Of the many great classical music events this year in New York, seven with some Jewish content particularly stood out: 1: Mozart collaborated on three operas with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, who was born to a Jewish family in the Ghetto of Venice. All three are among the greatest ever written, and explore issues of…
December 14 marks the centenary of the American pianist Rosalyn Tureck. The legacy of Tureck, who died in 2003, is being commemorated with CD releases and a recital dedicated to her at New York’s 92nd Street Y by her student, guitarist Sharon Isbin. Critic Harold Schonberg called Tureck the “high priestess” of Johann Sebastian Bach…
This month marks the bicentenary of the French Jewish composer and pianist Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888). A new biography was published earlier this year in France, written by two devotees, Brigitte François-Sappey and François Luguenot. And pianists such as Pascal Amoyel and Alessandro Deljavan, have released recordings of his work, which range from the resolutely virtuosic…
Although marred by unexplained omissions and bowdlerizations, the publication of “The Leonard Bernstein Letters” brought to mind a dinner I attended at Bernstein’s Fairfield, Conn., home around 30 years ago. Unlike the interviewer, Jonathan Cott, author of “Dinner With Lenny: The Last Long Interview With Leonard Bernstein,” I did not ask the maestro any portentous…
The Leonard Bernstein Letters Edited by Nigel Simeone Yale University Press, 624 pages, $38 No one ever questioned Leonard Bernstein’s gifts. His innate musicality was apparent prodigiously early, as were his verbal intelligence, his energy, and his limitless self-confidence. Almost everyone who knew the young Bernstein assumed he would achieve great things. Whether his later…
Those looking to discover a new, young classical music orchestra with a Jewish twist should keep an eye out for Orchestra Jakobsplatz Munich, which is performing in North America for the first time this month with concerts in Maine, Kansas, New York and Montreal. Conductor Daniel Grossmann founded Orchestra Jakobsplatz Munich in 2005 to bring…
James Levine is not the only major return at the Metropolitan Opera this week. Coming back for just seven performances between September 28 and October 26 is one of the Met’s most artistically acclaimed productions in recent years, Shostakovich early, wildly inventive, over-the-top adaptation of Gogol’s classic story, “The Nose.” Picked by every critic as…
‘We lament the loss of the treasures of the library at Alexandria, and the great step back in knowledge it entailed. The same thing will happen if we lose the music of the concentration camps. It’s an imaginary library that may never materialize.” Walking the narrow streets of the decaying industrial city of Barletta in…
