RRC Blog

Through the loss of his family at the hands of Nazi Germany and his own imprisonment in various concentration camps, violinist David Arben (born Chaim Arbeitman) remained incredibly resilient and grateful for his chance at life after the war. In an interview with his biographers, he summarized his outlook on life—“Life is my specialty. I am in love with life. It is fantastic. Freedom to breathe, freedom to talk, freedom to stand up, freedom to walk, freedom to move. I cherish this kind of freedom because I know the opposite.”

New in the digital library: an excerpt from Curtis's 1975 Golden Anniversary Banquet which includes an address by Leonard Bernstein. Introduced by fellow conducting alum Boris Goldovsky, Bernstein recounts the bright and dark points of his time at the institute. Seen as "too Harvard" and a "smart-aleck", Bernstein had difficulty fitting in with Curtis's more insulated, conservatory-minded culture. His experience at Harvard had fostered his interest in world affairs, political and
philosophical debate, and campus activism. At Curtis, he did not initially find like-minded students, many of whom were much younger than he. Bernstein often gravitated to friendships with faculty, including director Randall Thompson. Interestingly, Thompson also clashed with the institute for his interest in instilling a more holistic, inclusive curriculum. Bernstein remarked,

Though Wanda Landowska had an incredible influence on today’s perception of performance practice and early music, perhaps nothing was more admirable than her intense love and dedication to the art of music itself. She excelled in every aspect of her career whether as virtuoso, musicologist, or teacher. In her own words: “I think of myself; sometimes I feel that music invades me to the point of that total oblivion when will and intention do not exist anymore. It is because music has penetrated so deeply into me that it alone directs my movements and my inflections.”

Born on October 31st, 1900, in Krakow, Poland, Mieczyslaw Munz’s talent was discovered at the age of three as he began to pick out Polish folk songs on the piano. Only six years later, he was studying at the Krakow Conservatory with Georg von Lalewicz (a former student of Liadov and Rimsky-Korsakov). He became quite famous in Krakow with his debut of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Krakow Symphony Orchestra at the age of twelve; from there, he began study at the Vienna Academy (still with Lalewicz) and then the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik with famous pianist, Ferrucio Busoni. ⁱ