Features
Daniel Raiskin, music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, discusses his life – from his boyhood in Soviet Russia to his coming to Winnipeg and his admiration for the Jewish community here
By BERNIE BELLAN Daniel Raiskin has been the music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra since 2018. This paper has been remiss not to have interviewed Raiskin until now, although to be fair to ourselves, he is an extremely busy fellow,
so finding a time when he could sit down and talk about his career, what life was like growing up in a Jewish family in Soviet Russia, and how he feels about spending a good part of his time in Winnipeg, was not easily arranged.
But then Covid-19 suddenly took over everyone’s lives – no matter who they are or where they live and, without much planning required, we were able to arrange to speak with Raiskin from his Amsterdam home.
At the outset of our conversation, which was conducted via WhatsAapp on Friday, April 3, Raiskin explained he’s “lived in Amsterdam for 30 years.” While he travels the world serving as guest conductor for many different orchestras, he “shares his time between Winnipeg and Amsterdam. My home is both in Amsterdam and Winnipeg,” he said.
I asked him, since he’s lived in The Netherlands for so many years whether he holds Dutch citizenship? Raiskin answered that he’s been a Dutch citizen for 26 years, although he still “has a Russian passport, too.”
At the present time Raiskin is also resigned, like the rest of us, to remaining in his Amsterdam home with his wife and two children (a son, 21, and a daughter, 16) for the foreseeable future..
“I was actually caught here between two projects – both of which were in Winnipeg,” Raiskin explained. “I was supposed to return to Winnipeg to spend 10 days there, but then things began to get really cloudy and we decided it doesn’t make any sense for me to fly into Winnipeg and get stuck there without my family, so I decided to stay here.”
We discussed how The Netherlands had taken a relatively hands-off approach to the Coronavirus to begin with, but as the danger has become more apparent, the liberal attitudes that most Dutch have in being uncomfortable with seeing their liberties restricted have begun to dissipate.
“People here are used to going to parks and to the seaside, but I’m afraid that on Monday (April 6) the lockdown is going to be announced,” Raiskin observed (on April 3).
Before we began to talk about Raiskin’s musical career, I said to him that I wanted “to take him back to his childhood in St. Petersburg.” I remarked to him that when I was a student in Israel (a very long time ago – 1974-75 to be exact). I became friends with a girl from St. Petersburg, who bragged to me that people from St. Petersburg were so much more sophisticated than Israelis, also that St. Petersburg had “the best ice cream in the world.”
I asked Raiskin whether the part about the ice cream was true.
“Yes, that ‘s very true,” he responded – “at least judging from my kids’ reaction any time we go to St. Petersburg, they say ‘this is really the best tasting ice cream.’ “
I wondered whether Raiskin was a musical prodigy as a child.
“I was not a prodigy at all,” he said. “I took up the violin when I was six – and I didn’t ‘take it up’. I was given it. It’s an old joke that with the wave of Russian Jewish immigration to Israel every second Russian landing in Israel at Ben Gurion Airport had a violin in his or her hands. Those that did not were piano players.”
“I was born into a Jewish family where music played a very important role,” Raiskin explained.
“My father is one of the foremost Russian musicologists (who is also a now retired physicist, Raiskin noted). One of the first sounds I heard when I was born was my brother (who tragically died at a the age of 34) practising his cello. By the time I was six – I like to joke my mother was so tired of carrying my brother’s cello around, she opted for something smaller for me: a violin.”
By the way, both Rasikin’s parents are alive and still living in St. Petersburg, he told me. His father’s first love was always music, Raiskin noted, but as part of the generation that grew up in the Soviet Union following World War II, it was unrealistic for anyone to make a career of music, he explained.
“He was teaching physics at a university in St. Petersburg when he was 35, but he graduated from a music conservatory when he was 40. That goes to show how important music was to him,” Raiskin observed.
“My mother stopped working a year ago (when she was 82),” Raiskin said. “She was a mathematician and a software programmer.”
I asked Raiskin whether his “parents ever endured any discrimination because they were Jewish that you can speak of? ” I added that “I didn’t want to seem naive by asking the question (since anyone who was following the fight of “refuseniks” in Russia attempting to leave Russia at the time that Raiskin was growing up would have known that anti-Semitism was rampant in that country.
