Ongoing coverage of last week's Starling-DeLay Symposium on Violin Studies at Juilliard
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Christian Tetzlaff performed Szymanowski's Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Vadim Gluzman performed Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
When Shmuel Ashkenasi advises you to fix something about your violin playing, you'd better do it.
Though his body language was casual and he spoke in a straightforward and amiable tone of voice, Ashkenasi was a complete stickler, like the cop who will give you a speeding ticket for going five miles over the speed limit -- and then give you another ticket a block later when you fail to come to a full stop at the stop sign. The good news is that you're not going to keep up with those traffic offenses for long, with that kind of oversight.
When you are doing something wrong in your playing, "be offended," Ashkenasi said several times to different students at a master class Friday at the Starling-DeLay Symposium on Violin Studies at The Juilliard School. "Let it bother you. Then you will take care of it."
Born in Israel, Ashkenasi studied with Ilona Feher and Efrem Zimbalist and was first violinist of the Vermeer Quartet for nearly 40 years. He is currently a member of the faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music and also teaches at Bard College.
Student artist Takumi Taguchi began the master class with an impressive performance of the first movement of the Sibelius Violin Concerto, in which he brought out the intricacies of fast passages and showed clarity of rhythm even in the murkiest of parts of this piece. Keep reading...
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When news of the birth of Gustav Mahler’s niece was announced in 1906 in Vienna, there was much rejoicing among the musical royalty. Alma Rosé was born 25 years after her father, Arnold Rosé, and brother-in-law to Gustav Mahler, was appointed concertmaster of the Vienna Court Opera Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic. To be born into this family, in a city that personified elegance and sophistication, gave Alma a legacy that defined her very essence.
Her life and martyr’s death was brought to the attention of Richard Newman, an award-winning journalist and music critic, by Alma’s brother, Professor Alfred Rose. A promising conductor in Austria before Hitler’s takeover in 1938, Alfred had been the protégé of Richard Strauss at the Vienna Opera. He did not want to talk about his sister for many years, until a chance encounter in an outdoor market. A stranger heard Alma’s name, and she told him that his sister had saved the lives of many Jewish girls.
Alma was caught by the Nazis in Dijon, France as she was trying to escape from Holland. She was transported to the internment camp at Drancy, and then to Auschwitz. The story of her survival and how she saved the lives of many musicians is especially poignant to musicians. Her fate as a conductor as well as a violinist brought her into close association with her Nazi captors, including Joseph Mengele, the infamous “Angel of Death.” Keep reading...
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