oboeinsight

When the Marlboro Music Festival was getting started, the local paper, the Brattleboro Reformer, agreed to run music reviews if the festival bought ads – and if Marlboro supplied the reviews itself.

So Anthony P. Checchia, its administrator, turned to Mr. Rosenblatt – a resident artist at Marlboro himself – who wrote under the nom de plume H.D. Semiquaver (hemidemisemiquaver is the British term for a 64th note).

Rudolf Serkin, the pianist who ran Marlboro, was mystified.

“Serkin knew the newspaper, and he couldn’t understand how a review of this sophistication would appear,” said Checchia.

I love it! “H.D. Semiquaver” is just great!

And then there’s this:

He retired from the orchestra in 1995 after 36 years, and was admired, if not always emulated, by his colleagues for quitting at the top of his game. Few people knew how nervous he was as a performer. And yet he was frequently in the spotlight, performing concertos by Skrowaczewski, Persichetti, or Fiala, or works with prominent parts, like Copland’s Quiet City.

Once he tripled on English horn, oboe, and oboe d’amore on a single program, in 1980, with the Concerto Soloists.

“He suffered terribly from nerves, and as he got older and realized how many things could go wrong, he just didn’t enjoy playing anymore,” said his wife of 56 years, a composer and pianist who would often write his cadenzas or edit parts.

RTWT

The picture below is from this page.

Left to right: Rosenblatt, Laurence Thorstenberg (later of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra), Laila Storch (author of a Tabuteau biography), John Mack (Cleveland Orchestra), Tabuteau and Walter Bianchi (of Brazil).