Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Rachmaninoff (1934):
Most of my waking hours as a child were filled with my father playing all these old geezers – Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Berlioz, Mahler. It was a constant dribble in the background. Sometimes, he’d bring me into the front room, sit me down and say: “Listen, son, this is absolute genius!” And I’d be [whinily]: “I don’t like it, Dad.” He was obsessive, to put it mildly. When Liszt’s birthday came around, he’d drive to Hungary in his beaten-up Morris Traveller, take a piece of soil and wear it round his neck in a phial for the rest of the year.
Most of my waking hours as a child were filled with my father playing all these old geezers – Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Berlioz, Mahler. It was a constant dribble in the background. Sometimes, he’d bring me into the front room, sit me down and say: “Listen, son, this is absolute genius!” And I’d be [whinily]: “I don’t like it, Dad.” He was obsessive, to put it mildly. When Liszt’s birthday came around, he’d drive to Hungary in his beaten-up Morris Traveller, take a piece of soil and wear it round his neck in a phial for the rest of the year.