Enter Lastly The Youngest Of the Angels [Markevitch] 4/20/33

Said Vanity Fair in the issue for October of last year: “We nominate for the Hall of Fame Igor Markevitch-because, at nineteen, he is a composer of enormous talent; because, at fifteen, in his native Russia, he composed a symphony which won him the patronage of Diaghilev, famed ballet-master; because his music, reversing the phrase, ‘Architecture is frozen music’ is instead, liquid architecture, formal in development, structural in tone; because he is a brilliant concert-pianist; because American premières of his music will be given soon.” These trumpetings, loud as they sound, are not free from false notes. Three are in the second clause: not at fifteen, but at sixteen, not in his native Russia, but in his adopted France, Markevitch composed not a symphony, but a sinfonietta. The patronage of Diaghilev was partly won at the first meeting of that magnificent arbiter with the youthful musician at Montreux, in Switzerland. In October, 1932, when Vanity Fair gave Markevitch a place in its hall, he was twenty, inasmuch as he was born (in Kiev, Russia) on July 27, 1912. Finally, Markevitch as a concert-pianist would not qualify even for a woman’s club.