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> After a bizarre incident at Steinway’s in New York in 1959, when one of the senior technicians (whom Gould disliked because of disagreements over piano regula
by jancsika 6y ago
> After a bizarre incident at Steinway’s in New York in 1959, when one of the senior technicians (whom Gould disliked because of disagreements over piano regulation) greeted him with a rather too hard clap on the shoulder, Gould claimed major physical injury, cancelled all his engagements for six months and (unsuccessfully) sued Steinway’s for $300,000.
Hm... Horowitz's tuner Franz Mohr wrote a book where IIRC he claimed that Gould reacted negatively to his retouching of the action on Gould's piano, complained that he could have been injured by it, and threatened to sue him. I wonder if this is a different version of that same story (Mohr would have been a senior tech at Steinway at that time) or yet another tuner who Gould harassed.
- eigenvector 6y agoNo, the tech in the infamous Steinway 'assault' incident was William Hupfer. Here's contemporary coverage of it in the New York Times: http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1960/12/07/99979002.html http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1960/12/07/9997... Besides being a genius, Gould was also a notorious hypochondriac.
- ternaryoperator 6y agoIn Gould's defense, when Steinway and their attorneys met with Gould to settle the lawsuit, they were stunned by the fact that he requested only reimbursement of his medical expenses--he made no request for damages of any kind. Steinway paid the bills and Gould continued to be a Steinway artist for many years. [All of this is described in detail in "Wondrous Strange," which is an excellent biography of Gould.]