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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000092.txt from 2004/04

From: James Jeter <jyjeter@-----.com>
Subj: [DR-L] Haskell Edelstein
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 00:14:39 -0400

This article about the late NYC bassoonist Haskell Edelstein appeared
in Sunday's New York Times.

April 25, 2004

Letting the Bassoons Play On

By DANIEL J. WAKIN

For Sale: One bassoon. Excellent condition. Mellow sound. Symbol of a
life in music.

The bassoon belonged to Haskell Edelstein, a tax lawyer and fanatic of
amateur music-making. Until a year ago, a glance at the woodwind section
of just about any volunteer orchestra in New York would reveal this
slightly hunched, elfin man with a flowing white beard. Countless
musicians passed through his Upper East Side town house.

Mr. Edelstein died of gall bladder cancer last May at 70. His wife and
partner in music, Joan, has disposed of the town house, donated his
sheet music to Bennington College, where he attended a chamber music
workshop for 25 years, and sold two of his instruments. Now, the last
one is on the block.

Mrs. Edelstein, a retired associate professor of physical therapy at
Columbia and a lecturer and writer, betrays not an ounce of
sentimentality about the task ahead of her, only her usual tone of
can-do geniality.

"My attitude is this: These are wonderful instruments which should be
played," said Mrs. Edelstein, who took up the flute in the 1970's to
share her husband's musical life. Her husband, she added, will live on
every time someone plays them. "He lives through memory," she said. "I
don't need the tangible instrument."

A high school student in New Mexico and a student at the New England
Conservatory have already bought Mr. Edelstein's other two bassoons. The
third, a prized Heckel, is being offered for $18,000. It is in good
shape, Mrs. Edelstein said, because the couple traveled every year to
Fredericksburg, Tex., where a master repairman overhauled Mr.
Edelstein's instruments.

Mr. Edelstein went through high school (in Albany) and college (Amherst)
without ever owning a bassoon, but a year after his marriage, his wife
arranged for him to buy an instrument from a member of the Detroit
Symphony. "I thought it would be a nice gesture, to get him a bassoon,"
she said.

Mr. Edelstein retired from Citibank, where he was general tax counsel,
in 1993, but continued work as a tax adviser for PricewaterhouseCoopers
and the New York State Bankers Association.

Here were his other associations: the Clinton Hill Orchestra in
Brooklyn, the 92nd Street Y Symphonic Workshop Orchestra, the Riverside
Orchestra, the Lawyers Orchestra, the Greenwich Village Orchestra.
Sometimes he rehearsed five evenings a week. "I was a bassoon widow,"
Mrs. Edelstein said cheerfully.

A friend, David Greenwald, an oboist-lawyer, described Mr. Edelstein's
funeral as a convention of the city's amateur music-makers. Several
orchestras devoted concerts to his memory, and at least three pieces
have been dedicated to him posthumously. Mr. Edelstein was a man who
took the long view. When a conductor once chewed out a fellow musician,
Mr. Greenwald recalled, Mr. Edelstein said: " 'I never worry about
conductors. My experience is, I outlast all of them.' "

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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