Music
Some reflections on how we Jews cope with the majority culture around us, provoked by Handel’s beautifully crafted 1741 oratorio.
“The self-assured informality of Israeli audiences in shorts and khaki shirts, score in hand, immediately enchanted him.”
Alfred Cortot.
And critics will ignore or excuse it.
Genius and Anxiety.
Mieczysław Weinberg wrote music equal in its genius to Mahler and Shostakovich, including one of the most powerful tributes to the victims of 20th-century tyranny.
Jennie Litvack, in memoriam.
Eric Vogel and the Ghetto Swingers.
How two psychics and a Lubavitch Ḥasid led an aspiring rock musician to Jewish observance.
Untouched for decades in England.
Heartless psalms.
Růžičková, who died in September, survived both Hitler and Stalin to become a brilliant interpreter of J.S. Bach—and the only person to commit his entire keyboard oeuvre to disc.
A Polish-Jewish composer who survived Auschwitz as the camp’s musical conductor wrote in an elegant style out of step with his times. Now the times are coming around.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Dmitri Shostakovich.