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Concertina Soloist In Carnegie Hall 1960's


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Apparently in the 1960's a concertina soloist made it to Carnegie Hall to perform with accompaniment by pianist Samuel Sanders. However the concert was then cancelled because the performer supposedly fainted.

Has anyone ever heard about this concertinist? He or she must have been good....to get there at all.

 

Pauline

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Howdy:

 

I'm guessing it had to be one of the many members of the Matusewich family and probably

Boris Gregory Matusewich ("America's foremost concertina virtuoso" according to an old issue of Mugwumps magazine)

 

Just a guess and IMO a very good one!

 

Have fun,

Perry Werner

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FOLKS: there are not many things about which i can speak with authority. . . . .but one of them, since i brush my teeth in front of a mirror, is ME.............

 

I am the "pretty good" concertinist to whom Pauline refers. . . . .

 

but let me make two corrections. . . .the venue was Carnegie Recital Hall (that's the LITTLE hall. . .holds about 250 people. . . .now called Weil Hall). . . .and "feint" is not correct. . . ."collapse" is more like it..............

 

i think it was the Fall of 1967. . . . .i had been fighting a flu for a week or so. . . . .and the strength just gave out. . . . .the accompanist, Sam Sanders, who accompanied many of the great soloists who came through New York, passed away a few years ago. . . . . . .Allan

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FOLKS: there are not many things about which i can speak with authority. . . . .but one of them, since i brush my teeth in front of a mirror, is ME.............

 

I am the "pretty good" concertinist to whom Pauline refers. . . . .

 

but let me make two corrections. . . .the venue was Carnegie Recital Hall (that's the LITTLE hall. . .holds about 250 people. . . .now called Weil Hall). . . .and "feint" is not correct. . . ."collapse" is more like it..............

 

i think it was the Fall of 1967. . . . .i had been fighting a flu for a week or so. . . . .and the strength just gave out. . . . .the accompanist, Sam Sanders, who accompanied many of the great soloists who came through New York, passed away a few years ago. . . . . . .Allan

 

Obviously you made a full recovery. Congratulations, for the recovery and for getting there for the performance, even if it was cancelled.

 

best wishes

 

John

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i think it was the Fall of 1967. . . . .

 

 

Hi Allan:

Though your name crossed my mind while preparing my earlier posting, I said to meself "no, it could'nt be Allan Atlas, he's much too young for the time period in question" or something like that.

 

Congratulations on holding on to your youth so well.

 

Perry Werner

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Thank you Allen for your message. How good of you to get to that level of playing and I am sorry about the "collapse". I am certain you have performed in that period successfully in other places in order to get a performance there.

Did you perform a lot? I did not know.

Best wishes

Pauline

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How good of you to get to that level of playing ... Did you perform a lot?

Pauline,

 

I'm sure Allan will reply for himself, but I found this with a Google search:

 

Another student of Boris Matusewitch, Allan Atlas, performed on the concertina and accordion during the 1950s and 1960s. Dr. Atlas is now chairman of the music department at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and author of a history of the instrument, The Wheatstone English Concertina in Victorian England (Oxford University Press, 1996). That book is graciously dedicated to Boris and Sergei Matusewitch.

 

Otherwise, Wes Williams posted an account of that Carnegie Hall recital, from the October 1966 ICA Newsletter, in a previous thread:

CONCERTINAS AT CARNEGIE HALL

 

Carnegie Recital Hall is the premier auditorium for serious music

making in the U.S.A. Here on 26th September Allan Atlas, a 23 year old

student of musicology at New York University gave a recital on his

48 key English Concertina. Allan Atlas already has his B.A.degree of

Hunter College, and his Master's Degree of New York, and that a

musician of such ability should cultivate the playing of the concertina

is a wonderful tribute to the qualities of this neglected instrument.

His programme included works by Vivaldi, Mozart, Bach and

Paganini, proving the contention that the violin works of the great

masters are ideal as concertina studies. Modernists are represented by

Bloch (1930?) and Charles Schwartz (1966), while the specifically

concertina music of Regondi was also included.

Allan Atlas is a student of Boris Matusewitch.

Edited by Stephen Chambers
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Thank you very much Steven

 

Though I have been reading a lot at some point in time I never came across this information.

 

We could only wish that Allan would have carried on performing on such platforms from that young age. Although of course Allan fortunately has supported and still is supporting the English concertina in as many ways as one can think of by writing books and organising recitals. And maybe other things I do not know of as this just shows.

 

Thanks again

 

Pauline

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Allan fortunately has supported and still is supporting the English concertina in as many ways as one can think of by writing books and organising recitals.

Pauline,

 

He's back performing too, at the likes of The Incredible Concertina - A Concert in Honor of Sir Charles Wheatstone - A Bicentiennial Celebration, or Viva Regondi etc.

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