Olivia de Havilland is 104 today. In her honor, here’s a suite from Aaron Copland’s score to “The Heiress,” a film for which De Havilland won her second Academy Award in 1950. (Copland won too.) Happy birthday!
Category: Daily Dispatch
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Ida Haendel Violin Virtuoso Dies at 91
The violinist Ida Haendel has died.
Haendel was born in Chelm, Poland, roughly a decade before the Nazi death marches and extermination camps began depleting most of its population of 18,000 Jews. It is no exaggeration to speculate that her gifts as a musician, and where they took her, saved her life and the lives of her immediate family.
To describe Haendel as a prodigy is an understatement. She won the Warsaw Conservatory’s Gold Medal and first Huberman Prize in 1933, at the age of five, for her performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto. At seven, she was competing against David Oistrakh and Ginette Neveu, about twenty years her senior, to become a laureate of the first Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition. Soon, she was studying in London and Paris with legendary pedagogues Carl Flesch and George Enescu.
During WWII she employed her talent to help boost the morale of British and American troops and factory workers. In 1937, she made her first appearance at the Proms. She went on to perform at the Proms no less than 68 times.
Internationally, she played with many of the great conductors, drawing particular acclaim for a recording of the Sibelius Concerto. Sibelius personally wrote her to say, “I congratulate you on the great success, but most of all I congratulate myself, that my concerto has found an interpreter of your rare standard.” In all, her recordings span some 70 years.
In 2006, she played before Pope Benedict XVI at the former concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The organizers suggested that she play something Jewish. Instead, she chose Handel’s prayer from the “Dettingen Te Deum.” The work was arranged by her teacher, Carl Flesch.
Haendel was extremely fortunate in that her talent allowed her to escape the fate of so many of her townspeople. Her precise age at the time of her death, yesterday, in Miami, is unclear, since she had in her possession several different birth certificates, but the consensus seems to be that she was 91.
R.I.P.
Haendel plays Sibelius
Haendel plays Allan Pettersson’s Violin Concerto No. 2, a work written for and dedicated to her:
More about Haendel:
https://interlude.hk/great-women-artists-shaped-music-vi-ida-haendel/?fbclid=IwAR38TYyNAKisPwoXbyZDycc41ir3BFpGqbHtK1yeWPTPsqE9EcmNAVumsDM -
WWFM Listener Support Shines Through
Even in time of COVID, our dedicated listeners come through for us! With hosts interacting from separate studios and staff answering phones from home, we were able to crest $65,000 in donations, making our end-of-the-fiscal-year fundraiser a success. This is not underappreciated during such a turbulent time. We at WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org thank you for your extraordinary generosity!
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Remembering Carl Reiner: A Comedy Legend
In common, I suppose, with just about anyone familiar his work – which would be anyone with any kind of familiarity with American popular culture since 1950 – I was saddened to learn of the passing of Carl Reiner, who died on Monday at the age of 98.
As a writer, producer, director, and actor, Reiner earned 11 Emmy Awards, including two for his work on “Your Show of Shows” and five for his own creation, “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” He acted in “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World” and “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.” He directed “Where’s Poppa?” with Ruth Gordon and “Oh, God!” with George Burns.
In his later years, he appeared in the “Ocean’s Eleven” films, with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, had recurring roles on the sitcoms “Two and a Half Men” and “Hot in Cleveland,’ and did voice work for animated shows such as “Family Guy” and “King of the Hill.”
On top of everything else – his work in movies, television, Broadway, and print – Reiner directed four of Steve Martin’s funniest comedies: “The Jerk” (1979), “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” (1982), “The Man with Two Brains” (1983), and “All of Me” (1984).
“The Jerk” gets all the love (it had the most quotable lines), but “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” is a cinematic valentine for classic movie buffs. The film’s conceit – concocted over lunch by Martin, Reiner, and screenwriter George Gipe – was to construct a new story around scenes culled from movies of the 1940s, employing insert shots and trick photography so that Martin, as hardboiled detective Rigby Reardon, interacts onscreen with Barbara Stanwyck, Veronica Lake, Humphrey Bogart, and other luminaries of Hollywood’s golden age.
