excerpt from 'Sergey Prokofiev diaries: 18 September [1 October] 1918' pp. 340 (189 words)
excerpt from 'Sergey Prokofiev diaries: 18 September [1 October] 1918' pp. 340 (189 words)
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Today we continued the negotiations with the mechanical-piano company, Duo-Art. I played some of my things so that they could see whether they could satisfactorily reproduce them. As an experiment I played the Gavotte from the 'Classical' Symphony, and three minutes later they played back to me my performance, of course without any refinements and rather characterless, but all my accents, ritardandi and wrong notes were there. I was afraid they might exploit the Gavotte and therefore played the middle section in the wrong key in case I needed some evidence to establish their guilt. But when the director suggested I play him four pieces for a fee of $50 each, I replied with great good humour that since my concept of a fee differed so radically from theirs, I would naturally not play for that money. However, if they agreed to pay me properly, I would be pleased to play for nothing. Theydid not immediately understand my little joke, and for a moment thought they were going to walk off with a good profit scot-free. The American soul is dollar-shaped; here even honour comes wrapped in a dollar bill. |
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