I have a few other interests as well as the glass harmonica.
First and foremost, I love to rebuild heirloom grand pianos. I got involved with this a few years ago, when I was looking for someone to restore my mother's Bechstein grand piano, which had been severely damaged in a house fire. It was built in 1900 and she brought it over to this country when she emigrated from Berlin Germany in 1936. It had been previously owned by her uncle, and my great uncle, Willi Apel, who wrote The Harvard Dictionary of Music. Since the cost of restoring the instrument was so high, I asked all the restorers I interviewed for the potential job of repairing the piano if they might allow me to assist with the project. Only one said yes and soon thereafter I had fallen in love with the work and had become his apprentice.
My mother was born in Berlin and my father was born in Bielefeld, Germany.
They both came from upper-middle class 100% assimilated and acculturated Jewish intellectual families. My mother's father was the director of a large chocolate factory in Berlin and my father's father was a lawyer who married the daughter of the founder of Patzenhofer brewery, which still exists in Germany. After the aforementioned Willi Apel got hired by Harvard to teach Musicology, my mom's family had a good way out of Germany rather early, in 1936. My dad was not so fortunate. He left on practically the last boat out of Germany in early 1939. Both his parents were hauled off to Theresienstadt shortly thereafter, and were later exterminated in Auschwitz. The first thing my father did when he came over here was to join the army. The army sent him off to Camp Ritchie in Maryland to be trained as an intelligence officer. He later went to the front and earned a bronze star by speaking in a bullhorn and convincing 29 German soldiers to surrender. After the war the army sent my father to Harvard. It was there that he met my mother. The story of their meeting is actually quite touching and romantic. My dad waited three hours by the steps of Widener Library to see who is was who own a bicycle he saw parked there, which was made in his home town. It was my mom. So I was born in Cambridge, MA and German was my first language. Since my parents were not religious at all, I was raised as an agnostic.
hi Vera! i'm really flattered you accepted my friendship here.
Let me introduce myself: My name's Francisca Bastos, I'm a 17-year-old portuguese music student. I play the bassoon and i'm on the 12th grade in a Profissional School of Music (a portuguese concept based on vocational schools). My 12th grade is equivalent to the 8th degree in music conservatories.
Hello Vera, Very good to know you. We glass players must stick together! Do you play a Finkenbeiner armonica? Someday I'd like to have an actual glass armonica, but for now I have to settle for thrift store glasses. Thanks again for the invite. All the best to you. Keep in touch, donal hinely
