Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Music Shtick and Awe: Daniel Barenboim in New York
You’d think Godzilla, or at least an enemy flotilla, had stormed the gates of the city, the way the media has trumpeted the news; the Financial Times announces, “Daniel Barenboim has invaded New York.” The 66-year-old pianist-conductor, born in Buenos Aires to a family of Russian Ashkenazic Jews who later immigrated to Israel, is definitely…
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Culture The Man With the Yellow Star: The Jewish Life of Serge Gainsbourg
Visitors to Paris may have noticed, in an otherwise ritzy neighborhood in the posh seventh arrondissement, a small building at 5 bis Rue d e Verneuil that is abundantly covered in garish multicolored graffiti. It is the home of the late French singer/songwriter Serge Gainsbourg (1928–1991), born Lucien Ginsburg in Paris’s humble 20th arrondissement. His…
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Culture Defined by Quality
Concerts and CDs featuring composers who died during the Holocaust have become commonplace, with such once forgotten names as Viktor Ullmann (1898–1944), Pavel Haas (1899–1944) and Gideon Klein (1919–1945) receiving posthumous tributes. Yet these honors, sincere and well deserved as they undoubtedly are, tend to type composers and their music in the somber region of…
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Culture Claude of the Jungle
On November 28, the centenary of the legendary French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss will be fêted in Paris. As a centenary celebration of a legend, however, it is rather unusual, as the birthday boy is very much alive and well. Born in 1908 to a French-Jewish family — his grandfather served as a rabbi in Versailles…
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Culture Sephardi Sea Hawks
Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom — and Revenge By Edward Kritzler Doubleday, 336 pages, $26. Yo ho ho and a bottle of Manischewitz! The jokes had better be disposed of immediately, since the very…
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Culture Baring Body and Soul, Again, on Broadway
The new Broadway production of “Equus,” which opened officially September 25, revives a 1973 play that was originally seen as an attack on psychiatry. Written by Sir Peter Levin Shaffer, who was born to a Jewish family in Liverpool, England, in 1926, the play reflected an earlier generation’s rejection of Freudianism. The book “The Myth…
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Culture Healing Hands on a Keyboard
The classical music world is feting pianist Leon Fleisher with a yearlong celebration of his 80th birthday, featuring a much applauded series of concerts across America. The latest performances, at New York City’s Carnegie Hall on October 2, in Boston on October 3 and in Baltimore on October 5, are titled Leon Fleisher & Friends…
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Culture A Forgotten Conductor’s Triumphant Return
Sometimes, historic recordings are more than just opportunities to hear great forgotten performances. The just completed 43-volume “Karel Ancerl Gold Edition” of CDs from Supraphon (www.supraphon.com; distributed in the United States by www.qualiton.com) conducted by the Czech maestro Karel Ancerl is a case in point. The new DVD — “Who Is Karel Ancerl?” — also…
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