Over quite a period of time in the late 1940s, my Greenwich Village neighbor David Diamond (who at that point earned his living playing fiddle in Broadway musicals' orchestra pits - e.g., "Finian's Rainbow") and I read through virtually the entire extant sonata repertoire for voilin & piano - at his suggestion, as a therapeutic antidote to his dreary but necessary activities six nights a week. I lived on West 10th Street (as did L. Bernstein, but he had a 5th-floor walk-up over in the chic block between 5th & 6th Avenues, with Felicia Montealegre about equidistant between us at 69 Washington Place and Judy Holiday & David Oppenheim on Waverly Place just off Sheridan Square), and David lived about three blocks away from me on Hudson Street, over a big garage where music from his apartment at all hours disturbed nobody.

Ohhh, I could tell you stories....

I immediately recall one Xmas dinner (he loved to cook, and he cooked damned well) where I made a mind-boggling discovery about one of the most powerfully influential members of that day's New York Music Critics Circle. David had composed his own big four-movement first Violin Sonata for Joseph Szigeti (who eventually unveiled it in Carnegie Hall), and David, who didn't feel comfortable with the piano keyboard, had enlisted me to aid & abet him in writing the piano part, so over time we whipped our performance up to the point where he decided we should officially unveil it for a dozen or so friends after a sumptuous turkey dinner.

I needed a page-turner, and the critic mentioned above - whom met for the first time that day - happened to sit nearest me, so I automatically enlisted his assistance, having no inkling of the trap I'd just dropped him into. I reached the bottom of the first right-hand page, and my nominal page-turner ... did nothing. I frantically yanked the page over myself, and he mumbled some feeble excuse or other.

The same thing happened at the bottom of the next right-hand page - and the next, and the next, and the next....

He finally stopped inventing those ever feebler excuses, for it quickly became clear to me that this almost uniquely powerful critic, with almost unrivalled power to make and/or break the careers of important musicians, could not read music - and clear also to him that I myself now knew that.

I could also tell you the almost incredible story of how that gentleman had landed that highly-paying plum job, but that would probably identify him - and even posthumously I think I'd prefer not to do that....