10-27a: Ginette Neveu : Debussy, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Chausson, Suk et al 1938-1948 - Johann Gottlieb Graun Concertos / Haselböck 2005

1771 – Johann Gottlieb Graun (German composer & violinist)
1781 – Herman-François Delange (Belgian violinist & composer)
1796 – Anton Stamitz [Antonín Stamic] (German-Czech composer & violinist, brother of Carl [Karel])
1822 – Christian Frederich Gottlieb Schwencke (German composer, pianist, organist, music editor & church musician)
1833 – Ferdinand Fränzl (German violinist, composer, conductor & opera director)
1848 – Alexander Egorovich Varlamov [Александр Егорович Варламов] (Russian composer)
1864 – Andreas Randel (Swedish composer & violinist)
1925 – Wilhelm Gericke (Austrian conductor & composer, active in Vienna & Boston, Mass.)
1933 – Julius Klengel (German cellist & composer)
1940 – Fini Valdemar Henriques (Danish composer & violinist)
1943 – Béla Reinitz (Hungarian composer & music critic)
1949 – Ginette Neveu (French violinist)
1949 – Jean-Paul Neveu (French pianist)

Well, it looks like it's Le Jour du Violon here at Yestermonth. I can't recall having seen so many prominent fiddlers on the list (this is only half of it, of course - yes, it's another two-fer today), and there's a cellist to boot. And so that violinist we think of the most on October 27th–28th is in very good company, if that expression can be used for something as heartbreaking as the loss of a great and promising young artist.

Ginette Neveu might well be remembered as one of the supreme players of the violin in the past century, had her life not been cut so cruelly short, at the age of 30, when her plane went down in the Azores in 1949, as she embarked on a tour of the Americas. And as if that were not terrible enough, the tragedy went double for the Neveu family, since Ginette's accompanist Jean-Paul, who was also her brother, was on board the aircraft as well.

And perhaps we can find some symbolic significance in the location of the air disaster, in that very part of the ocean where the legendary continent of Atlantis has traditionally been said to have lain (if one takes Plato's account of it literally). For with the stuff of legends, we naturally touch on questions of what was, and what might have been, and what still could be today, had so-and-so occurred or not occurred. A little food for thought, especially for any of you Americans out there who didn't get quite enough to eat during yesterday's Thanksgiving pig-out feast...

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