An absorbing and useful but bare-bones account of how a musician’s vision helped save nearly 1,000 lives.
This nonfiction account, first in the middle-grade Groundbreaker series, explains how a Polish Jewish violinist helped saved the lives of Jewish musicians and their families from Nazis.
Bronislaw Huberman (1882-1947), born in Poland, was a child prodigy on the violin by the time he was 9 and soon after toured Europe and the United States. When he was 13, Huberman played Brahms’ music at a concert whose audience included “Gustav Mahler, Anton Bruckner, Johann Strauss and Johannes Brahms himself….Huberman played so beautifully that Brahms, reportedly, cried with joy.” Growing up, Huberman became a world-touring concert violinist (including performing in then Palestine) and had his first encounter with political oppression in World War I. He was playing in Berlin when war was declared, and as a Polish citizen, he was considered an enemy of the state. Luckily, the German crown princess appreciated Huberman’s talent and got him released, but the experience turned him into an anti-war activist. Hitler’s rise introduced many anti-Semitic laws, such as one that barred Jewish musicians from performing. Because he was a great and famous musician, Huberman was nevertheless invited to play with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, an invitation he angrily refused in a 1933 letter published in the New York Times. As anti-Semitic violence in Europe rose, Huberman decided to take action by raising money for a new orchestra in Palestine that would offer refuge to escaping Jewish musicians. Auditions that were “competitive, emotional and tense” took place all over Europe; Huberman got financial and political help from the likes of Albert Einstein and David Ben-Gurion. In 1936, 50-plus Jewish musicians and their families sailed to Palestine for a new life. “Today, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the greatest orchestras in the world, and, as Huberman had hoped, the leading cultural ambassador for the state of Israel,” writes Aronson. Huberman settled in New York in 1940, dying in Switzerland seven years later without having seen Palestine again. For his debut book, Aronson—a former journalist—interviewed original members of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra; also included in this volume are a selected bibliography and photo credits, useful information for researchers. The book feels somewhat light at only 50 pages, mainly providing highlights and apt quotations. The main story does convey the fascinating details of how the orchestra was conceived, paid for, and staffed, but it may not bring Huberman and his heroism alive for middle-grade readers. Aronson notes, for example, that Huberman faced difficult choices as musicians auditioned for their lives (and their families’), but he sounds remote and chilly: “ ‘In art there can be no mercy and no comprise,’ he wrote to a friend.” More time could have been spent on episodes from Huberman’s biography, such as his musical education, the nature of his musical gifts, or his personal life; Aronson doesn’t mention, for example, Huberman’s marriage and divorce. Still, this is an exciting, relatively unknown historical account that warrants attention.
An absorbing and useful but bare-bones account of how a musician’s vision helped save nearly 1,000 lives.Pub Date: July 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73207-751-5
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Double M Books Inc.
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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