Draft:Ruth Mense

Ruth Mense (Hebrew: רות מנזה) (February 4, 1933, Tel Aviv, Mandate Palestine – June 12, 1988, Tel Aviv, Israel) was an Israeli classical concert pianist and accompanist.

Early life and education


Mense was born in Tel Aviv, Mandate Palestine. Her mother was a housewife born in Poland and her father was an educated government clerk, born in Austro-Hungarian Empire. She was the 3rd of five children. Her mother was determined that all her children would become professional musicians; even though she was not musical at all, she forced them to learn to play at least two musical instruments and practice for hours every day in their small, two-room apartment.

Ruth started playing the piano at age 5 with Paula Zik Blumbreg. When she played for professor Leo Kestenberg, the renowned piano teacher, he was so impressed with the little girl that he decided to take her on as his student, even though the family had no money to pay for her lessons. She later studied with Frank Pelleg. During this time, she also started playing the oboe, studying under Eliyahu Thorner.

As Ruth and her siblings continued to develop as musicians and perform in concerts, they became known as "The Mense musical family" (see bellow). Ruth played the oboe at the Israeli Opera at the age of 16.

Between 1951-1953 Ruth served in the IDF's radio station, Galei Tzahal as a musical editor. She performed as a soloist, accompanist and as a member of chamber ensembles in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and in radio broadcasts. She has also performed several times as a soloist with the Kol Israel Orchestra (which later became the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra).

In 1953, she moved to the USA to pursue her academic studies. She received a Diploma in Piano at the Juilliard School of Music in 1957, where she held a scholarship from 1954 to 1957. She was a pupil of the distinguished pianist and teacher, Eduard Steuermann, during this time. At Juilliard, she accompanied in the voice and instrumental studios of several faculty members, including Mack Harrell, Mme. Lotte Leonard and Mme. Marion Freschl of the voice department; and Leonard Rose, cello, Bernard Greenhouse, cello, and Willian Primrose, viola. During the summers of 1955 and 1956, Ruth was staff accompanist for the Aspen Music Festival and School, Aspen, Colorado, accompanying in the studios of Szymon Goldberg, Adele Addison, Leslie Chabay and others. She has been engaged as a pianist for the 1957 Antioch Shakespeare-under-the-Stars Festival opera theater and chamber music concerts at Toledo and Yellow Springs, Ohio.

After graduating from Juilliard, Mense hoped to return to Israel with a grand piano, her lifelong dream, but had no money. A benefit concert was organized for her, in which a sum of $2000 was collected for the purchase of the piano. When Ruth went to one of the established piano stores to buy the piano, she decided to buy a Baldwin piano, together with its bench, that had belonged to Leonard Bernstein and was exclusively used by him for one year. At that time, she couldn't imagine that later on in her life, she would become Bernstein's colleague and close friend.

1957-1962
After Juilliard, Mense became widely recognized as a concert accompanist, and for her appearances with chamber music ensembles in the United States. She has accompanied many well-known artists in public concerts, including Reginald Kell, clarinet, Joseph Eger, french horn, Walter Trampler, viola, Roman Totenberg, violin, and Claus Adam, cello. In 1957 she returned to Israel and immediately became a busy, sought-after pianist, playing in chamber and orchestral concerts and recitals, recordings for radio and television, and even playing oboe in the theater. While playing in a historical production of Kurt Weill's Cry, the Beloved Country at Habima National theater in Tel Aviv, she met her husband, actor Albert Cohen, who appeared in the musical. They got married 2 years later. Some of the musicians she accompanied in those years were: violinists Isaac Stern, Zwi Zeitlin, Alexander Tal; violists Lina Lama, Daniel Benyamini; cellists Uzi Wiesel, Toby Saks, Zvi Harel, Yaacov Mense, Emil Weinstein; flutists Uri Toeplitz, Uri Shoham; oboist Eliyahu Thorner; clarinetist Yona Ettlinger; bassoonist Mordechai Rechtman; the New Israeli Quartet and the Tel Aviv Wind Quintet. As a soloist she performed with the Kol Israel Orchestra in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1. During those years she also started performing with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

