Boston Symphony mourns a violinist of 48 years

David Pesetsky says:

For the last twenty years, Ron conducted just one orchestra (besides the Boston Pops, where he was often a guest conductor) — my orchestra, the New Philharmonia Orchestra of Massachusetts, based in Newton (http://www.newphil.org). He was wonderful musician, who held our mostly non-professional group to standards we could hardly believe we could meet, yet we did. As a conductor, he was intensely passionate yet intensely practical, able to tell us exactly how to shape a passage to make the sound he sought, what part of the bow to use for maximum efficiency and effect, or how to distinguish the different styles within a piece — just what a non-professional group like us most needs, and what you might expect from a man who was not only a BSO player and a conductor, but also a top instrument repairer. We, the musicians who loved him, and came week after week (some from miles away) to play under his direction, are grief-stricken beyond words. Ron’s death is a terrible loss for us and for the entire musical community here in the Boston area. Thank you for taking note of it from across the Atlantic.