An eminent musicologist and critic has died. Bernard Jacobson was a familiar presence in Philadelphia. During the Muti years, when he was probably my age or younger, he was a program annotator for the Philadelphia Orchestra. He also founded a chamber music series and initiated pre-concert talks. Furthermore, he very much had Muti’s ear as an advisor, so that it’s difficult to say how much he may have influenced what trickled down to audiences at the Academy of Music. On one occasion, he appeared as narrator with members of the orchestra, delivering his own translation of Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du soldat.”
Later in life, he regularly attended concerts of the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, to whom he generously donated program notes. He showed a marked preference for the French form of Mozart’s middle name, Amadé.
His accomplishments extended far beyond the City of Brotherly Love. You can read more about him here:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/contrib/Bernard_Jacobson.htm
I just put in an order for his book on “Polish Renaissance” composers Andrzej Panufnik, Witold Lutoslawski, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Henryk Górecki.
Jacobson was 85 years-old.
Jacobson recites Schoenberg’s “Ode to Napoleon” in 1968
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