Simon Rattle: My father met my mother in a record store
mainSearching for something else, we came across this almost unwatched and altogether fascinating video of the Berlin Philharmonic music director reminiscing about his musical antecedents in the multicultural city of Liverpool.
The infrastructures and organisations he describes still exist – except for the record stores.
I think that was a moving interview, with Rattle reflecting on his musical roots.
That must be the music store owned by Brian Epstein’s family.
Is Epstein’s a music store? Looks more like a Jewish delicatessen to me!
Yes Robert, Brian Epstein built up a successful record store in his home city, Liverpool, never dreaming this day would come:
http://www.beatlesbible.com/1963/01/24/live-nems-liverpool/
You wouldn’t have to walk far around Manhattan to find Jewish delicatessens that, in their turn, look like Epstein’s record emporium.
Why Yes Epstein’s Is a Jewish deli in Yonkers…
Excellent pickles . Good coleslaw
the knish is, eh.
But….drumroll, please: they have Dr. Brown’s Black Cherry Soda! Otherwise referred to as “Jewish superhero juice”.
As the UK’s main transatlantic passenger port in the days of the liners, Liverpool has always had strong links with New York! It’s also got the oldest-established black and Chinese communities in the UK, a thriving Jewish community, largest Welsh population outside Cardiff, it’s practically half-Irish, and has Polish and Scandinavian communities large enough to have their own churches as long as a century ago. And the Viennese flautist, humorist, composer and lexicographer Fritz Spiegl, who settled in the city after the Anschluss, said that the local dialect, Scouse, was the closest equivalent he’d found in English to Viennese dialect.
A tremendous city: and it’s produced England’s greatest pop group, greatest conductor and two of its finest pianists – Paul Lewis and Stephen Hough. When Manchester and Birmingham quarrel over which is the UK’s ‘second city’, we Liverpudlians just look on amused. We’ve always known the answer – the Second City is London.