Reviews
BOOKS
The Fractured Self: Selected German Letters of the Australian-born Violinist Alma Moodie, 1918–1943 Ed. Kay Dreyfus
666PP ISBN 9781800790216 PETER LANG VERLAG £55.60
This is the third time Australian academic Kay Dreyfus has sought to interest us in her compatriot, the German-based violinist Alma Moodie (1898–1943). I reviewed the second book, Bluebeard’s Bride, in 2014. The new volume is more ambitious: a selection of 268 letters which Moodie wrote mainly to the men in her life, including 136 of 200 she sent to the well-known Winterthur businessman, amateur clarinettist and patron Werner Reinhart.
With Reinhart she is more unbridled than with anyone else. She uses various pet names for him and is very candid, often being highly critical of such colleagues as the conductor Hermann Scherchen. Whether the intimacy with Reinhart had a sexual element is not known, but he gave her two violins, a Gofriller and a ‘del Gesù’.
Alma Moodie with Carl Flesch
TULLY POTTER COLLECTION
How important was she? A favourite pupil of Flesch, she was a leading player in the German context yet left no recordings. She counted Kreisler and Rilke among her friends. She appeared with top orchestras and conductors and had a reputation for playing new music, although only Krenek – with whom she had a fling – Stravinsky, Wellesz, Bartók and Szymanowski were progressive.