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On the Spring Equinox, I wish a happy belated birthday to Johan Halvorsen, born in March 15, 1864 (d. 1935), a Norwegian composer and friend of Edvard Grieg's. I have recently stumbled up on his works and am enjoying them a great deal. He wrote lots of music for the stage, which I suppose makes him equivalent to some who write film scores these days. There is, of course, a wikipedia entry on him that I have not bothered to link to, since I have lots of other links below, and I'll bet everybody here knows how to look stuff up on Wikipedia.
One of his most famous pieces, the Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia for Violin and Viola, is here, played by Jascha Heifetz and William Primrose in 1941:
Or, if you prefer the violin and cello version, played by two attractive young people and rather pyrotechnic:
In another one of those odd coincidences, I was reading The Lost Cellos of Lev Aronson, which I'd started some weeks ago, and only finished yesterday. Lev Aronson was an Eastern European Jew who managed to survive the Holocaust, though most of his family did not, and whose priceless, 17th c. Amati cello was confiscated when the Germans invaded the Latvian city of Riga, where he lived. Eventually, he emigrated to America after the war, and became the principal cellist in the Dallas Symphony, but he was never reunited with his Amati; nor, in fact, has it yet been tracked down--if it ever will be.
Yesterday, I suddenly found myself reading about the Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia, and Lev's performance of it. Realizing it referred to an earlier episode of his life, I thumbed back and to my surprise that between the time I'd started this book and the reference meant nothing to me, and the time I finished it, I went from zero Halvorsen knowledge to having researched him, borrowed cds from the library, and fallen in love with his music. By the time I noticed the second reference, it had the slightly eerie feeling of the webs of connection being tugged a bit.
Now,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bezeldesign, are you going to tell my your Daddy knew Aronson? Because I wouldn't be surprised. He was a student of Piatagorsky's, I understand, and died in the late 80s.
One of his most famous pieces, the Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia for Violin and Viola, is here, played by Jascha Heifetz and William Primrose in 1941:
Or, if you prefer the violin and cello version, played by two attractive young people and rather pyrotechnic:
In another one of those odd coincidences, I was reading The Lost Cellos of Lev Aronson, which I'd started some weeks ago, and only finished yesterday. Lev Aronson was an Eastern European Jew who managed to survive the Holocaust, though most of his family did not, and whose priceless, 17th c. Amati cello was confiscated when the Germans invaded the Latvian city of Riga, where he lived. Eventually, he emigrated to America after the war, and became the principal cellist in the Dallas Symphony, but he was never reunited with his Amati; nor, in fact, has it yet been tracked down--if it ever will be.
Yesterday, I suddenly found myself reading about the Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia, and Lev's performance of it. Realizing it referred to an earlier episode of his life, I thumbed back and to my surprise that between the time I'd started this book and the reference meant nothing to me, and the time I finished it, I went from zero Halvorsen knowledge to having researched him, borrowed cds from the library, and fallen in love with his music. By the time I noticed the second reference, it had the slightly eerie feeling of the webs of connection being tugged a bit.
Now,
bezeldesign, are you going to tell my your Daddy knew Aronson? Because I wouldn't be surprised. He was a student of Piatagorsky's, I understand, and died in the late 80s.