Subscribe"No composer goes quite so far in each direction, so happy and so sad. When Mahler is said, it is a complete sadness; nothing can comfort him, like a weeping child. And when he's happy, he's happy the way a child is - all the way. And that's one of the keys to the Mahler puzzle - he is like a child; his feelings are extreme, exaggerated, like young people's feelings."
"In the world of music there are few sudden stars. The gift first must be guarded, nurtured, matured before it is acceptable. Consequently, most great names in music are in their middle years.
Yet on Sunday, a young man stepped on the podium of Carnegie Hall in place of the venerable Bruno Walter and welded the tones of the orchestra into a great surge of sound. The music lovers in excitement marked the date, Nov. 13 [sic], as the debut of Leonard Bernstein, 25.
They are remembering now that other date--June 15, 1886--in the opera house of Rio de Janeiro, when another youth, a 19-year-old cellist, was called upon to lead the orchestra. The name -- Arturo Toscanini".
Q: Halina Rodzinski recounts in her book that you approached her husband about sitting in on the rehearsal for Mahler's Second Symphony.
MOONDOG: Well, that was the symphony they were rehearsing the week that I was there. It was very interesting: I came to New York early in November, and I took a taxi and came over to Carnegie Hall and got a ticket and I sat in the front row, center. And that was the day that Bruno Walter was taken ill and they had to get a quick substitute; unbeknownst to me, it was Leonard Bernstein. His debut, and I was sitting right behind him; just a few feet ahead of me, it was Bernstein, and I said to myself, "After the first number, I'm going to he the first to applaud, and be heard all over the country." And I was.
The cello soloist in Don Quixote was Joseph Schuster, and he was sitting very close to me there, being the soloist. A few days later, I was standing in the entrance to the stage door, and there was an intermission in the rehearsal. Apparently, Joseph Schuster saw me, and he came over to me and said, "I saw you Sunday. Would you like to come to rehearsal?" And I said, "Yes." He said, "Wait a minute", and in a few minutes he came back with Artur Rodzinski who put his arm around my shoulder and said, "Come with me. You can come to my rehearsal." He took me clear to the front of the hall and took me down the center aisle and said, "Sit down now and enjoy yourself." At lunch he took me up to his dressing room. Mrs. Rodzinski had brought some hot soup for him, and that's how I got to meet her. And then Bernstein came in and asked something about the contrabasses. I didn't know who it was, and I said, "Are you a bass player?" And he said, "No, I wish I were." So I got to meet Leonard Bernstein too.
Q: Were you aware that you'd made such a strong impression on Rodzinski, and that it was highly unusual for him to admit an outsider to his rehearsals?
MOONDOG: Yes. He was a very superstitious, spiritual-minded person, and for some reason he got the idea that I resembled the face of Christ. I had a beard and all that, so I think it was partly that, and some kind of intuition that he should be especially nice to me. He was lovely, and I owe a lot to him and his wife.
Lamah rag'shu goyim
Ul'umim yeh'gu rik?
Yit'yats'vu malchei erets,
V'roznim nos'du yachad
Al Adonai v'al m'shicho.
N'natkah et mos'roteimo,
V'nashlichah mimenu avoteimo.
Yoshev bashamayim
Yis'chak, Adonai
Yil'ag lamo!
With the passing years, local Puritan concert-goers have watched the Jewish grip on their music tighten. And the process has been facilitated by the fact that Boston’s musical taste is of the sort which the Jews are most able to satisfy. For the city likes virtuosos — the kind of high-strung, high-paid soloist that every Jewish parent is planning on when he first straps his three-year-old offspring to a piano stool.
Example: Boston is much taken with keyboard performers like Artur Rubenstein, Myra Hess, Rudolph Serkin, Wanda Landowska, Artur Schnabel, William Kapell, Alexander Brailowsky, Leopold Godowsky, Vladimir Horowitz — all Jews. And with concert-violinists like Fritz Kreisler, Isaac Stern, Nathan Milstein, Mischa Mischakoff, Joseph Szigeti, Efrem Zimbalist, Joseph Fuchs, Mischa Elman, Michel Piastro, Erica Morini, Yehudi Menuhin, Jascha Heifitz — Jews who lend support to the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia ’s boast that “The entire history of violin-playing is virtually a Jewish art.”
Beyond this, Boston is a “symphony” rather than an “opera” town. Russell’s Boston Opera Company quickly faded, but Henschel’s Boston Symphony became world-famous. Among the Yankees, in fact, going to the Symphony took on all the aspects of a new form of worship. As one astute, out-of-town observer remarked: when a Boston lady walks down the center aisle of Symphony Hall, you fully expect a profound genuflection before she enters her seat.
The Boston Symphony Orchestra a few years ago sustained the loss of its most long-lived Jewish conductor, Serge Koussevitzky, the despot of local music for twenty-five years. And when devoted Bostonians were not actually in the presence of Koussevitzky (or his Jewish colleague, Arthur Fiedler) at Symphony Hall, they were home listening to recorded performances of the rest of the country’s symphony orchestras, directed by the rest of the country’s Jewish conductors. For, with about three notable exceptions, the men who gesticulate before the chief orchestras of the nation are all Jews.
The following is a partial list: Artur Rodzinski, Alfred Wallenstein, Leonard Bernstein, George Szell, Erich Leinsdorf, Otto Klemperer, Efrem Kurtz, Bruno Walter, Vladimir Golschmann, Walter Damrosch, Eugene Ormandy, Alexander Smallens, Fritz Reiner, Pierre Monteux, Josef Pasternak, Erich Kleiber, Max Reiter, Fabien Sevitzky, Andre Kostelanetz.
And what, in the face of all this, does The Point propose for a remedy? The situation is obviously critical. What do we recommend as a course of effective action for Bostonians? Shall we start a crusade to rescue the holy precincts of Symphony Hall from the sacrilegious hands of the Jews? Shall we picket the box-office? Shall we assault the place? Storm it in mid-season? Shall we sweat and bleed and die for the right to hear Beethoven conducted by a Mayflower descendant?
After proper consideration, we think not. We think that perhaps this time we will restrain our wrath, run the risk of being labeled “above it all,” and just contemplate with medieval, Romish satisfaction, the prospect of a stuffy hall-full of heretics being serenaded by a pit-full of infidels — for all eternity.
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Somewhat appropriately, when Bernstein was buried, his children put in his coffin, alongside a baton, a score of Mahler's Fifth Symphony, a lucky penny, a piece of amber and a copy of Alice in Wonderland.
posted by matteo at 10:46 AM on December 28, 2005