When, in November 1943, Furtwängler returned to Berlin from a concert tour abroad, he was informed that the Philharmonie Hall had been bombed during an attack on the night of November 22-23. The facade had been badly damaged, and so had the front rooms in which the irreplaceable music library had been kept. Important letters, files, documents, orginal scores - everything had been destroyed. The concert hall itself remained intact, but the windows had been blown out, and glass, at the time, was not available. Besides, concerts could no longer be given there because high piles of rubble cut off the hall from the outside world. And before it could be cleared away, more bombs fell on the Philharmonie Hall on January 30, 1944, when the Anhalter Station, near the hall, was the target. This time the Philharmonie was completely wrecked. From Wilhelm Furtwängler a biography by Curt Riess, 1955 Following the destruction of the Philharmonie Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted the Berlin Philharmonic ...
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(sorry if this is a repeat - not sure the first attempt made it, I run my default browser with extremely restricted settings and occasionally get bitten :-) )
(bobregular)
Hi Bob:
More like “Guessing the Score” but would it be Elgar’s “The Apostles”?
Carol
… Elgar’s Apostles which includes a Shofar …
Antoine
Interesting trivia ... of the first five readers who correctly identified Elgar's The Apostles one lives in England, one in Estonia, one in France (just) and two in the States. Which gives the lie to Elgar only appealing to the English.
More trivia, the first two correct answers came from current or former librarians on both sides of the Atlantic and two of the first three came from ladies, the eternal feminine clearly know their Elgar.
I was going to head the post Shofar so good but thought that would give the game away.
What a wonderful work The Apostles is. It is so different to the 'smells and bells' of Gerontius and is almost contemporary in its ecumenical message.
If you don't know the work Boult's classic recording from EMI is currently available for the price of two Starbuck lattes - no contest.
Many thanks to everyone who joined in the fun.
Actually, the question is as much whether Elgar finds appeal beyond the UK (I love Falstaff and the end of the Dream is worthy of Brahms’s German Requiem) as much as how many who responded correctly are Jewish (disclosure: I am).
AL
Actually, I live in Lithuania, not Estonia.
One of my friends, Anatolijus Senderovas, had composed a piece involving the shofar, Shmaa Israel
http://www.mic.lt/en/classical/persons/works/senderovas/36?ref=%2Fen%2Fclassical%2Fpersons%2F41
It involves a shofar...you can listen to bits of it. After that it was easy to find it....
Doesn't mean I appreciate Elgar, though ;-)
-- Beate
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