A MUSICIAN’S STORY

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30823, 7 August 1965, Page 4

A MUSICIAN’S STORY

Day’s at the Morn. By Samuel Chotzinoff. Hamish Hamilton. 309 pp.

This juicy slice of autobiography certainly merits the laudatory preface by the noted British writer Sir Osbert Sitwell. It is the more surprising, therefore, that the publishers have left readers in the dark about the author’s artistic standing. For the sake of those who may not know, this reviewer therefore sets down Chotzinoff’s credentials: pianist, accompanish to the violinists Zimbalist and Heifetz, musical critic for the "New York World” and later for the “New York Post,” man of letters, author. In addition, as the reader will soon discover, he is a talented writer. Having published the first slice of his autobiography (from the age of seven to 16) under the title of “A Lost Paradise,” Chotzinoff has now recorded the second slice (to his 21st year) in “Day’s at the Morn.” It is a delightful book. In it the man full of years looks back with graphic freshness on his youthful ardours. He is the son of migrants from Russia, extremely poor orthodox Jews, who live—exist might be the apter word—in a crowded tenement on New York’s teeming lower East Side. Untutored scholastically and lacking knowledge of the common European social graces and conventions, he is yet highly gifted with artistic sensitivity. In the year 1905 Sam Franko’s Educational Alliance has discovered in him at the age of 16 a pianist capable of playing the solo in Mozart’s Concerto in D minor. That is where this book

I begins. From there is takes us with Chotzinoff through his adolescent sadnesses and joys so vividly that we feel we have an intimate relationship with him and his friends. He is unbelievably naive by our standards and he is possessed by passing enthusiasms—for Wagnerian opera, then for some other composer, then for Brahms, and so on—but always there is undefined ambition in front of him, and unquestioning devotion to his underprivileged family.

He falls in love with a young ’cellist, but she does not reciprocate. He is apparently highly attractive to women, and thus becomes involved, platonically for him, with admirers, most of them married. But his only real passions are music and literature. By dint of sacrifice and much borrowing against future piano lessons, he keeps on supporting his family and enrols as a student at Columbia University. Sociology, philosophy and Theosophy, each in turn, find in him an ardent disciple. He and his friends buy standing

room at concerts and operas and indulge in endless discussion of their merits. We meet, at an awed distance to begin with, great names in music, such as the young Mahler and the young Toscanini, the young Mischa Elman, and enter the homes of Jewish families like the Kovners and the Lessers. In the meantime Chotzinoff is getting jobs as a pianist in summer resort hotels, unconsciously charming the ladies and unknowingly progressing towards his first big opportunity—ghosting as a classical pianist in a David Belasco play. Afterwards—after amazing survivals from social “faux pas” by a naive and incurable romantic— Chotzinoff becomes accompanist to Zimbalist, tours the United States, and enters the homes of the enormously rich and unobtrusively cultured. And there, on the crest of anecdotes joyful and sad. we are left to await the next instalment of this fascinating autobiography. This reviewer greatly hopes he will be able to read it.