Talk:Vladimir Ashkenazy

Untitled

Re: zy / zi -- so that why I'm not getting much off google for him! thanks Camemebert! -- Tarquin

Place of birth

Right now, there are two places of birth in the article: Nizny Novgorod (or something like that...) and Gorky. -Atavi 19:42, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh...!

"Between 1932 and 1990 the Russian city Nizhny Novgorod was named Gorky"

-Atavi 19:45, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Origin

His name sounds like Georgian origin. Is that true? iyigun 22:10, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

It's a Jewish surname. 58.168.37.204 08:59, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

70

Happy birthday, Vladimir Ashkenazy! :D —  $PЯINGrαgђ  16:44, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Central Music School

Am I right in thinking that the "Central Music School" mentioned is part of the Moscow Conservatory? As a non-expert in the subject I initially read it as saying he'd been to two separate institutions, but the absence of a link to CMS caught my eye. fontles (talk) 09:54, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Jewish?

A discussion has arisen elsewhere as to whether Ashkenazy can properly be classified as Jewish, and as a result the Jewish-related categories have been deleted.[1] Indeed his father was Jewish, his mother was a non-Jewish Russian, and in interviews he seems to be saying he does not identify as Jewish.[2] Under the circumstances, and given our deference to living people, it would not seem appropriate to categorize him as Jewish. - Wikidemon (talk) 08:04, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

You may have a point, but let's agree that anybody would be hard pressed not to consider Jewish a man whose surname is Davidovich Ashkenazy... MUSIKVEREIN (talk) 14:09, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

If you are making the encyclopedia useful for readers you should restore Vladimir Ashkenazy to "Jewish" Categories.

"The following is a list of Jewish entertainers from the disciplines, of the past and the present. (With today's recording technology many times they merge). It is not complete but it shows the preponderance of Superb Jewish talents that are part and parcel to media exposure." On the list is Vladimir Ashkenazy. I found many more like that.

"But Hurok was in a good mood that January morning, swathed in a large brown fur coat with a Russian fur hat on his head, his cane tapping the grounding front of him. The night before, Vladimir Ashkenazy, the famous young pianist, had performed at Carnegie Hall. The son of a Jewish father who had defected to England in the early 1960s, Ashkenazy had protested on behalf of Soviet Jews and had elicited a JDL promise not to disrupt the evening with bottles of ammonia or scurrying mice. This is a source that seems to suggest that Vladimir Ashkenazy is Jewish, though admittedly it doesn't say that explicitly.

"By the 1950s the relatively few middle-class interwar Jewish German immigrants were being steadily assimilated: overall Jewish numbers in Britain reached a peak in the 1950s and then began to decline as their distinct identity faded. The advent of refugees from Communism—the Russian pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy in 1963, for example—was insufficient to prevent the self-consciously Jewish hard core by the 1970s from aging and waning in number; by then there were probably not more than about 250,000." That source is indicating that Vladimir Ashkenazi is a Jew.

He does not say that he is not Jewish, and he does not say that he "...does not identify as Jewish". He says "I never felt Jewish." You are construing that statement as a pointed statement. It is not. He does not dwell or elaborate on it. He is not saying that he is not a Jew. He is saying that identity is not a big part of his life, and that is entirely consistent with a Jew being secular. We should not be misconstruing casual statements or blowing them out of proportion. As a secular Jew he belongs in Category:Jewish classical musicians, and Category:Jewish classical pianists, which he was just removed from. All sources that I've seen categorize him as Jewish. We would do the reader a disservice by perversely omitting him from our Categories of Jews. Bus stop (talk) 15:01, 17 March 2011 (UTC)