Talk:Emanuel Feuermann

Historical errors so obvious as make one doubt any of the 'facts' stated in the article.

The article states: "He moved for some time to Zürich, but happened to be in Vienna at the time of the Anschluss. Bronislaw Huberman helped Feuermann and his family escape to British Palestine. From there they moved to the United States in 1937."

This isn't possible. As everyone knows, the Anschluss occurred in 1938.

Are the rest of the statements in this article of similar quality? It seems a good-hearted article at first glance: competent, if perhaps, as others have remarked, over-effusive. However, mistakes this obvious shake one's faith in _anything_ such authors might write. While I don't see the necessity for over-referencing an article, that is only true when the article is arguably correct. What seems like overly burdensome requirements for referencing can really help out in a case like this, where the author is enthusiastic but doesn't seem to realize that every statement must actually be correct. Busterbarker2008 (talk) 22:43, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Unsourced Biography

With the exception of the cello section of the article, there are no sources for any of the statements. And some are incredibly bold:

(1) "considered by many major musicians to have been the foremost master of his chosen instrument of the 20th century" There's no doubt that Feuermann was one of the great cellists of the 20th century, but there were others, like Casals, Rostropovich, and Piatigorsky, to name three. Moreover, Feuermann sadly died very young, so he only lived during less than the first half of the 20th century. Early versions of the article just say "celebrated cellist."

(2) "Musicians such as Artur Rubinstein, Heifetz and Arturo Toscanini considered him the greatest cellist of all" This statement suffers from the same defect as #1.

(3) "Many believe that Feuermann's interpretation of Antonín Dvořák's Cello Concerto and his performance of Johannes Brahms's Double Concerto with Jascha Heifetz rank among the best ever." Same problem, not quite so bad - at least it allows room for other recordings being considered as good or better.

Mostly, though, the article has no sources for any of the biographical information, even for quotes. It also indulges in hyperbole rather than sticking to facts. It sounds to me like some of the creators and editors of this article were particularly fond of the subject. Certainly doesn't sound neutral. --Bbb23 (talk) 23:55, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Based on a gracious response by Atavi, I toned down just the very first sentence in the article and left the Evaluation section alone. I'm still unhappy with the quotes in the Evaluation section with no references or even attribution of the authors, but I feel better about the two first sentences now that Atavi has explained that they came from the Morreau book. WP doesn't appear to insist on references for dead people, only for the living. Although I understand the distinction, I'm in favor of references for everything.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:28, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Hello to Bbb23 and anyone else reading,

I'd like to begin in reference to your last remarks, Bbb23.

Wikipedia policy is especially strict about unreferenced (and unfavorable) information about living people, both because of the effect this can have on those people and because it would be ethically and legally libel/slander. I hinted of this in my message to Bbb23. Such text is to be removed on sight.

That said, WP does have a number of other policies, including two important ones, to which Bbb23 previously alluded: No original research and Neutral point of view. Adequately referencing all of the material, as Bbb23 has in good judgment suggested, is of course dictated by these two policies as well as that of verifiability.

Right now the evaluation section certainly violates all of them. It includes an assessment of Feuermann that amounts to adulation and virtually none of this is based on a verifiable reference. Also, emotionally charged text is generally frowned upon, since it can easily be argued it violates "Neutral point of view" (NPOV).

The two extracts regarding the evaluations a) by J.Klengel and b) by Rubinstein/Heifetz/Toscanini were written by me.

Both of them are the personal opinions of specific people, which is allowed if properly referenced and also if it is balanced by other statements.

Both of them are almost certainly from the book by Annette Morreau. However it is generally required that such statements refer to specific pages in their source, especially if it is a book. Unfortunately, right now I'm unable to provide page numbers.

