Unable to enter their college building on the Tel Aviv University campus, which is slowly emerging from lockdown, students at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music have taken to practising next door…. in the museum of natural history.
Full of stuffed animals.
Like a post-concert reception.
Fascinating story in the Times of Israel.
Musicologist Henry Sapoznik recently spoke with The Times of Israel about the little-known history of Black cantors. Sapoznik related that LaRue was hardly the only Black cantor or Yiddish theater performers of that era. There were at least a dozen, including one woman…
Who knew?
Read on here.
On election night in Florida a group of Trump supporters went down to Wilton Manors with a view of provoking its mainly-gay residents.
They reckoned without Stephen Neil.
He got out his violin. And an amplifier.
More here.
The British label Chandos has signed the Italian violinist Francesca Dego as an exclusive artist.
Dego, 31, is to record the the Mozart concertos with Sir Roger Norrington in Scotland.
She is married to the Ulster Orchestra’s chief conductor Daniele Rustioni.
The grapevine rustles with news of the death of Jay K. Hoffman, music PR and sometime agent.
He was a character.
Charles Passy writes:
Jay K. Hoffman passed away in April (the family kept it quiet). It was not Covid-related (he died from heart failure), but his wife, Maj-britt, also passed away that same month from the virus. How tragic.
Jay was a pillar in the New York classical music scene for many, many years — the man whom Glenn Gould once called the last true impresario. He had a brilliant mind and was just one of those curious, larger-than-life figures who thrive in New York. He was also my first boss — and even though we were toiling largely in the music p.r. business, I learned more from him about journalism and storytelling than I did from just about all the editors I’ve known for years. As a mentor, he inspired me, even as he often drove me crazy. But that’s sometimes what mentors — and friends — do. I last spoke to him about 2-3 years ago. What I would do to have one more conversation. Sigh.
Vienna may be in lockdown but tonight at 7.30 we can watch a live stream of The Wrath of God by Sofia Gubaidulina in the annual Claudio Abbado concert from an empty Musikverein.
The orchestra is RSO Vienna, conducted by Oksana Lyniv. Here’s the link.
A letter has come to light at auction in which Wilhelm Furtwängler warns the Swiss pianist Edwin Fischer in 1947 that the anti-Nazi violinist Adolf Busch is seeking confrontation with him. Both Furtwängler and Fischer were willing Nazi collaborators.
Here’s the text of the letter.
‘Yesterday someone who recently came back from London told me that Adolf Busch said in presence of many other persons that he is “just waiting for the moment to meet you and to confront you personally and badly because of your attitude in Germany”. I thought it was the right thing to do to let you know in order to be ready for this or to avoid such meeting.’
