RIP, Elijah Moshinsky and Sarah Bryan Miller
Elijah Moshinsky from about the time that I knew him in the 1970s.
Two people whom I knew and admired have passed away in the last few months, one in the USA and the other London.
The first is the wonderful stage director Elijah Moshinsky, who died on January 14th aged 75. He was born of Russian parents in Shanghai in 1946 before moving to Melbourne when he was about five. I met him when we were both graduate students at Oxford in the early 1970s, he at St. Anthony’s and I at Magdalen. While there, he was asked to direct a production of As you like it for the Oxford and Cambridge Shakespeare Company and I was very lucky to be invited to perform the live music of which there was a great deal. As well as playing at both universities we also went on a tour of the mid-west and east coast of America. This was my first visit to the USA, and I loved every minute of it. Little did I know at the time that the country would end up being my home for the last forty years!
The cast, which included John Madden, who went on to direct Shakespeare in Love and the brilliant comedian Mel Smith, was terrific and the production was wonderful and witty. Elijah was super to work with and he produced something that has lived in my memory ever since. Alas, my father died suddenly when the company was in Washington DC in the period around Christmas and New Year 1972/3 and I had to return immediately to the UK. Elijah and his wife Ruth could not have been kinder and more supportive at what was a very difficult time for me. I continued to see them both often after we had all returned to Oxford. Since I had a car, we would sometimes take them on jolly jaunts into Cotswolds, a great adventure for all of us. They had recently arrived from Australia and were I think pleased to be in a place so different from home. Elijah had a brilliant mind and was interested in a vast range of topics from Russian politics and philosophy to music (he, like me, played the flute). Sadly, we lost touch after a few years, but I continued to admire his work from afar and wish now that we remained in closer contact.
Sarah Bryan Miller
Sarah Bryan Miller, the music critic of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, passed away in November after a long battle with cancer. In an era when arts criticism is slowly being shut out of one’s daily newspaper, she remained a strong voice as an advocate for the musical life of the city she loved. We didn’t meet very often but we did talk on the phone, usually on one of my frequent visits to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. As a mezzo soprano, she could be very firm in her views on what good singing should be. Of course, we didn’t always agree and sometimes I was on the receiving end of her criticism, but she was always very supportive of the musical life and institutions of her beloved city. She had very high standards and would point out if she felt that a performance didn’t live up to them; but she was never destructive or vindictive. I must admit that I would sometimes be a little nervous to go on-line the morning after one of my concerts to read her opinion, but I always found that she was fair and often had some wonderful insights into the music and how we had performed it. She wasn’t one of those critics who like to show off their musicological credentials in every review, nor did she basically regurgitate the programme notes merely to pad out her piece, instead she wrote, simply and straightforwardly, about what she thought and felt. That basic honesty was a refreshing quality and a rare one too. She will be much missed not only in St. Louis but in the wider music life of this country.
Requiescant in pace.