” We lived in a country with a great rate of anti-Semitism,’ Raiskin answered. “My parents and my brother and me and friends all around us were all subject to state-sponsored anti-Semitism. At some point my family had also made the decision to leave (Russia), but it was too late. The Afghanistan war had broken out and everything was hermetically sealed. We got stuck.”
At that point I said to Raiskin that I wanted to talk about what it was like growing up as a young Jewish boy in Russia at that time – and how much love of music was inculcated into his and his peers’ lives.
“It was like – any given picture of Chagall has a violin in it,” Raiskin observed. “It’s part of the Jewish heritage and DNA; this whole ‘3,000 years of endurance’. Music was one of the things that kept us from getting alienated.”
At the same time though, Raiskin said that “music was not something that I particularly wanted to do. I wanted to play football and ice hockey with my mates outside. As a kid you don’t want to spend hours practising and doing scales for hours, looking out the window of your seventh-floor apartment while other kids are playing outside. I wanted to be more like them.”
“It’s very often a mistake to think that it’s the child who makes the decision at age six or seven to become a musician. Some kids are so incredibly gifted they show a unique talent at such a young age, there’s nothing else they want to do. I definitely don’t want to give the impression that I was one of those kids. I was pretty much normal and not very well behaved; I was pretty naughty.
“It was only later that I developed a real taste for music – and worked hard to become something.”
To that point we hadn’t discussed Raiskin’s particular musical interests. I noted that I had read in various articles and interviews that his favourite composer was Gustav Mahler (who was also Jewish, by the way). I wondered when Raiskin first became interested in Mahler’s music?
“You know, in fact, Mahler was not a composer whose music was very often played in my years in the Soviet Union,” Raiskin explained. “The performances of Mahler were always a great event,” but it was only one or two of his symphonies that were ever played, he noted.
“It was only with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first Western orchestras that started to come on European tours that we really started to hear Mahler played. I’ll never forget the first time I heard Mahler’s Seventh Symphony played by the Pittsburgh Symphony…I think this was when it really hit me hard. This is the moment that I said to myself: ‘I’m going to conduct this once’…and I did, on many occasions…I try to conduct his music as often as I can.”
We skipped ahead to Raiskin’s first time coming to Winnipeg which, he said, was in 2015, as guest conductor of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. There were two more appearances as guest conductor of the WSO in 2017 before Raiskin was appointed as music director in 2018.
“It was a lengthy process,” he said, “but I am, in fact, already looking back on five years of being associated with Winnipeg. It’s not like it started in 2018.”
Raiskin also observed that “no matter how successful a relationship a music director has with an orchestra – it’s never a relationship for life. It’s just the nature of the profession. It’s a marriage for a time…It’s not the conductors who play the music; it’s the orchestras. It’s about 67 musicians who play. It’s very important – the mandate we get from the musicians …and at a certain point it’s time for the conductor to go.”
However, Raiskin wanted to make clear that this is not something he is thinking about now. With his second season cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he said that, |“more than ever our relationship and interdependency is being tested and I am confident we’ll get out if the crisis, whenever this might be, stronger than ever.“
Raiskin explained that, while he is contractually obligated to conduct the WSO for 12 weeks during the year, it is hugely important for any conductor to get out on the road as much as possible. He used the following analogy to illustrate his point: “A hockey player cannot perform at the highest level of his ability if he just plays home games. It’s also important how you perform outside.”
I noted at the outset of this article that, although Daniel Raiskin has been music director of the WSO for two years now, we still hadn’t interviewed him which, given that we’re a Jewish newspaper and he’s Jewish, is something that we should have done much earlier. But, since he’s now had time to get to know Winnipeg – and its Jewish community, much better, I asked him what his impression of our community was?
“I’m sure you’ve met Gail Asper,” I said (tongue in cheek; how could the music director of the WSO not have met one of the foremost supporters of the WSO – and arts in general in this city?)
“Yes, of course,” came Raiskin’s reply, “and many other people, like Laurel Malkin, and Michel Kay and Glenna Kay. You know, Winnipeg became a place where being Jewish for me suddenly started to matter in a very personal and positive way. Growing up in the Soviet Union was definitely not. I was once expelled from a music conservatory for visiting a synagogue – for the first time, just out of curiosity.
