Violinist finishes Jewish father's Brahms concerto performance, 82 years after Nazis stopped it

Violinist Eugene Drucker played a Brahms concerto 83 years after the Nazis broke up his father's performance
(Image credit: Facebook/EmersonStringQuartet)

In 1933, in Cologne, Germany, a young violin virtuoso named Ernest Drucker played the first movement of the Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, then was escorted off the stage by Nazi officials who objected to Jewish musicians playing before non-Jewish audiences. Drucker then became a founding member of an all-Jewish arts collective, Judischer Kulturbund, whose complicated legacy was commemorated in Raanana, Israel, last weekend.

On Sunday night, Drucker's son, Eugene Drucker, played the complete Brahms concert with the Raanana Symphonette Orchestra. "I think he would feel a sense of completion," Eugene Drucker, 63, said of his father, who died in 1993. "I think in some ways many aspects of my career served that purpose for him." Eugene Drucker is a founding member of the Grammy-winning Emerson String Quartet.

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.