arts & entertainment
From Pablo To Peled
Cellist plays Casals' instrument in
Ann Arbor Symphony concert.
I
Suzanne Chessler
United States, will play Edward Elgar's Cello
Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, appearing
between orchestral performances of Evan
mit Peled's 2012-2013 season
Chambers' Crazed for the Flame, a strong
takes note of a 100-year anniver-
homage to Qawwali music, and Rimsky-
sary.
Korsikov's Scheherazade, a
It's been 100 years since
showcase for every instrument.
the instrument he uses on
While the music starts at 8
loan — a 1733 Goffriller
p.m., the audience can attend
cello — was acquired by
the pre-concert session, at
Pablo Casals and kept
7-7:30 p.m., and also hear
in service by his widow,
conductor Arie Lipsky and
Marta Casals Istomin.
composer Chambers discuss the
An Ann Arbor audi-
other pieces.
ence will hear how the
"Elgar's concerto shows the
cherished cello sounds
sound of the cello in the best
as played by Peled when
way," says Peled, 38, in a phone
he appears Friday eve-
conversation from the road. "It
ning, March 15, with the
features all the ranges of the
Cellist Amit Pel ed
Ann Arbor Symphony
instrument.
Orchestra at the Michigan
"The piece was one of the big-
Theater. The audience also can learn more
gest reasons I fell in love with the cello when
about the instrument during a pre-concert
I was a child. I listened to the famous record-
presentation.
ing made by Jacqueline du Pre:'
Peled, raised in Israel and settled in the
Peled, who travels the world to perform
Contributing Writer
A
Art Sleuth
Renowned Renaissance art historian
offers talk at DIA.
Lynne Konstantin
Contributing
Writer
I
rowing up in a Conservative
Jewish family in suburban
Rockville, Md., Edward
Goldberg had the gift of constant access to
some of the most magnificent museums in
the world. The art historian in the making
"grew up," he says, in D.Cs National Gallery
of Art and Baltimore's Walters Art Museum.
At school, he says, "I began on the studio
art side, but art history is where a lot of bad
painters go when they die:'
True or not, Goldberg is an undeniably
brilliant art historian, scholar and research-
er, focusing in the areas of Italian history
and culture, Florence and the Medici family,
as well as Jewish history and culture, from
his home base in Florence.
Goldberg became entrenched in the
world of Italian history and culture while
performing research on Medici art patron-
age and collecting at the Archivio di Stato
di Firenze as a doctoral candidate through
Oxford University. He has published scores
of articles and numerous books on these
topics, has taught at Harvard University
and lectures internationally — including
G
46
March 7 • 2013
Edward Goldberg
Detroit, where he will share his findings
on "Michelangelo and the Medici" at the
Detroit Institute of Arts.
"Michelangelo (Buonarroti) is the most
famous Florentine artist, and the Medici are
the most famous family in Florentine his-
tory," says Goldberg. "But how do the pieces
fit together? I suggest that Michelangelo
was neither pro-Medici nor anti-Medici.
Rather, he was pro-Michelangelo — ready
to do whatever it took to realize his artistic
vision while surviving and even prospering
in a time of incredible political and social
upheaval."
and has been featured at chamber music fes-
tivals, was raised on a kibbutz.
"I first was attracted to the cello by a girl
I heard playing one at school," he recalls.
"When I was 10, she was 14, and I wanted to
get to know her.
"I thought if I tried to play cello, that
would be a way of meeting her, but it didn't
work. At least I got my start with the cello
and was more traditional after that:'
Peled studied with a Tel Aviv teacher, went
to an arts high school and played with a
string quartet while in the Israeli army. After
winning top honors in classical competition,
he went to the United States to study.
"I have a special connection to Michigan
through a late teacher, Bernard Greenhouse,
who was a student of Pablo Casals,"
says Peled, a professor at the Peabody
Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins
University.
"[Greenhouse] has a daughter, Elena
Delbanco, whose husband, author Nicholas
Delbanco, is a literature professor at the
University of Michigan. They're going to
come to the concert. I wish my teacher could
see me:"
Peled, married with three children attend-
ing Jewish day school, has made three
recordings in the past three years, and they
will be available at the concert.
"My way of expressing my religion is
While Goldberg's DIA talk will focus
on the complex relationship between
Michelangelo and the Medici, the historian
has also written extensively on what he calls
"the discovery of a lifetime:'
Over his decades of research in the
Medici Granducal archive at Florence's
Archivio di Stato, Goldberg has marched
through hundreds of thousands of Medici
letters, looking for artistic commissions and
acquisitions throughout the Medici reign
from 1537 to 1743.
"Along the way, Jewish documents kept
`falling' out of the archive and hitting
me over the head — business proposals,
requests for help and so on," says Goldberg.
"Jews were always in my peripheral vision:'
A few years ago, Goldberg came upon
more than 200 letters from Benedetto Blanis
(c. 1580-1647) to his great patron, Don
Giovanni de' Medici. Born in the Florentine
Jewish ghetto to a formerly grand Jewish
family, Blanis scraped by however he could,
but he had a passion for learning, knowing
that knowledge was power — especially in
early-17th-century Italy, "where alchemy
and Kabbalah had an enthusiastic follow-
ing among the rich and powerful, including
Don Giovanni," says Goldberg.
Blanis also was suspected of abducting
Jewish children to prevent their conversion
to Catholicism and spent time in and out of
jail. When Don Giovanni moved to Venice,
Blanis — in order to keep his relationship
with his Medici patron alive — took the
breathtaking risk of putting dangerous
through the cello," he says. "That's why my
first CD, A Jewish Soul, has Jewish songs I
knew in my youth:'
Cellobrations, the second, is a celebration
of cello pieces. The most recent recording
and the first of a series, Reflections, pairs
Bach suites with newer pieces that reflect
the original sounds.
Also recent is the Casals cello.
"A few months ago, I played for the
maestro's widow," Peled explains. "I was
on an audition, not expecting in my wild-
est dreams to get the instrument. It was a
chance for me to get to know her.
"After I decided to start by playing Bach
— because Pablo Casals was so associated
with Bach — I thought, 'This will be either
really good or really bad, and I'll take the
chance:
"A great cellist herself, she gave me a les-
son on the cello I was playing before asking
me to try the one that is now on loan. I take
it every place I go to perform:' ❑
The Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra,
with Amit Peled, will perform at
8 p.m. Friday, March 15, at the
Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty,
in Ann Arbor. $10-$58. (734) 994-
4801; www.a2so.com .
secrets in writing.
"So four centuries later, we can hear him
talking openly about his illicit business
dealings, his relationships with contempo-
rary occultists and his adventures with the
Inquisition.
"The Blanis letters are an archival super-
rarity," says Goldberg. "I doubt that we have
200 letters from all the Jews in Italy in those
years."
Goldberg has based two books on these
findings: Jews and Magic: The Secret World
of Benedetto Blanis and A Jew at the Medici
Court: The Letters of Benedetto Blanis
"Hebreo," 1615-1621.
And Goldberg has recently made a sec-
ond "discovery of a lifetime" — a previously
unknown five-act comedy, L'Ebreo (The
Jew), penned by Michelangelo Buonarroti
the Younger (great-nephew of the senior),
which he is currently working on.
"It is dizzying and exhilarating to make
such sensational archival discoveries, but
it is also business as usual for an archival
researcher like me," says Goldberg.
❑
Edward Goldberg discusses
"Michelangelo and the Medici" at 2
p.m. Saturday, March 9, at the DIA.
Free with museum admission. (313)
833-7900; dia.org .