Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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The Schmooze Richard Tauber, a Mighty, not Schmaltzy, Tenor
Today Richard Tauber, the Austrian tenor of Jewish ancestry, is a genuine icon, as the title of a splendid 5-CD box set of his recordings from EMI Classics indicates. Yet his life is a cautionary tale of how critics should reflect on the possible impact of their words. By the 1920s, Tauber had achieved matinee…
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The Schmooze The Arty Semite Guide to Winter’s Classical Music Lineup
An approaching New Year can be a time of rearrangements and transpositions, as Manhattan classical music lovers in search of Yiddishkeit will discover. From December 1 to 3 at Avery Fisher Hall, Gustav Mahler’s unfinished Symphony No. 10 in its revised Deryck Cooke performing edition will be conducted by Daniel Harding. Harding has recorded this…
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Culture The Man Who Out-Sainted Einstein
James Franck, a Jewish scientist who was born in Hamburg, Germany, and was a co-winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize in physics, is honored by The University of Chicago’s James Franck Institute and by the James Franck German-Israel Binational Program, hosted at five leading Israeli technical schools. Yet nothing commemorates the work Franck did inside…
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The Schmooze ‘Ringing’ Voice of German Jewish Compassion
November 21 marks the 200th anniversary of the German dramatist and novelist Heinrich von Kleist’s death but European literati have been celebrating all year long. Reflected glory is cast on Max Ring, a German Jewish poet and playwright who has not yet even been accorded a German-language Wikipedia entry despite lasting literary achievements. Ring, a…
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The Schmooze Human Rights Pioneer Retains Human Mystery
A 1968 Nobel Peace Prizewinner for his activism on behalf of human rights, the French Jewish legal scholar René Cassin is more honored for his public actions than understood as a man. Co-author of the UN’s postwar Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Cassin was given a book-length homage in 2001 from Les editions Honoré Champion,…
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The Schmooze Curly Locks and Pocket Watches of Henri Herz
As CD releases celebrate 19th century Jewish romantic composers such as Ignaz Moscheles, Jakob Rosenhain and Edouard Wolff, the time to rediscover the composer/pianist/piano manufacturer Henri Herz may finally be here. Born Heinrich Herz in Vienna to a Jewish family, he composed gracious high-society music which has been recorded by recent keyboard notables such as…
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The Schmooze Coaches at Penn State Filmed By Documentarian
Dee Mosbacher, a San Francisco psychiatrist and Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, has inherited her family’s gift for prescience. Her paternal grandparents, Gertrude (née Schwartz) and Emil Mosbacher, of German Jewish stock, had the foresight to divest their ample stock holdings before the 1929 Wall Street Crash, reaping financial rewards instead from Texas oil investments. This week,…
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Culture Pauline Kael Left Jewish Imprint on Criticism
Can anyone love a professional critic? Perhaps not, but film critic Pauline Kael, who died on September 3, 2001, is receiving a stream of new tributes. The 10th anniversary of her demise was commemorated by three books that treat her life and work with awe, and sometimes with shock. “The Age of Movies: Selected Writings…
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