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I’m always curious when I stumble across pieces that I’d never heard of. I know and love Mozart’s, Brahms’s, Verdi’s, and Victoria’s Requiems (and know and intensely dislike Berlioz’), but I never knew that Dvořák had even written one. I immediately searched for it on YouTube, and am listening to it as I write this; the Introitus sounds like the Lord of the Rings soundtrack.

Leafing through the 1997 program book for a March event, this concert struck me because of two things: a letter written by Gerald R. Ford and a picture of Gustav Mahler.

To dispel confusion: he is not the Albert Spalding who was a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher and who founded the sports equipment company. That Spalding (the pitcher) was Spalding’s (the violinist) uncle

As a member of the UMS Choral Union for the past three years, I have thoroughly enjoyed performing some of the great masterpieces of choral music: Handel’s Messiah, Verdi’s Requiem, and Beethoven’s…

There are a few musicians with whom I’d love to sit down and have a conversation. Bach, certainly, to ask him how he wrote such incredible counterpoint. Mozart, just to joke around with (although I also have a bone to pick with one of his doublings in the last movement of the D major K. 499 string quartet). Some I’d just be content to hear play: Paganini, for instance, or Joseph Joachim. Rubinstein fits into both categories: by all accounts his playing was arresting (certainly the recordings I’ve heard are), and, judging by his memoirs My Young Years, quite an entertaining companion as well.

UMS has just learned of the sad news that David Soyer, founding cellist for the Guarneri String Quartet, passed away yesterday, one day after his 87th birthday.

Editor’s Note: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performs in Ann Arbor on January 11, 2016. February 19, 1985 Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Yehudi Menuhin, conductor “While Yehudi Menuhin’s name is synonymous…

February 18, 1986 Rackham Auditorium, Ann Arbor Guarneri String Quartet Arnold Steinhardt & John Dalley, violins Michael Tree, viola David Soyer, cello One of the first questions I was asked at UMS…

February 15, 1892 University Hall, Ann Arbor During my time at UMS, I’ve become used to seeing the ghosts of famous musicians.  I’ve stumbled across signed photos of Jascha Heifetz (for whose…