Part 32

Lang's imagination, Gourmet magazine once wrote, "is as fertile as the Indus Valley." This imagination, combined with his keen intelligence, his concern for details, his natural versatility, and his seemingly endless capacity for work, have enabled him to rewrite the definition of the term "restaurant consultant."

As head of the George Lang Corporation, a loosely structured group of associates that he founded in 1971, he commands $2,500 a day plus expenses for jetting around the world, giving advice on restaurant and kitchen design, menu planning, and every other aspect of a restaurant from the lighting to the color of the napkins.

His large-scale projects in the past few years include food consulting and design for Marriot Motor Hotels, Holiday Inn, the Cunard Lines, and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. He was the chief planner for The Market, a three-level, 20-shop marketplace in the East Side's Citicorp Center. In 1975, when he took over the West Side's famous Cafe des Artistes, the business quadrupled within weeks.

A prolific author as well, Lang has written several books and hundreds of articles for leading publications, including the Encyclopedia Britannica. His column, "Table for One," is a regular feature of Travel & Leisure magazine. He has bottled burgundy under his own label, arranged parties for the rich and famous, and served as consultant for Time-Life's series on international cookery.

His office has a miniature garden in the middle; the wall are lined with 5,000 catalogued cookbooks. He comes sailing into the room and takes a seat at his semicircular desk, which all but engulfs him. Short in stature, bald as a gourd, he moves with a darting energy that sees him through 20 hour workdays with as many as 30 food tastings. His softly accented speech is the only thing about him that is slow, because Lang chooses his words carefully, aiming for the same perfection in English as in everything else. Although modesty is not one of his characteristics, he gives full credit to his staff for being equal partners in his corporation's success. There is a feeling of camaraderie in the air, as if all are members of a single family.

The Cafe des Artistes, he admits, was a moderately successful French restaurant for 60 years before he took it over. "But it needed spiritual changes as well as physical changes. And -- let me underline this and triple-space it -- excellent food. You cannot chew scenery. We maintain a certain kind of formal informality, which simply means that anyone can come, dressed any way they want, as long as their behavior will justify their white tie or dungarees. I could raise the prices by 50 to 100 percent overnight, and I wouldn't lose a single customer. But feel an obligation to New York City and the restaurant industry to maintain what I call reasonable prices."

His corporation also owns the Hungaria Restaurant at Citicorp, which has a gypsy orchestra from Budapest, and Small Pleasures, a pastry shop in the same building. However, Lang stresses that "98 percent of our business comes from consulting. I always think in terms of problems and solutions, because every restaurant must be designed to suit the needs of a particular market. At Alexander's, for example, we came up with a restaurant where you could have a reasonably pleasant luncheon for two to four dollars."

Still an ardent music lover, George Lang plays the violin whenever time permits. He recently acquired a Stradivarius and says with a laugh, "I'm threatening to get back completely to shape and play a concert."

Lang enjoys the European atmosphere of the West Side, where he has lived for the past 30 years. Among his favorite Westside restaurants: the Moon Palace on Broadway, Sakura Chaya on Columbus, and Le Poulailler on 65th Street.

His latest endeavor is a 4-to-6-minute TV spot titled Lang at Large, which is broadcast twice a month on the CBS network show Sunday Morning. "It's part of my new career," he announces joyfully.

Asked about which aspect of his work gives him the most satisfaction, Lang ponders for a moment and concludes: "It would be easiest for me to say that my biggest thrill is to see an idea of mine become a three dimensional reality, especially if it may be a $50 million project. But actually, an even bigger thrill for me is to go to an obscure place in the world, and see a bit of improvement in people's lives through the effort of someone who was my former disciple."

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WESTSIDER RUTH LAREDO Leading American pianist

12-30-78

She has frequently been called America's greatest female pianist -- a title which, as recently as the 1960s, almost any woman would have coveted. But when the year is 1978 and the musician is Ruth Laredo, this "compliment" brings a different response.

