The pianist is Ralph Berkowitz, who was Piatigorsky's accompanist from about 1940 until his death (and he's mentioned in the film). The film was made around 1950. Mr. Berkowitz is still with us at 97, and he still plays and teaches.
1: The pianist is Ralph Berkowitz, not Emmanuel Bay. Ralph Berkowitz, who died in August of 2011 at age 100, was Piatigorsky's regular accompanists for many years, as well as a faculty member at Curtis and Tanglewood. 2: I don't understand how anyone could "dislike" this transcendentally sublime performance. String playing simply doesn't get any better than this. Sadly, I've come to expect the RU-vid audience to include a fair number of ignoramuses.
Thank you SO much for all the Piatigorsky videos! My teacher (a graduate of Curtis and Juilliard) greatly admired Piatigorsky and recommended that I watch and listen to him play.
Theres a great book, in wich Gregor Piatigorsky discribes his live by himself. In german it calls: mein Cello und Ich und unsere Begegnungen. This book nmakes real fun ;)
I have to be in a certain mood to like Tchaikovsky’s music enough to listen to it-except for his ballets-but the small instrumental pieces are truly wonderful, as this is!
Noone else has the compellingvstyle Heifetz had. Nor hus sound. But Oisrrakh,Szigeti,Oistrakh,Kogan Szeryng are all impeachable and we always learned from these top players.
