Congratulations to David Whitehill for bringing Emmanuel Ax to Asheville and for creating the great occasions of Asheville Amadeus [“Asheville Amadeus Festival Celebrates Mozart and Local Art,” March 11, Xpress].
Your reporter quotes Whitehill as saying that this is the first time an artist of Ax’s stature has performed side by side with the symphony. It’s hard to rank the stature of classical artists, but the Asheville Symphony has indeed brought artists of the stature of Phyllis Curtin (1980), Mischa Dicter (1989), Leonard Pennario (1990) and Eugene Istomin (1994) to play with the symphony.
— Arnold Wengrow
Professor Emeritus of Drama
University of North Carolina at Asheville
Editor’s note: Arnold Wengrow is the author of Great Music, Great Memories, 50 Years with the Asheville Symphony, published in 2010.
