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Mixing Opera and Zionism Hessler Installed Where Neo-Nazis Roam

By Raphael Mostel

The first female intendant of the Dresden Opera, Ulrike Hessler, has long been a major supporter of Israel and of numerous efforts to resuscitate Jewish life and culture in Germany. It’s no small thing to have her thrust into such prominence in a region where neo-Nazi violence remains prevalent.Read More

Bernstein, Davening in the Vernacular

By Raphael Mostel

As difficult as it is for outsiders to understand, especially in retrospect, Leonard Bernstein’s overachieving father, Sam, was so opposed to his son’s fixation with music that neither he nor his wife, Jenny, even showed up for their son’s student debut as soloist in Grieg’s Piano Concerto with the orchestra of Boston Latin School.Read More

Felix Mendelssohn: Music That ‘Keeps Working’

By Raphael Mostel

Felix Mendelssohn was still alive when the New York Philharmonic was founded in 1842. “He most certainly influenced our orchestra from its inception,” Philharmonic archivist Barbara Haws told the Forward. “Our very first program featured Mendelssohn. In fact, before his death in 1848, a total of six Mendelssohn works were performed in our first 14 concerts. And we gave the U.S. premieres of most of Mendelssohn’s works, like the Violin Concerto.”Read More

Apples and Fresh Lemon

By Raphael Mostel

Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall had been closed for the past several years, undergoing a major renovation. The choice of first sounds to be heard in its gala opening program, held on the evening of February 22, was a startlingly inward one, a solo on an early 15th-century Afghanistanian rebab, which is a kind of viol. (No, “viol” is not a misprint. Viols were a popular family of instruments in ancient times.Read More

Treasuring Felix, Embodying Moses’ Enlightenment in Music

By Raphael Mostel

Why do we still feel the need to defend Felix Mendelssohn even in this, the bicentennial year of his birth? In his all too brief lifetime, he was deeply appreciated as the musician most admired by other musicians: as a person, as a colleague, as a performer, but especially as a composer. Mendelssohn was perhaps the greatest musical prodigy who ever lived (Mozart was still imitating others at an age when Mendelssohn was already composing mature masterpieces). In his 38 years, he wrote a huge body of major works that have never disappeared from concert stages.Read More


 

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