Richard Jernigan -> RE: Segovia and flamenco (Mar. 20 2013 0:54:48)
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I still haven't gotten around to ordering the Gilardino biography, and I'm giving Segovia a break for a while after reading Escande. While Poveda's Spanish "biography" is openly worshipful, with many remarks based upon his personal friendship with Segovia, Escande's editorial stance is, overtly at least, neutral. He seldom comes out with opinions, confining himself mostly to quotations of other people, press accounts and reviews. He quotes a number of glowing reviews of Madriguera as performer and composer, and at least one complete hatchet job. The quoted press reviews of Segovia are unanimously enthusiastic. There is documented evidence for the high esteem he was held in by Heifetz, Toscanini, Rubinstein and other greater and lesser musicians and composers, who invited him to their homes, and socialized with him during concert tours. I note that these three were not universally admired as individuals, but there has not been a reaction against them personally in the conducting, violin or piano worlds. Indeed, Heifetz is still seen as something of a demigod by such a virtuoso as Perlman. On Segovia's New York affair with Olga Coelho, which led to the breakup of his marriage with Madriguera, Escande does not hesitate to quote the outraged, even venomous remarks of those who took Paquita's side. Escande concludes with a chapter on Segovia's daughter by Madriguera, Beatriz. He details her unhappy childhood. Madriguera's three daughters by Puig spent much of their early lives in boarding schools as well, but Beatriz was inconsolable upon her separation from Montevideo when, after the divorce, her mother moved to Buenos Aires, taking Beatriz with her, but boarding her out so Madriguera could pursue her renewed artistic career.. As a young teenager, and a young adult, Segovia took Beatriz to Europe on concert tours and spent months with her. Still, Escande quotes Maria Rosa, Madriguera's daughter to whom Segovia remained attached throughout his life, showering her with affection and gifts of money. Maria Rosa tells the story of Beatriz's suicide at age 24, attributed by many to a "romantic disillusionment." But Maria Rosa says the cause was deeper and went back to childhood, when Segovia was "an absent father." Maria Rosa and the other two Puig Madriguera daughters remained good friends with Segovia as long as he lived. long after they had made good marriages to wealthy men and were no longer dependent upon him for partial support. My own father was absent during the entirety of WW II, a couple of years of the Occupation of Japan, two years during the Berlin airlift, and the first year of a three year tour of duty in Alaska before we could join him. It had its effects. I still wish I could have had a closer relationship with him. But my brother and I have survived into old age, self supporting and relatively successful. It's hard to think Segovia, or anyone else could foresee Beatriz's suicide as a consequence of his itinerant lifestyle as a performing artist. Of course, absent fathers were routine in military life, and an anomaly in the highly conventional upper class milieu of Montevideo. Escande remains scrupulously neutral. There is a thick section of documentation at the back of the book, which I haven't perused in any detail. It is in fact a platitude that we are all flawed, but just because it's boring doesn't make it unimportant. That's why I thought to quote Twain's witty skewering of those who live in glass houses, but still throw stones. RNJ
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