (he died six years ago) for what he was, she forgives him for what he did. Perhaps through his own fault, her father's prophecy that she would be one of the world's greatest musicians has not been fulfilled. But her present highly skillful work shows that in spite of the pain the piano caused her as a child, Ruth Slenczynska has matured enough to turn it into an instrument of pleasure for herself and her listeners.

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