I'd like to note that the assessment by Rubinstein (etc) was poorly phrased by me. It could only read, at best, as "the greatest cellist until their time" in order to capture the true meaning of anything the could have said. It probably should read "the greatest cellist of their time", but as I can't read the original text by Morreau, I can't really say and we are not able to edit quotations from other people, even if we think they are exaggeration or wrong. What we can do is offer balancing referenced comments or quotations by other people.

As for the rest of the evaluation section, most of it could probably be salvaged if properly referenced, but I doubt this will be possible without some hard digging by an editor or without the input of the original author of those excerpts.

However, the last paragraph, which says that "many" believe this or that, is probably not going to stand any chance of actually being salvaged. There is the practice in WP of asking "Who" the "many" are and waiting some time for someone to specify it. Usually though, when the text reads "many", it is impossible to name any single one of them.

In my original personal response to Bbb23, I more or less washed my hands about all of this. On the one hand, since I am almost retired, I didn't want to put much time on this. On the other hand, deleting text by others has always been hard for me. This is in the end quite indefensible on my part.

Right after posting this, I will make some edits to the article. I encourage any of you, but especially Bbb23 to be bold and make any other changes you deem necessary to make this article better and and improve its adherence to WP principles.

Atavi (talk) 19:37, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Follow-up: I have now found specific pages for some of the material in the article. I have added those. I have put up several citation notices. I noticed that some of the pre-existing material also comes from Morreau's book and I will try to add some more page numbers. I wasn't very persistent, but was unable to find any specific reference to the effect that Toscanini made a statement to the effect such that Feuermann is the greatest cellist I know. Therefore, I've removed that sentence from the article.Atavi (talk) 21:13, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I managed to find more specific citations that I expected.

A note I'd like to make is that the Casals quotation regaring Feuermann is very probably real. Unfortunately I have only managed to find forum or unsigned references to it. If this comment is indeed real, I guess it would be in a 1954 interview of Casals by José Maria Corredor, which was published in 1956 in the book "Conversations with Casals". I have been unable to find a web excerpt of that book or a reliable reference.

As of now, the evaluation section is still lopsided and work is needed on it to amend this. However, most of the claims have been traced back to a source. The rest of the text could in time be removed.

Bbb23, the quality of the article has already been greatly increased both as a direct of your efforts and an indirect result of your incitement.

Atavi (talk) 22:31, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I just removed the following text:

1. "On his American debut performance, the hall was packed with fellow cellists, who had come to hear something truly extraordinary.Following the performance a critic wrote, "Difficulties do not exist for Mr. Feuermann, even difficulties that would give celebrated virtuosi pause.": these two sentences were not referenced and moreover several other referenced sentences convey the same spirit. There is no reason why these should remain.

2."Many believe that Feuermann's interpretation of Antonín Dvořák's Cello Concerto and his performance of Johannes Brahms's Double Concerto with Jascha Heifetz rank among the best ever.": I doubt this will ever get cited and it is low value information anyway, even if it could.

I left in the only other completely unreferenced sentence "..this is murder...". I know it should probably be removed as well. However, I believe that a proper citation might turn up in a reasonable amount of time. In addition, even if the sentence in question could be dubious, its inclusion does little harm.

Atavi (talk) 17:24, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Nationality?

It's exceedingly difficult to reach any solid conclusions from the info in this article as to which nationality/ies can properly be assigned to Feuermann. There's no indication of his parent's nationality. His place of birth, which is nominally in Ukraine, was in fact located in a region that has belonged to a number of different countries at various times. I read the relevant sections of the Wiki article on Kolomyya, but that didn't help to resolve the question. And although he ultimately emigrated to the United States, it's extremely unlikely that he had acquired US citizenship before his death. (If I'm not mistaken, there's a 5-year minimum residency requirement.) So I've removed both of the categories that asserted US nationality. If anybody has reliable sourced information pertaining to these issues, please reply here and/or add such info to the article. (And please be kind enough to leave a short note on my talk page.) Thanks! Cgingold (talk) 14:00, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

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