sentencing in oquist/svendsen case June 25, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : crime, the orchestra world, viola, violin, add a commentI was forwarded this information from Janet George:
Fivea Sharipoff was sentenced June 24, 2008 in a 3 hour hearing. Family members of Kjersten and Angela read statements, Kelly Gronli read her own statement and one from her parents, and members of Fivea’s family read statements as well. In the end, the judge sentenced Fivea to a total of 16 years and 8 months in prison with no chance of early release. Upon her release, her driver’s license will be suspended for 8 years, and she will also be required to be under post-prison supervision for 3 years.
Here is a link to the Eugene Register-Guard’s article.
tidbits for monday morning June 2, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : appreciation/criticism, bloggers, cello, chamber music, music, soloists & recitals, the orchestra world, viola, violin, 2comments• I just caught Robert Levine’s latest blog entry about the Milwaukee Symphony’s recent concerts with Hilary Hahn. Robert is one of the smartest guys out there, I’m coming to appreciate, and reading this post had me scratching my head and wondering “why couldn’t I have said that?”. I like the way he clearly expresses what’s on his mind, and gets to the crux of the matter with minimal equivocation. Hahn was in Milwaukee playing the Tchaikovsky concerto, and Levine really hits the nail on the head about this piece (which is one of my favorite guilty pleasures, by the way):
But I found myself not really convinced by her version of the piece, which surprised me, as I hadn’t felt that way about the previous times she’d played with us. I spent all week trying to figure out why. The best I could come up with was that she was trying to find more in the piece than was actually there. She was making wonderful and interesting phrases all over the place. But it’s not that kind of piece. In a funny way, her great strengths as a musician – her intelligence and imagination – were not really relevant to the piece, and even got in the way. One doesn’t think of semplice and Tchaikowsky as ever being coupled – but I think that’s what it needs. Perhaps that’s why the last movement consistently worked the best, because all it needs – all there’s time for, really – is technique and a kind of inexorable rhythmic stability, which of course she has in spades.
• In other news, my joint recital with Heather Blackburn went pretty well - I’ll have more thoughts on it when I have a little more distance from it. For now, my alarm clock is off until further notice, however!
• Last Friday evening I went to hear a chamber concert organized by cellist Justin Kagan, and it featured some top local players in works of Shostakovich (his Piano Quintet), Gerald Cohen (a trio for viola, cello and piano), and Schoenberg (his sextet Verklärte Nacht). Every work was played with conviction and assurance, with kudos going out to everyone involved, as to single out one or several would be unfair to them all.
I hope that concerts such as this become more of a regular event in Portland. We have plenty of high-powered out-of-towners that come in and play chamber music on the various series in town, but little opportunity to hear our high-powered locals play the same.
oops… April 14, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : News, violin, add a commentA British man left an extremely valuable old Italian violin on a train luggage rack - now it’s missing.
LONDON - A retired shipping consultant said he lost an expensive 17th-century violin after forgetting it on a train. Rob Napier said he did not realize the instrument, made by master Venetian craftsman Matteo Goffriller in 1698, was still on the train’s luggage rack until it began pulling out of the station.
“I think you can imagine the awful, kind of pit-in-your-stomach feeling,” Napier, 67, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday. “My first instinct was: Can I jump on top of the train? But that was obviously stupid.”
Napier said he was on his way home to Bedwyn, some 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of London, on Jan. 29 after retrieving the violin from an expert who had valued it at about 200,000 pounds (US$390,000; euro245,000). Napier called the train company, but by the time the train reached its final destination, the instrument was gone.
Napier said the violin belonged to his mother, who died in 2006. A professional violinist, she bought the Goffriller from a dealer in 1945. She said later she had wanted a fine instrument to match the quality of those played by her colleagues in the well-known Ebsworth String Quartet, an all-female group, Napier said.
A reward of up to 10,000 pounds (about US$20,000 euro12,000) was being offered for the instrument’s recovery, he said.
The British Transport Police confirmed it was investigating the theft of a “very high value violin.”
oh, crap! February 12, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : News, music, soloists & recitals, violin, add a comment
Photo credit: Theremina
It’s every string player’s nightmare - tripping, falling, and destroying your instrument. Now imagine that you own a rare Guadagnini priceless Stradivarius violin. Yeah, you get the picture! (more…)
schubert’s erlkönig February 3, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : music, soloists & recitals, video, violin, 2commentsLast night, after his brilliant performance of the Beethoven Second Piano Concerto, Kirill Gerstein played an encore that I’d never heard before, at least on piano alone. It was Erlkönig - originally a song by Schubert, transcribed for solo piano by Liszt. I had heard a similar transcription, by the violinist Max Ernst, for solo violin - and that is even more impressive.
