PYP News
PROGRAM NOTES: ERNEST BLOCH’s ‘Schelomo,’ Hebraic Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra
Posted on February 18, 2019
Photo fromThe Oregon Encyclopedia
Deeply disturbed by the suffering around him at the end of World War I, Swiss-born American composer Ernst Bloch sought inspiration for his newest composition from the biblical book of Ecclesiastes. The book features the story of King Solomon, whose name translates to Schelomo.
Considered by many to be his finest work, Schelomo was written at the end... Read More ›
Avshalomov/Bernstein 1: Introduction
Posted on January 28, 2019
Bernstein: 1918-1990
Avshalomov: 1919-2013
Leonard Bernstein and Jacob Avshalomov: one shot like a rocket into the international classical music stratosphere; the other wound his way through the world and built his reputation year by year. A year apart in age, both were part of the legendary post-WWII mid-twentieth-century American composers’ “circuit,” as Avshalomov put it. Both their similarities and their differences informed their different... Read More ›
Avshalomov/Bernstein 2: Bernstein’s early years
Posted on January 28, 2019
As a young man, Leonard Bernstein’s Orthodox Jewish father emigrated from a shtetl in the Ukrainian area of the “Pale of Settlement”, where the Imperial Russian government allowed Jews to live, to New York and eventually to Lawrence, Massachusetts. Leonard grew up in a tightly disciplined, observant Jewish family with two siblings, was drawn to piano before he could walk, and... Read More ›
Avshalomov/Bernstein 3: Avshalomov’s early years
Posted on January 28, 2019
Avshalomov’s path, in contrast, was much more circuitous, as illustrated by the title and preface of his perfectly-named intergenerational autobiography, Avshalomovs’ Winding Way:
“This is a tale essentially about my Father, Aaron, and myself—in and out of China, in and out of music. It shows what we had to do to survive while pursuing creative aims and clinging to our ideals. Although we were... Read More ›
Avshalomov/Bernstein 4: Avshalomov’s early years part 2
Posted on January 28, 2019
original oil portrait of Jacob Avshalomov at Reed, artist unknown; courtesy Doris Avshalomov
With the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, however, Jacob and his mother decided to return to the US for good. Jacob’s father would have decades of trouble getting a visa because he was a native Russian, not an American citizen, as Jacob’s mother was, and she lodged testimony against him... Read More ›
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