Gimmicky? Sure! But for 90 minutes, I’ll take it. Reiner himself turns up fairly late in the game as a Nazi fugitive operating out of Peru.
“Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” went to great lengths to imbue its pastiche with a sense of verisimilitude. To this end, Reiner secured legendary costume designer Edith Head, who had worked in Hollywood since the 1920s. (A number of her movies – including “The Glass Key,” “Double Indemnity,” “The Lost Weekend,” and “Sorry, Wrong Number” – were sampled for the new project). It would be Head’s final film. The production designer, John DeCuir, had also been active since the 1930s.
But the real masterstroke was the hiring of film composer Miklós Rózsa, whose career flourished during the heyday of noir, having provided scores for “Double Indemnity,” “The Lost Weekend,” and “The Killers,” scenes from which were also recreated in Reiner’s film. This was meta before meta was cool. Sadly, it would also turn out to be Rózsa’s final film. But what a way to go!
Of course, I haven’t seen the movie in years – we’re now as far away from “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” as “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” was from “Double Indemnity” – but I remember being mightily entertained as a 15 year-old. I’m sure I was well below the demographic that would have gotten most of the references. But then, I was a rather unusual child.
Sadly, plaid is no longer among Reiner’s wardrobe options. I’ve also been thinking a lot about Mel Brooks, Reiner’s best friend for 70 years. The two men met while working with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca on “Your Show of Shows” in 1950, and have been inseparable companions throughout their golden years. According to Reiner, their daily routine involved having dinner, watching “Jeopardy” (taped), and then Mel falling asleep while watching a movie.
Reiner and Brooks formulated their classic “2000 Year Old-Man” routine when goofing around behind the scenes on “Your Show of Shows.” By 1960, they were recording it. Their final collaboration, “The 2000 Year-Old Man in 2000,” released in 1998, received a Grammy Award for Spoken Comedy Album.
It’s always especially sad to lose a comedian. Comedians should not age (except perhaps to 2000). They never really grow old, so there should be an exemption. Here’s hoping there’s a special place in heaven for those who make us laugh.
PHOTO: Reiner, channeling Erich von Stroheim in “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid”
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Last Day to Support Classical Music on WWFM!
Today’s the day! The final day of our membership campaign, and the last day of our fiscal year!
We know that, as a devoted listener of The Classical Network, you are passionate about the variety of music we present. This is music that resonates, whether from down the centuries or across the globe – enduring classics, presented alongside the new or unusual, in live concerts and superior recordings made by the world’s great orchestras or rising stars in the performing arts. The common thread is musicmaking of great beauty and humanity.
It goes without saying that you want us to continue doing what we do, that you want us to succeed. As a committed listener, naturally you are deeply invested in The Classical Network and everything we do to enhance the quality of your days – the daily comfort, reflection, insight, and elevation, inspired by our creative playlists, concert broadcasts, artist interviews, homegrown specialty shows, and hand-in-glove relationship with the local arts community.
WWFM is a virtual meeting place for the musical arts in central New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. But it is a meeting place that is only as open and welcoming as our listener-members allow. Your contribution at this time will have a powerful impact on what next year’s budget will look like and how much grant money we are able to secure.
A gratifying number of you have already messaged me the past couple of days to let me know that you have already stepped up. Thank you so much for your support! If you haven’t done so yet, please consider making a donation now. WWFM hosts and volunteers will be on hand until 7:00 this evening, at 1-888-232-1212.
If the time gets away from you, and suddenly it’s 8, remember, you can donate at our website right up until 11:59 p.m. and still have it count toward our goal. But at midnight, we turn into a pumpkin!
Be a fairy godparent and a patron of WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org today! We cannot thank you enough for doing your part in sustaining the world’s great music on the radio. We could not do it without you!
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