10.I.51

Dear Webster:

I was so delighted to get your letter.  So were J & M who shared it with me. . . .I do feel apologetic about PRINKIPO, but we did not choose it--the name--and it ISNT baby talk, but a perfectly good, or perhaps bad, Greek Island.  Otherwise it is lovely:  right on the water, gets sun all day, has mimosas and palms and spikey things.  I have a whole top floor, with terrace, to myself.  It would be an ideal place to work. . .if I worked.  I am too busy thinking, and acting, "This may be my last chance to see Europe.  I must see all I can."  I sail March 6th.  Before then--about Feb 1st--we expect to go to Taormina and, and and.

[Referring to the photograph of Cortot] He doesn't look this old now.  Older--very much like Ingres last self portrait (at 81)--less dramatic, and even less healthy.

[Referring to Invatation à la Valse by Carl Maria von Weber]  I couldn't imagine that he would make this delightful.  But he did.

[Referring to Polonaise en la bemol by Frédéric Chopin]  This was a wild sketch but exciting.  If he had been a young American debuting in New York, his carreer [sic] would have been ruined.  Whole pages of approximate notes--but--it all sounded like music, which no critic would have noticed. 

[Referring to Deuxième Rhapsodie by Franz Liszt]  He even made us like THIS!

It was a very good piano for HIS style of throwing his tired old hind in the neighborhood of the top notes, because as J. said all the top ten or twelve notes sounded exactly alike.  And I bet that Chopin didn't play any better.  Other musical memories for us:  Pêcheurs de Perles, Carmen, & Guillaume Tell.  I hope I don't remember the latter for long. 

I wish I could have heard your Beethoven and hope I may this year.

                                                    Love
                                                         Paul

Works listed in Recital Program:   
Variations Sérieuses, op. 54                    Felix Mendelssohn
Moment Musical                                      Franz Schubert 
Invitation à la Valse, op. 65                     Carl Maria von Weber
The Four Ballads                                       Frédéric Chopin
Waltz, op. 70 no. 1                                                            
Scenes from Childhood, op. 15             Robert Schumann

Nocturne, op. 15 no. 2                           Frédéric Chopin 
La Tarantelle 
Études op. 10 and op. 25                                              
Polonaise                                                                                    
Deuxième Rhapsodie                               Franz Liszt