From Berezna and Krupa to Boston: The Beggelman and Karas Families and Their Roots

Washington, DC (October 2012)

Yale Wolf Richmond, who was a Cultural Attache at the US embassy in Moscow in late 1960s, author of many books. Chapter 19 and other chapters in the whole book are very moving stories about families from Kelmentsy, Brichany, Lipkany, Khotin uezd and other places. 

The String Quartet No. 2 was composed in about five weeks in the autumn of 1942 in the little town of Nalchik, in the Kabardino-Balkaria Autonomous Republic, located in the foothills of the northern Caucasus mountains between the Black and Caspian Seas. During the summer of 1942, following the demise of the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin, as the German Army was overrunning Russia, the Soviet government evacuated a group of its then favored musicians, actors, artists and professors from Moscow to the safety of this little known region.

Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev - Милий Алексеевич Балакирев (January 2, 1837 – May 29, 1910)

Islamey: an Oriental Fantasy is a fantasy for piano by Russian composer Mily Balakirev, written in September 1869.

Balakirev, a committed nationalist whose music was influenced by Russian traditions, was inspired to write the piece after a trip to the Caucasus, as he relates in a letter:

A Circassian Chief
Oil on canvas 76.8 x 64.1 cm
Signed and dated at lower right: Willm. Allan Pinx. 1843

Sir William Allan began his career as an apprentice to a carriage painter though he was soon accepted to the Royal Academy of Edinburgh. There he befriended David Wilkie and the engraver John Burnet; all would become important artistic figures.