"I have mixed feelings about it," says Miss Laredo, sitting back on the couch of her West Side living room. "I would really rather be known as an American pianist. Being female doesn't preclude playing some of the most powerful sounds on the piano."

Her words are backed by accomplishments. In October, Ruth came to the end of a four-year project to record the complete works for solo piano by Sergei Rachmaninoff, the late Russian-born composer who emigrated to the U.S. after the Revolution of 1917. Almost all of his piano works were composed before 1910, and they rank among the most technically difficult pieces ever written for the instrument. Laredo is the first person in history to record the piano solos in their entirety. Columbia Records will release the final three discs of the seven-album set in early 1979.

Slender, graceful, and radiantly attractive, Laredo is still adjusting to her recently acquired status as a major international artist. For 14 years she was married to the acclaimed Bolivian-born violinist, Jaime Laredo, and during most of that time she was known primarily as his accompanist. Shortly after their marriage broke up in 1974, her career began to soar. That year the first of her Rachmaninoff recordings was made, and it won rave reviews. Her Lincoln Center debut with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in December 1974 caused such a sensation that she was quickly signed up to perform with the Boston, Philadelphia, National Symphony, Cleveland, and Detroit orchestras. "After 15 years," recalls Ruth, "I was an overnight success."

Now, at 41 -- but looking considerably younger -- she can look back on four years of unbroken triumph. Following a recital at Alice Tully Hall in 1976, the New York Times reported that she "operated within a relatively narrow range -- from first-rate to superb." Her talents have been constantly in demand ever since across the U.S. and Canada. During the 1976-77 season she had over 40 concerts, including tours of Europe and Japan. This season she will perform in Japan and Hong Kong.

Although her repertoire includes piano works spanning the last 250 years, Ruth has concentrated largely on Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, a Russian composer of the same era. She has recorded five albums of Scriabin's piano solos. "It's such strange music if you haven't heard it before," she says. "I gave some concerts of Scriabin at Hunter College, and talked about each piece before playing it. I was kind of a crusader at the time for his music. It was very rewarding for me. I think people are much more familiar with Scriabin today than they were 10 years ago.

"One thing I love to do is to talk to the audience after a concert. There's a certain feeling of distance sometimes between the audience and classical musicians, which need not happen."

On most days, Ruth practices at one of her twin grand pianos from about 10:30 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon, when her 9-year-old daughter Jennifer gets home from school. The walls of the Laredos' living room are covered with neatly framed fingerpaintings that Jennifer created. "She's intellectually brilliant and lots of fun. I take her to concerts with me when it's possible. When I gave a talk on Rachmaninoff to the cadets at West Point, they all called her 'ma'am.'"

A native of Detroit, Ruth began studying piano at the age of 2, performed with the Detroit Symphony at 11, and entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia at 16. There she met her future husband. During their years together, Ruth longed for a solo career, but it somehow eluded her. "I played with Leopold Stokowski and the American Symphony in the 1960s," she says. "There was a major concert I did at Carnegie Hall then, but nobody heard about it. I think that women are being accepted on their own merits today. They weren't given a chance until recently."

Ruth keeps fit by riding her bicycle almost every day. She is a fan of the New York Yankees -- "I saw all the World Series games" -- and likes to do photography when she has the time. A Westsider ever since she moved to New York in 1960, Ruth lists Fiorello's (on Broadway across from Lincoln Center) as her favorite restaurant. When she needs music supplies of any kind, she goes to Patelson's (56th Street and 7th Avenue). Says Ruth: "It's a gathering place for musicians. The people who sell music there are very friendly and very knowledgeable. ... They sell records there. They sell my records."

Asked whether men might have an inborn advantage at the piano, Ruth denies the suggestion vigorously. "Of course not," she replies. "I can't imagine why a man should play the piano better than a woman. At West Point, the women do everything the same as the male cadets except boxing and wrestling. Women might have smaller fingers on the average, but as far as strength, speed, and dexterity are concerned, it's impossible to listen to a recording and guess whether it was played by a man or a woman."

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EASTSIDER STAN LEE Creator of Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk

1-13-79