Gregor piatigorsky autobiography vs biography

I had heard of cellist Gregor Piatigorsky when I was young, but like other famous musicians of the era (Vladimir Horowitz and Jascha Heifetz), Piatigorsky was a celebrity, remote and distant. My impressions changed when my husband Harry took me visit his childhood home in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York.

"That's where the famous Russian Cellist Gregor Piatigorsky lived" He pointed to Windy Cliff, the Tudor castle high on a mountainside across the road from the farm where he had grown up. "I remember swimming with Piatigorsky and his children in the river."

I immediately wanted to know more, so he told me about his playmates and neighbors. Violinist Michael Rabin spent the summers down the street and violin pedagogue Ivan Galamian and his Meadowmount School of Music were nearby. Piano virtuoso Willie Kapell rented the Piatigorsky cottage, and Harry's mother rented rooms and cabins to students who studied wit