On music and other matters in Hungry Generations
Alexander Petrov, the virtuoso pianist at the center of the novel, joins a long line of great pianists in the twentieth century, including Vladimir Horowitz, Rudolf Serkin, Arthur Schnabel, Arthur Rubenstein, and Egon Petrie (with whom I briefly studied). Of course, the tradition of European émigré musicians who settled in the United States is a long one and includes string players (like Heifetz and Piatigorsky) and myriad others.
There are many fine discs documenting these and other musicians' performances of the works mentioned in the novel. Of these performances, the following recordings have particularly influenced my hearing and imagination.
Beethoven's Piano Sonata #29, the Hammerklavier, opus 106, is central to Sasha Petrov's career, Jack's compositions, and to the novel itself (the tempo indication for each of its four movements provides the title for each of the four Parts of the novel). The performance of the sonata which has been most important to me for many years is Rudolf Serkin's recording, still available on Sony (47666). [See Amazon.com links for web addresses to access musical samples of the music mentioned.] Also available are Rudolf Serkin's performances of the final three late Beethoven sonatas, opus 109, 110, and 111(on DGG Polygram). Influential, too, for me have been Arthur Schnabel's recordings of these works. Also, the recording I first heard of them was by Egon Petri.
Arnold Schoenberg's piano pieces—opus 11 and the opus 25 suite—are performed by Petrov during the novel, and Schoenberg is one of 'the three bald geniuses' who haunt Jack Weinstein's imagination (along with Igor Stravinsky and Bela Bartok). A particularly fine performance of the Schoenberg pieces is to be found on Glenn Gould's recording of them (Sony 52667). There is also Mauizio Pollini's fine recording of Stravinsky's Three Pieces from Petroushka (Polygram 44143). The Stravinsky sonata is brilliantly performed by Peter Serkin on disc (New World Records 80344). There is a beautiful recording of Bartok's sonata by Murray Perahia on Sony.
The significant effects achieved by the playing of the novel's pianist Alexander Petrov are suggested by, among others, Vladimir Horowitz's incredible performances (for example, he recorded the Scriabin Sonata #3, which Joseph Petrov performs in the novel—RCA 6215). Similarly, there is Sviatoslav Richter's powerful performance, for example, of Scriabin and other composers on Melodiya 26470 (with a range of sound from immensely loud to terrifically soft, a range akin to that imagined for Sasha Petrov).
Hungry Generations' composer, Jack Weinstein, writes music which echoes some of Alfred Schnttke's works. Gidon Kremer has recorded wonderfully several works by Schnittke (for example, the first Concerto Grosso on Polygram 45520). Finally, among other contemporary scores, Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima also haunts some of the music composed by Jack (EMI 65077).
Finally, there are many excellent non-fiction narratives concerned with the expatriate and musical communities in LA from the thirties to the seventies, and for much insight and information, one could do worse than start with John Russell's Strangers in Paradise, Otto Friedrich's City of Nets, and Mike Davis' City of Quartz. For those who want to pursue the philosophical background of the novel, there are of course works by Friedrich Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, etc.), Adorno (his classic analysis in Philosophy of Modern Music), and then there is Thomas Mann's memorable portrait of Adorno in LA, in The Story of A Novel—the book narrates Mann's writing (in Los Angeles during the forties) of his novel about a German composer whose career spans the decades leading up to World War II, Doctor Faustus. Also, readers may enjoy the novel's many echoes of passages from Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, etc., as well as of Beethoven's biography and writing, novels by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence (whose Aaron's Rod concerns a musician), again Thomas Mann, let alone songs and 'characters' from American popular culture from the forties through the seventies, etc.