Hershey Felder returns to Bay Area with Rachmaninoff on his mind

There’s a revealing insight that pulls back the curtain on Hershey Felder’s ambitious point of view.

The anecdote goes back nearly 45 years, when Felder was tackling Russian master Sergei Rachmaninoff’s other-worldly piano compositions in a young student’s program at Montreal’s McGill University. Looking back, was Felder overwhelmed by the mere scope of taking on Rachmaninoff as a 12-year-old?

“You know, I’m not sure I ever thought of it that way — I always thought of things as, ‘Gee...