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Pianist David Smith plays Rachmaninoff Prelude. David Edward Smith, studied piano from the age of 12 (1936) until age 20 (1944) with Dr. Karol Liszniewski of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. My father wrote: "All the Polish celebrities knew Dr. Liszniewski (who speaks Polish besides the Poles?). Arthur Rubinstein and Mieczyslaw Munz often stopped by when they were on tour. So did Rachmaninoff and Paderewski. I would be allowed to sit right next to them--only inches from the keyboard--to watch them practice by the hour--preparing for their solo recitals and concerto performances. They would give me lessons and sometimes, when I was practicing in my room upstairs, they would open the door at the bottom of the stairs and yell such things as 'Practice SLOWLY' or, for example, 'Who told you to do that crescendo in the left hand' (I had done something terrible, no doubt). 'That's good-don't ever change that!' (What a pleasant surprise). Sometimes they would come to my room to watch me practice--stopping me to show better fingering, a more beautiful interpretation, or how to solve some difficult problem 'at hand'. To an artist there is nothing quite so satisfying as the solving of an 'aesthetic problem'."
