[gsjansen]

an amusing little anecdote about harpo marx when he lived at the garden of allah. this is from his autobiography Harpo Speaks

“My little bungalow in the Garden of Allah was a peaceful retreat. It
was the best place to practice I ever had - until a piano player moved
into a bungalow across from mine and shattered the peace.
I was looking forward to a solid weekend of practice, without
interruptions, when my new neighbour started to bang away. I couldn’t
hear anything below a forte on the harp. There were no signs the
piano banging was going to stop. It only got more overpowering. This
character was warming up for a solid weekend of practice too.
I went to the office to register a complaint. One of us had to go, I
said, and it wasn’t going to be me because I was there first. But the
management didn’t see it my way. The new guest, whose playing was
driving me nuts, was Sergei Rachmaninoff. They were not about to ask
him to move.

I was flattered to have such a distinguished neighbour, but I still
had to practice. So I got rid of him my own way.

I opened the door and all the windows in my place and began to play
the first four bars of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C sharp Minor, over
and over, fortissimo. Two hours later my fingers were getting numb.
But I didn’t let up, not until I heard a thunderous crash of notes
from across the way, like the keyboard had been attacked with a pair
of sledgehammers. Then there was silence.

This time it was Rachmaninoff who went to complain. He asked to be
moved to another bungalow immediately, the farthest possible from that
dreadful harpist. Peace returned to the Garden.

I didn’t really know until much later how sharp my intuition had been.
I found out that the great pianist and composer detested his Prelude
in C-sharp Minor. He considered it a very Minor piece of work. He
was haunted by it everywhere he went, by students who butchered it and
by audiences who clamoured for it, and he wished he’d never written
it. After playing the damn thing nonstop for two hours I knew exactly
how he felt.”