HOW DO YOU GET TO CARNEGIE HALL?

The Aspen Music Festival and School’s president and CEO for 12 years, Robert Harth, is leaving to become executive and artistic director of Carnegie Hall in September, after the close of the 2001 Aspen season. "It is a magnificent institution," Harth says, "and it has been a dream of mine to join Carnegie Hall." He replaces Franz Xaver Ohnesorg, who recently announced that he was ending his turbulent tenure at Carnegie and taking the role of director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Cellist and viola da gamba player Eva Heinitz died in April at the age of 94. Born in Berlin in 1907, she was accepted to the Berlin State Academy of Music and studied cello with the great Hugo Becker. She was often in demand as a soloist and played with many of Europe’s best orchestras. At the height of her career she became interested in the viola da gamba; as there were very few players at that time, she literally taught herself by researching early books of instruction.

Driven from Germany by World War II, Heinitz moved to the U.S., where she played in the Pittsburgh Symphony until their unwillingness to promote a woman to principal forced her resignation. She joined the faculty of the University of Washington and performed in their string quartet—a post she maintained for 28 years. She also founded an early-music group, although she was scornful of the "authenticity" movement and played her viola da gamba, normally held between the legs, with an endpin!

In 1994, Heinitz donated her 1700 Goffriller cello to the University of Indiana; the sale of the instrument seeded the Eva Heinitz Scholarship Fund. "I am not that interested in money," she explained. "In fact, I hate it. But I am interested in what money can do, and I want to help young cellists. I’ve had a full, rich life and achieved almost everything I wanted. Now it’s time for this wonderful instrument to go on." Her scholarship is awarded annually to cello students at the IU school of music.

FRESH WEB

MARKETING MOTHERS-TO-BE

The castle in Stockholm, Sweden, that is home to King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia includes a royal church, recently restored and open to anyone who wants to celebrate a Sunday service with the royal court (and possibly the royal family themselves). The church also hosts a concert series, and the Seven Stradivari Concert on April 18, 2001, was quite unique.

The Nippon Music Foundation, established in 1974, loans out a collection of instruments, and two young artists who play Nippon Stradivaris came to Stockholm to perform in this concert. English-born Daishin Kashimoto, who trained at Juilliard and was a student of Zakhar Bron, opened the concert with the Bach Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 for violin solo, played on the 1722 "Jupiter" Stradivari. The German-Korean violinist Viviane Hagner, Pinchas Zukerman’s partner on tour this summer, played the 1717 "Sasserno." Hagner’s performance of Chausson’s Poeme and Sarasate’s Zapateado brought a different temperament into the church.

Malin Broman, violinist of the Kungsbacka Piano Trio, lent her pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips to Hagner before performing with him herself. She used one of the few Stradivari violins in Sweden, the 1709 "ex-Crafoord," provided by the Swedish Music Academy and the Järnåker Foundation just for this performance.

The final four Stradivaris came all at once. The "Paganini" quartet of instruments was once owned by Niccolò Paganini and now is played by the Tokyo String Quartet (see more on the Tokyo’s instruments on page 58). There are only about a dozen Stradivari violas in the world, and the Tokyo made the most of theirs by playing Brahms’ Third String Quartet in B-flat major. Although turned away from the audience, the sound of the viola was the most distinct, and really quite lovely.

Seven is an impressive number when you are speaking of Stradivari. But we didn’t just hear seven great instruments—we heard seven great instrumentalists, too.

The Beyreuth Festspiele (Wagner Festival) has chosen its new artistic director. It comes as no surprise that 55-year-old Eva Wagner-Pasquier will replace her father, Wolfgang Wagner, as the power behind the festival in October 2002. Despite conflicts between mother and father, the board of directors for this legendary summer opera festival will keep the Wagner family firmly under control.

AVERY FISHER GRANTS

The Avery Fisher Artist Program has just awarded four 2001 Career Grants, designed to provide assistance and recognition to young musicians with a potential for solo careers. Each recipient receives a stipend of $15,000; up to five grants may be given each year. This year’s grants go to violinist Timothy Fain, cellists Daniel Lee and Hai-Ye Ni, and flutist Tara Helen O’Connor.

CORPUS CHRISTI COMPETITOR

Jia Lei Li, violinist, won the first-place Morris L. Lichtenstein Jr. Foundation String Award at the Corpus Christi Young Artists’ Competition. Hailing from Houston, Texas, Li attends Julliard and is a student of both Dorothy DeLay and Masao Kawasaki. She took $5,000 and a solo appearance with either the Corpus Christi Symphony or the San Antonio Symphony.

THE FINEST CRAFTSMAN

Robert Lundberg died March 3, 2001. He was one of the world’s finest lute makers, but he was also a true Renaissance man, and we will never see his like again. He suffered from terrible health problems over the last few years, but even though his body kept betraying him, he had the strongest life force imaginable.

Lutes were Lundberg’s calling, but he could walk into the musical-instrument collection of any museum, take anything apart, and put it back together in much better shape than he found it. He started working at Schuback’s Violin Shop in 1971, studied lute building in Europe with Jacob Van De Geest, taught many workshops in Germany, and was well versed in all aspects of instrument making. He also wrote many articles for the Guild of American Luthiers. It seemed to me that he knew a bit about most everything. He was already somewhat legendary when I was starting out and I found it amazing that we were the same age.

I remember having a wonderful time with him in the catacombs beneath the Smithsonian, where there are laboratories and repair facilities that seem to go on for miles. Lundberg was commissioned to work on the collection and, since I had a guitar repair shop at the time, he asked my advice on an instrument that was deformed from being apart for at least 100 years. I advised a maneuver that I knew would work but was, at best, unorthodox for museum restoration. After considering for a couple of days, Lundberg closed the door and said, "Let’s go for it." With hot hide glue, lots of cushioned clamps, and our 20 fingers, I helped him fix George Washington’s guitar.

Bob Lundberg surely didn’t deserve the illnesses that seemed to follow him around these last years. I’m going to miss him a lot. He was brave, strong, loyal, brilliant, and the finest craftsman I have ever seen. He could also be extremely cantankerous in any argument, but I will sorely miss those debates. We shared the finest discussions of my life about the nature of beauty, craft, and the challenges of making a living at it. To those of you who didn’t know him, take my word for it: we all lost something wonderful when he died.

—Eric Meyer