Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Life Being Composer Emmerich Kálmán Means Never Saying You’re Sári.
The Hungarian Jewish composer of light music, Kálmán Imre (1882 –1953), better known by the Germanized version of his name, Emmerich Kálmán, continues to enjoy cult status in East and Central Europe. American audiences, though, might need reminding about Kálmán’s past glories like the Broadway hit “Sári” from 1914, which will be presented in concert…
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Life From Papa Haydn to Tateh Haydn?
Among the many commemorations of the 200th anniversary of the death of composer Joseph Haydn is a compelling new study from Cambridge University Press, “Haydn’s Jews: Representation and Reception on the Operatic Stage” by Caryl Clark, a University of Toronto musicologist. Ms. Clark points out that in Eisenstadt, Austria, the palace of the Eszterházy family,…
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Culture Loving and Loathing
A longtime secret treasure of American film criticism, Manny Farber is finally in the limelight, a year after his death of bone cancer at age 91. Farber is being honored with the publication of “Farber On Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber,” an 824-page tome from the Library of America, collecting many long-overlooked…
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Life French Jewish Philosopher Alain Finkielkraut Cracks the Books
Having survived a bout with lymphoma last fall, the French Jewish philosopher and essayist Alain Finkielkraut has come back fighting, with an ambitious and thoughtful new book on literature, “Un coeur intelligent” (An Intelligent Heart; Stock Flammarion, Paris ), an examination of nine novels, including Philip Roth’s “The Human Stain” (2000) and Ukrainian Jewish writer…
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Culture Architect Richard Meier’s Jewish Inspirations
The Newark-born American Jewish architect Richard Meier, who celebrates his 75th birthday on October 12, is being feted with an all-too-brief exhibit, “Meier 75” at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The exhibit is scheduled to end on Meier’s birthday, which shows party pooper planning on the part of the Cooper-Hewitt committee that have chosen to…
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Life Hungarian Jewish Composer György Kurtág Hits the Mainstream
On October 15th, the University of Rochester Press will publish “György Kurtág: Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages”, a tribute to the 83-year-old Hungarian Jewish composer with many charming details about his life, such as that around age six, he hoped to write a “Jewish symphony in E minor with the title ‘Eternal Hope.’” Although this…
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Life Perahia vs. Schiff: Dueling Bach Partitas by Jewish Pianists
Before his much-anticipated October 23 Carnegie Hall recital, of music by Bach, Beethoven, and Schumann, the magisterial Jewish American pianist Murray Perahia is releasing a new CD on Sony Classical of three of the six Bach keyboard Partitas, Nos. 1, 5 & 6, completing the set begun last year with his CD of Partitas 2,…
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Life Robert Frank and his Frankly American Photographs
The Zurich-born Swiss Jewish photographer Robert Frank, 84, is being celebrated in two New York exhibits, Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans which runs from September 22 to January 3, 2010 at the Metropolitan Museum as well as a smaller show at the Robert Mann Gallery in Chelsea. Marking the 50th anniversary of the publication…
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