I was in New York on Thursday for another round of interviews for a documentary being shot by filmmaker H. Paul Moon about the great American cellist Leonard Rose.
Here are some fun photos from the shoot, which took place at Bowery Poetry in the East Village. In various permutations, you’ll find Paul, musicologist Eric Wen (in one shot seen in the chair I usually occupy, asking questions from off-camera), cellist and Rose pupil Sara Sant’Ambrogio of the Eroica Trio, and violist Eric Shumsky, son of the legendary violinist Oscar Shumsky, who was Rose’s close associate and good friend.
There were lots of juicy stories about Toscanini, Glenn Gould, and Isaac Stern, among others, and some anecdotes about Yo-Yo Ma gone wild. I’m guessing not all of these will make it into the movie! This is an ongoing project that will continue to span many months, with more interviews in New York, Philadelphia, and D.C., and perhaps further afield.
All the interview subjects on Thursday were great, of course, but the highlight of the day, for me, surely was the realization that Wen, who is on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music, was a regular patron of my Philadelphia book store, back in the 1990s! He just couldn’t get over it. In particular, he treasures a Samuel Johnson facsimile he found there, and he says he and his wife still talk about the shop, despite the fact that it closed in that location all the way back in 2000. (That’s us together in another photo, taken, he says, to share with her.) As you can imagine, it made me feel really good that someone still remembers and values the space and the inventory I curated.
It turns out we have much else in common, including a shared adoration of Erich Wolfgang Korngold!
It was a real pleasure to meet everyone.
