Mischa Elman

My first ever Mischa Elman CDs arrived yesterday from Passionato.  This 2 CD set only cost me about $6.  Wow.  You can't get bargains like that on iTunes!

His version of the Gossec Gavotte from Suzuki Violin School Book 1 is something else!  Very charming.  There is also the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, Lalo's Symphonie espagnole and the Khachaturian Concerto.  It's crazy how cheap classical music is these days.  Elman died in 1967, but he didn't record for the big record companies it would seem.  He was about 12 years older than Heifetz and Milstein (a couple of other great Jewish violinists from Russia).

Spectrum 2013

I took my grade 9 class to Spectrum 2013 on Thursday morning.  On Friday night, I returned with my kids.  I also met a former Walter Murray student who told me about the cheap TI MSP430 microcontroller.  I had mentioned I was considering Arduino, but it was still expensive.  He said the MSP430 promoted "proper C programming".  Arduino uses its own version of C.  Interesting!

Mendelssohn Violin Concerto

The Mendelssohn Violin Concerto was one of the first violin concerti I bought on CD (way back when I was in high school). I think the others I ordered from Templar Records in London were the Brahms Violin Concerto (Anne-Sophie Mutter) and the Beethoven Violin Concerto (Itzhak Perlman). I bought this EuroArts DVD from Presto Classical last year when it was half price and I was watching it tonight in preparation for the SSO concert on Saturday, January 19.  Frank-Michael Erben, the concert master of the Gewandhaus Orchestra is the soloist.  Interestingly, the first soloist of the concerto was Ferdinand David, then the concert master of the Gewandhaus Orchestra during Mendelssohn's time.

My first CD of this concerto was with Uto Ughi and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Georges Prêtre.

When I first got this CD from Templar Records in London, I just listened to the Mendelssohn concerto and ignored the Bruch.  Of course, when I actually finally got around to listening to Bruch's first violin concerto, I was entranced and it is, to me, the most beautiful of all violin concertos!

Anyways, it is good to be able to hear the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto live played by the Gewandhaus Orchestra's concert master.  It is, after all, a very listenable masterpiece!  Mendelssohn was even more precocious than Mozart as a prodigy.  I've heard the Brahms Violin Concerto played by Miriam Fried and the Calgary Philharmonic back in the 1980s as well as with Itzhak Perlman and the TSO back in 1998 (during Easter break!).  Pinchas Zukerman was conducting the TSO that evening and the Mendelssohn Reformation Symphony was on the second half of the program.

More piano this year?

We have a Mason and Hamlin Model A grand piano that doesn't get played very much.  It was purchased in May 2008 and I hope it will get played more this year.  Maybe, someday, someone will play Beethoven Opus 109 on it!

Maybe the kid in the picture will play late Beethoven on this piano some day!