1963-1984
In 1963, famed conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein arrived in Israel to conduct the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in performances of the world premiere of his 3rd Symphony, "Kaddish". Mense was the pianist in the piece as well as the coach who worked with the mezzo-soprano soloist, Jennie Tourel, and the narrator, actress Hanna Rovina. 75-years-old Rovina had a very hard time learning Bernstein's precise musical instructions, and Bernstein contemplated replacing her. Mense told him to "give her 1 hour with Rovina" to try and teach her. With her unique combination of superb musicianship and personal charm, Mense has succeeded in teaching Rovina the part. Thanks to this and other similar incidents, Bernstein learned to appreciate Mense's talent and invited her to assist with the rehearsals of his symphony in New York, with his other concerts in Europe and the US and with all the recordings of the piece. In Boston, she assisted conductor Charles Munch in preparations of the materials, and especially in working with the soloists. From Boston she went to New York and worked with Bernstein himself and with Abraham Kaplan, the chorus conductor. After the concerts ended, Bernstein asked Mense to prepare, with Kaplan, the symphony's piano score, which was published by Schirmer. Bernstein and Mense became close friends, and their friendship and professional collaboration lasted until Mense's final days.

In 1968, Mense introduced conductor Daniel Oren, then 13 years old, to Bernstein, who chose him to perform the boy solo part in Chichester Psalms.

Mense has been a member of the Israel Chamber Orchestra under conductor Gary Bertini, and has performed with the orchestra in concerts in Israel and abroad. She also performed under Bertini with his choir, Rinat (Israel Chamber Choir). She also performed with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and was the pianist for the Toscanini Seminar and for the Pablo Casals International Cello Competition, and worked as vocal coach for many vocal and choral works at the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and elsewhere. She recorded with the Israel Philharmonic, under Lorin Maazel, Stravinsky's Petrushka for Decca, and, under Leonard Bernstein, his suite Fancy Free for Deutsche Grammophon. As her career flourished, Mense has become renowned internationally as a world-class accompanist, admired for her musicianship, musicality and unmatched prima-vista abilities, and the world's best and most popular soloists seeked her collaboration as an accompanist. Among those artists who Mense regularly accompanied, in recitals, chamber and symphonic concerts, were violinists Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Silvia Marcovici, Gil Shaham, Henryk Szeryng, Ivry Gitlis, Ruggiero Ricci, Iona Brown, Yehonatan Berick, Guy Braunstein, Roi Shiloah, Hagai Shaham, Miriam Fried, Uri Pianka and many more; cellists Yo Yo ma, Lynn Harel and her brother Yaacov Mense; singers Christa Ludwig, Luciano Pavarotti, Monserat Caballé, Shirley Verrett, Evelyn Lear, Nicola Tagger, Raffaele Arié, Netanyah Dovrat, Rema Samsonov, Gila Yaron, Mira Zakai, Roslyn Barak, Miriam Laron, Mordechai Ben-Shachar, Bibiana Goldenthal, Ephraim Biran and many more; flutists Jean-Pierre Rampal, Er'ella Talmi; clarinetists Eli Eban, Richard Lesser, Sharon Kam and others; oboist Smadar Shazar; french hornists Yaakov Mishori, Meir Rimon; trombonist Ray Parnes; trumpeter Ilan Eshed; percussionists Alon Bor, Chen Zimbalista; tubist Shmuel Hershko; bassists Talia Kling (her sister) and Teddy Kling (her brother-in-law); violist Mira Mense (her nephew); conductors Zubin Mehta, Yoav Talmi, Arieh Vardi, Shalom Ronley-Riklis and many more.

Mense became renowned for her ability to sight-read any piece of music, no matter how complex it was or if it was a new, original piece never before played; for that reason, contemporary composers (such as Zvi Avni, André Hajdu, Yossi Mar-Chaim and more) seeked Mense's assistance when they wrote new pieces by asking her to play their pieces for them from the scores they wrote. She also participated in numerous premiere recordings of new pieces, both in recordings that came out as albums or for Israeli radio Kol Israel.

In March-April 1977, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra celebrated Leonard Bernstein's life and work with a series of symphonic and chamber performances as part of the Leonard Bernstein Festival. Mense performed in many concerts, notably a 4-hands concert with Bernstein himself, and the highlight of the festival - Bernstein's 2nd Symphony, The Age of Anxiety, in which Mense played the virtuosic piano solo part, with Lukas Foss conducting, a concert that has been broadcast live on Kol Israel. Mense's performance has received rave reviews.

