Fastest climbing musical instrument in popular favor, according to trade statistics, is the piano accordion. Last year piano accordion sales took second place only to piano sales, accounted for $19,000,000 worth of business. There are at least 400,000 piano accordion players in the U. S. Their instrument, a more complicated and efficient descendant of the old-fashioned concertina, is really a small piano keyboard grafted on to an accordion.
Even today few piano accordion squeezers rank as virtuosos. But this week, after an accordion recital in Philadelphia's staid Academy of Music, Philadelphia critics admitted that their townsman, dark, 30-year-old Andy Arcari, could claim the title. Accordionist Arcari, who had given previous recitals in Pittsburgh and Toledo, played a program ranging from Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue to Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen. Said Critic Henry Pleasants: "Here was a brilliance in scale and arpeggio passages that many a violinist or pianist could envy." Virtuoso Arcari, who makes most of his living teaching and playing for swank parties in Philadelphia, has often been heard at the White House in Washington.