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1770, Ludwig van Beethoven is born in Bonn, Germany. At his full adult height, the composer stood only 5'3". Yet he towers over the classical-music nearly 200 years after his death (1827).
Things I'll bet you never knew about Beethoven:
* He has his own listing on IMDB.com (Internet Movie Database) as the "soundtrack" composer of a half-dozen 20th-Century movies;
* And about his trademark four notes -- the famous duh-duh-duh-DAH motive he wrote to open his Fifth Symphony: 
The composer described the motive as "death knocking at the door." But the Beethoven signature would become the Allies' signature during World War II because the four notes are unintentionally immortalized as Morse Code for the letter "V" (for "Victory").
1773, the Boston Tea Party took place as American colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than 300 chests of tea overboard to protest tea taxes.
1921, French composer Camille Saint-Saens died.1944, American composer and bandleader Glenn Miller was presumed dead after his flight went missing over the English Channel.
1965, British novelist and playwright William Somerset Maugham died.
1928, renowned violinist Ida Haendel was born. A British musician of Polish descent, Dame Ida (CBE, 1991) is a longtime Miami resident.
I didn't know it at the time -- the great painter was attracted to redheads.
Due to the overwhelming response to these broadcasts, the Majestic will show prerecorded encore performances on the Wednesday evening following each Saturday's live broadcast.
Tickets are $20 for adults/seniors and $15 for students/children are available at the MAJESTIC Theatre and online at www.majesticvero.com.
Special thanks to our friends at WQCS who also radio broadcast the Met performances on WQCS 88.9 FM.
For the dates of upcoming Met Opera Live in HD performances, visit http://www.verobeachopera.org/view/242/24185/08-09-The-Met-Live-Broadcasts.html. The next is "La Damnation de Faust" (New production) – Berlioz - Saturday, November 22, 2008 (1:00 pm ET. Robert Lepage directs Marcello Giordani in the title role of this new production, conducted by James Levine. Also starring Susan Graham..
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
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There were many David Prenskys.
There was the classical music devotee and popular preconcert lecturer. The advocate for the arts and tireless booster of the Alexander W. Dreyfoos Jr. School of the Arts. The ardent Democrat and campaigner for a universal health-care system. The devoted husband who wrote a poem for his beloved Bryna nearly every day of their 50-year marriage.
Henry David Prensky died Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2008, of complications from emphysema at Hospice of Palm Beach County at JFK Medical Center in Atlantis. He was 90.
Dr. Prensky, who preferred his middle name, was born Dec. 5, 1917, in Brooklyn, N.Y. He learned to love classical music from his mother and studied piano as a child.
He married June Kamen in 1936, and the couple had two children. Unlike his brother, Bertram Ross, who became an acclaimed dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, David Prensky opted to become a dentist like his father to better support his young family.
Dr. Prensky served as a ship's dentist in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific theater during World War II.
After the war, he settled in the Miami area, where he integrated classical music into his dental practice by playing it to relax his patients.
He and his wife divorced. He married artist Bryna Raskin in 1952. "She was absolutely the love of his life," said Anne Driver De Moore, Dr. Prensky's assistant.
The couple fell in love with Mexico during a delayed honeymoon in 1954 and relocated to Mexico City.
In Mexico, David Prensky developed a thriving dental practice whose clients included members of the British embassy, while Bryna Prensky opened a gallery showing contemporary Mexican art. Dr. Prensky arranged to have most of his wife's collection, which was shown at The Society of the Four Arts, donated to the Naples Museum of Art after her death in 2002.
The Prenskys became seasonal residents of Palm Beach in the mid-1970s and permanent residents in 1984.
Retirement opened a new chapter in Dr. Prensky's life. He threw his prodigious energies into supporting groups such as the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, the Palm Beach Festival and the fledgling Palm Beach County Council of the Arts, the forerunner of the Palm Beach County Cultural Council.
He put his extensive recordings collection and seemingly inexhaustible fund of musical anecdotes to use as a lecturer for organizations such as the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra, the Society of the Four Arts and Regional Arts.
"We always considered him sort of an elder-statesman professor who helped our audiences really enjoy and appreciate the programs they were coming to see," said Judith Mitchell, the Kravis Center's chief executive officer.
Dr. Prensky's charm and persistence served him well in the many causes he supported. It was difficult to say no to David Prensky.
"He was a man of deep convictions, deep passions and deep compassion," said his son, William Prensky.
"To know him was to love him," said longtime friend Lily Rovin of Palm Beach.
Dr. Prensky was in the advance guard of the drives to build the Kravis Center and the Alexander W. Dreyfoos Jr. School of the Arts in West Palm Beach.
"He clearly played a major role in my deciding to support the school of the arts," said Alexander Dreyfoos, who donated $1 million to the school's foundation, which Dr. Prensky helped start.
"He just was the life force here," said Pat Montesino, executive director of the School of the Arts Foundation. "He lived and breathed this school and the work of the foundation. He considered every student here his child."
Dr. Prensky's efforts for the school included setting up visual arts and music libraries and establishing annual scholarships for graduating visual arts and music majors. The school's orchestra rehearsal hall is named in his honor.
Dr. Prensky served on the board of the Etta Res Institute of New Dimensions at Palm Beach Community College, where he lectured on music and organized symposiums on current events.
On the political front, he helped found the Palm Beach Democratic Club and was its program chairman.
