In Wednesday’s (4/10) Boston Globe, Jeremy Eichler writes, “ ‘The highest ability a performer can have is to give the constant impression that he is improvising,’ the conductor and violinist Michel Sasson once told the Globe. His life and career in music reflected a kindred gift for creativity in the face of conventional expectations. As a young boy growing up in Egypt in a family of French and Turkish descent, Mr. Sasson learned the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto by ear from an old recording by Yehudi Menuhin and then performed it with the Cairo Symphony. He was 8 years old. Decades later, even after Mr. Sasson in 1958 won a spot in the second violin section of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a post that would have sated the career ambitions of many violinists, he continued improvising. … [The Newton Symphony] gave its inaugural concert in 1965, with Mr. Sasson as its cofounder and first conductor. Mr. Sasson, a Brookline resident, died of a stroke March 26 in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He was 77. … Mr. Sasson was ¬appointed as music director of the Boston Ballet (1975-1980), which led to guest conducting dates with the American Ballet Theatre and to a post with La Scala Ballet of Milan.”
Posted April 10, 2013