In another solo performance, Mense performed Shotakovich's Concerto in C minor for Piano, Trumpet, and String Orchestra with the Haifa Symphony Orchestra.

Illness and death
In 1984 Mense discovered that she had the incurable illness Multiple sclerosis. Because MS disrupts the nervous system it affected her playing, but she didn't let it change her personal life and career and continued playing in concerts almost as usual. She kept her illness a secret and only told about it to her family and a very small number of her close friends, among them Bernstein, who was working at the time on his new piece Jubilee Games, commissioned by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in celebration of their 50th anniversary. Bernstein knew, from Mense, that because of her illness she sometimes had difficulties playing fluently with her right hand. For that reason, he wrote the piano part of Jubilee Games to be played almost entirely by the left hand only (Composer Noam Sheriff also wrote, at that time, a piano part especially for Mense, as part of his piece Mechaye Hamethim, also performed by the Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta conducting). Mense performed the world premiere of the piece with the Philharmonic under Bernstein's conducting, and enjoyed it immensely. When Bernstein returned in June 1988 to Tel Aviv to conduct the piece again for a recording for Deutsche Grammophon, Mense was so happy that she went to see Bernstein in his Tel Aviv Hilton hotel suite as soon as he landed. She met Bernstein there for 2 hours, and when she came back home, happy and optimistic, she bumped into the carpet as she entered and fell, breaking her hip. She was alone in the house, unable to move or call anyone, and only 30 minutes later, when her sister Talia arrived to visit her, she found her in pain and immediately called an ambulance, which took Mense to Beilinson hospital. Mense was operated on, but her dreams of recording with Bernstein, who visited her at the hospital after the operation, were shattered. Two weeks later, on June 12, 1988, when she was almost healed and ready to go home, a blood clot blocked blood from getting to her heart and she died, an immature death that surprised and shocked the music world and all who knew her. Mense's funeral was attended by almost 1000 people, and her family received hundreds of telegrams and phone calls from her colleagues, some of the world's greatest musicians, and friends, mourning her death.

On April 22, 1989, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra organized a concert in memory of Ruth Mense at the Tel Aviv Museum. Some of the orchestra's musicians played tributes to Mense, and the guest of honor was Leonard Bernstein, who arrived especially from New York to attend the concert. Bernstein has decided to dedicate the world premiere of his just-completed new piece Arias and Barcarolles to the memory of his dear friend Ruthie, and the premiere was given that night, following a heart-breaking eulogy given by Bernstein, in English and Hebrew, from the stage.

Family
Mense was born into a musical family, and has created another one with her husband, actor and singer Albert Cohen, with whom she has also worked sometimes, as pianist for his show Aley Shalechet (Yves Montand's songs), in the Cameri Theater production of Three Hotzmach in which she played and he starred, as his coach for his role as Sweeney todd in the Cameri Theater's production of Sweeney Todd, and more. Together they had 2 children: Ady, who is a film composer and a professor at Berklee College of Music; and Sharon, who is a dubbing director, translator and actor and owner of a recording studio. Mense's older and only brother Yaacov was a cellist who played in the New Israeli Quartet and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra; his daughter Mira plays viola in the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon Lezion; her older sister Rachel played contrabass; her daughter Amalia played piano and harpsichord and is a music therapist; her younger sister Talia played contrabass in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra; her husband Teddy was her student and later became the contrabass principal in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra; their son Nimrod also plays contrabass in the orchestra. Mense's youngest sister, Avishag, is the only sibling who didn't become a musician but an artist, because her mother died when she was only 9, before she could influence her to become one. Mense's son Sharon, who is also a saxophonist, once played as a guest musician in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and together with the other members of the Mense family there were 6 Mense family members playing in the same concert: Sharon, Ruth, Yaacov, Talia, Teddy and Shmuel Hershko, the orchestra's tuba player who was married to Yaacov's daughter Mira at the time.

Mense's children continue the Mense tradition. Apart from being musicians themselves, Ady is married to opera singer and voice teacher Bavat Marom, their son Lyle studies Music Composition at Tel Aviv University and their daughter Noot is a young pianist and opera singer. Sharon has 3 children: Lenny Cohen, his daughter from his marriage to Osnat Bukoftzer, and Gabriel, who is a young cellist, and Alma, who plays violin, from his relationship with cellist Chagit Glaser.