As a founding member of Floridians for Health Care, Dr. Prensky joined in the victorious battle to keep Good Samaritan and St. Mary's medical centers open.
Dr. Prensky battled for health-care reform into the final weeks of his life, when he campaigned from his sick bed for the adoption of single-payer national health insurance.
Dr. Prensky is survived by his son, William; a daughter, Catherine Prensky Mason of New York City; three grandchildren, Joel Mason of Wisconsin, and Josh Mason and James Regan of New York City; and three great-grandchildren.
No information on service yet, but donations for the Bryna Prensky Visual Arts Scholarship Fund or the David Prensky Music Scholarship fund for graduating seniors at the Dreyfoos School of the Arts can be sent to: School of the Arts Foundation, P.O. Box 552, West Palm Beach, FL 33402.
Vero Beach (FL) Opera announces the chartering of the Deborah Voigt/Vero Beach Opera Foundation. Among the foundation's trustees are Chairperson Deborah Voigt, Dr. Joan Ortega-Cowan and Román Ortega-Cowan (wife of the Vero company's artistic director, Roman Ortega-Cowan).
The main focus of the Foundation will be the PROTÉGÉ/MENTORING PROGRAM through which Deborah Voigt will personally select a Protégé, specifically a young soprano, each year who will then spend about six weeks with her during rehearsals and performances at a selected U.S. Opera house where she will be performing. The Protégé will enjoy extended contact with Voigt while gaining personal experience of artistry at the highest level.
The Deborah Voigt/Vero Beach Opera Foundation is extending an invitation to selected conservatories, colleges, universities and opera companies with outstanding operatic training programs for young artists to submit letters of recommendation for a full lyric or young dramatic soprano between the ages of 22 years and 30 years of age. The Protégé will be selected in April 2009.
During the 2009-2010 opera season, the Protégé will spend six weeks with Voigt at the Chicago Lyric Opera during rehearsals and performances of TOSCA from Sept. 7 – Oct. 15, 2009. The Foundation will provide housing, voice lessons, coaching and some personal needs. The Protégé will perform for Vero Beach Opera during its 2009-2010 opera season.
For more information, contact Vero Beach Opera office at P. O. Box 6912, Vero Beach, Florida, 43961 (phone 772-569-6993 or visit www.verobeachopera.org.)
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
If any conductor qualifies for living-legend status, it's Russia's conductor Valery Gergiev. Since he began appearing in South Florida three years ago, he has proven why he's the decade-long darling of Lincoln Center and music meccas worldwide.
His debut at the Kravis Center in 2006, leading the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra with pianist Vladimir Feltsman, still stands as one of the supreme concerts of the young 21st century.
Returning to the Kravis on Tuesday afternoon, Gergiev led his own Kirov Orchestra — officially renamed on Monday as the Maryiinsky — to reflect its original, historic designation: the orchestra of the oldest theater in Russia, the famed Maryiinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.
The program of Wagner, Beethoven and Prokofiev was typical Gergiev: thoughtful and intense, oversize but intimate, complex yet speaking directly to the heart.
But with guest pianist Alexei Volodin in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4, the Gergiev mystique seldom reached its accustomed depth. Although the 31-year-old rising star was on tour with his hometown St. Petersburg orchestra, he rarely connected musically with the players behind him.
As a pianist, Volodin was equal parts ideal and imperfect. His technical prowess and strength were astonishing. He practically had 10 computerized fingers at his disposal. Still his habit of suddenly rushing the tempo — as jolting as speed bumps on a highway — unsettled the unwary listener.
Even in a work as famous as the Fourth, Volodin brought attention to details that rarely reach a microphone. But the music's warmth and humanity suffered. Instead, he created dramatic contrasts between the moods and melodies, but went no farther.
That left the 37-minute Beethoven straddling two worlds. With Gergiev, the orchestra opened up the big picture and gave the work scope. Whether majestic or prayerful, he saturated the music with warmth, graceful nuances and an inner glow.
With Volodin, the piano was hyper-articulate, brilliant but detached. The pianist was rock to the orchestra's water.
Wagner's Prelude to Act I from Lohengrin and two scenes from Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet, showed the skill of Kirov/Maryiinsky players. Even if Gergiev couldn't quiet the violins as much as he wanted in the Wagner, he created an aura of mystery, intimacy and delicacy in the otherworldly prelude.
Romeo, however, was outstanding. Despite a slip or two in the solo woodwinds, the orchestra swerved with ease through Prokofiev's complex and winding layers. For more than an hour, Gergiev delved into each vignette of the ballet score, carving out beautiful, breathtaking moments of comedy, sinister turbulence, splendor, elation and almost aching bittersweetness.
The Kravis audience rustled restlessly during 20-plus episodes; some left early. But Gergiev's scene painting was so dramatic that dancers would have proved a distraction. This was purely an orchestral tour de force.
Yet after an hour-plus of Prokofiev, Gergiev and his band still had the energy, not to mention the chops, to nail an over-the-top encore, the three-minute ground-shaker that is Wagner at his most heroic, the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin.
The orchestra, led by conductor Valery Gergiev, opens Regional Arts' Music at 8 series Wednesday, Nov. 5, at 8 p.m. with Mendelssohn and Prokofiev. Guest soloist Alexei Volodin performs Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 4. It's at the Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach, FL. For tickets, call (561) 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org.
