From a recent interview with composer Elliott Carter, 103, who had a world premiere last weekend. Carter, who says he is reading Balzac in French on his Kindle, airs thoughts (or recollections) about Hitler, Romnney, Stravinsky, and Frank Sinatra, as, for example, here:
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Tarmy: What was your favorite restaurant?
Carter: La Cote Basque, now sadly closed. I took Igor Stravinsky and his wife there. We got a table in the middle of the room, speaking French, and a man came in, and said in rather good French, “will the maestro please give me an autograph?” Stravinsky said “Certainly not.”
His wife did a great deal of talking in Russian and finally he agreed, but took forever to write out his name. The man waited and waited and by this point the whole room was watching.
Finally Stravinsky was done and the man thanked him and walked away. We asked Stravinsky if he knew who he was and he said, “Certainly, I see him on television all the time.” The man was Frank Sinatra.
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See James Tarmy's article in full as posted on Bloomberg. With sincere thanks to Rick Whitaker who forwarded the link to me. — DL