Happy 24th!

Claudio Arrau performing the Beethoven piano sonata no. 24, opus 78.  It is said that of the 32 piano sonatas Beethoven wrote, this was his favorite.

The late pianist Claudio Arrau is one of my three favorite Chileans.  The other two are Dean Claudio Grossman of American University Law School and Otto Kernberg, M.D., past president of the International Psychoanalytical Association. Dean Grossman's father, David Grossman, M.D., specialized in obstetrics and gynecology.  The Grossmans were from Santiago.  I believe Dr. Grossman was the Dean of the University of Santiago Medical School; incidentally, the University of Santiago, founded in 1495, is the oldest university in the western hemisphere.

Dr. Kernberg studied biology and medicine and afterwards psychiatry and psychoanalysis with the Chilean Psychoanalytic Society. He first came to the U.S. in 1959 on a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to study research in psychotherapy with Jerome Frank at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. In 1961 he emigrated to the U.S. joining the C.F. Menninger Memorial Hospital, later became director of the hospital. He was the Supervising and Training Analyst of the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis, and Director of the Psychotherapy Research Project of Menninger Foundation.  It was at the Menninger Foundation that Dr. Kernberg met Ernst Ticho, Ph.D. and Gertrude R. Ticho, M.D.  See Freedman v. D.C. Dept. Human Rights, D.C.C.A. no. 96-CV-961 (Sept. 1, 1998).

During the summer of 1972, if I recall correctly, I saw Claudio Arrau perform the Brahms first piano concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Robin Hood Dell in Fairmount Park. The orchestra performed the Beethoven seventh symphony in the second part of the concert. I was 18 years old at the time and had just completed my first year of college. What you don't know when you're 18 is that you'll be 18 for the rest of your life.