“And when you’re in a very cosmopolitan city like Amsterdam, with a very tragic history of Dutch Jews – one needs to acknowledge that there were 150,000 Dutch Jews before the Second World War, and only 15,000 survived – so, for me, connecting to the Jewish community here…like the first Rosh Hashanah dinner I ever attended was…in Winnipeg! Because some friends just took me and my wife and said: ‘Come’. I really feel that it matters in a very positive way that I’m Jewish and I can connect to many people in Winnipeg and many in our audiences are Jewish.”
“I feel more Jewish than ever since coming to Winnipeg,” Raiskin suggested. “Jewish music is so important to me. One of the first things I recorded as a musician – as an instrumentalist, was a complete edition of music for viola and piano by Ernst Bloch, the foremost Jewish composer.”
At the end of our interview we discussed the devastating effect that the current crisis is having on people’s lives – in so many ways. Raiskin said that he was still fully involved in planning for the coming season of the WSO – and for the season after that as well.
In terms of assessing people’s hunger for music, he had this to say: “I think there will be a sense of growing hunger…our souls and our spirits are being so hollowed, there will be a growing need to fill in this gap – and this is where we can step in.”
Raiskin closed our interview with this observation: “I feel: today, more than ever, people feel how important arts and culture are to them. We suddenly realize that we use art to communicate with each other!“
Features
Every Rick Owens Sneaker You Should Know: A Complete Ranking
I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about Rick Owens sneakers. Comparing soles in browser tabs at 2 AM, reading forum debates about leather quality across seasons. But it’s turned me into the person friends text when they want to know which pair to buy first — so at least it’s a useful obsession.
The thing about Rick Owens eu clothing is that sneakers are secretly the gateway. People see the draped jackets on the runway and assume that’s where Rick starts. For most of us, it starts with a pair of shoes that looked unlike anything else on the shelf. Here’s my ranking of every major silhouette.
Ramones: The Gateway That Started It All
If Rick Owens sneakers have a mascot, it’s the Ramones. Named after the punk band — these are Rick’s take on the classic high-top. Chunky rubber sole, waxed cotton laces, a toe cap that sits more forward than a typical Converse shape. The most recognizable silhouette in the entire lineup.
I recommend these as a first purchase to everyone. Easiest to style, most forgiving in proportion, and they age beautifully. Mainline leather runs $700–900. DRKSHDW canvas sits closer to $400–500 and works just as well daily.
Geobaskets: The Statement Maker
Take the Ramones, crank the volume up, and you get Geobaskets. Higher shaft, thicker sole, more visual weight. The proportions are deliberately aggressive — they look like they belong in a sci-fi film, and that’s the point.
Geobaskets are not a beginner shoe. The shaft height changes how your pants sit. They demand confidence. But if you’ve already got a couple of pieces from the Rick Owens collection and want to commit harder — this is the move. Leather pairs run $1,000+ and they’re worth it to the right person.
Abstract: The Low-Top That Actually Works
Rick’s low-top game was uneven until the Abstracts landed. These take the Ramones DNA — the sole shape, the toe box — and drop it to ankle height. Clean, sharp, unexpectedly versatile. I wear mine with cropped trousers in summer and they look as intentional as any designer shoe I own.
The Abstract solved a real problem: what do you wear when it’s too hot for Geobaskets but you still want that Rick silhouette? This. Browse the EU store during warmer months and you’ll see these sell fast.
Megalaced Runner: Where Rick Meets Athletic
When Rick started putting out runner-style sneakers, purists lost their minds. But the Megalaced Runner works because it doesn’t pretend to be a performance shoe. It takes the runner shape and twists it — exaggerated sole, dramatic lacing, materials that belong on a runway, not a track. The pick for someone who lives in sneakers but wants to graduate beyond Nike into something with more design weight.
Fogachine: The Platform Statement
The Fogachine is for people who’ve seen every other Rick sneaker and thought — “not enough.” The stacked platform sole is massive, borderline architectural. Closer to wearable sculpture than traditional footwear. I’ve tried them on and they’re surprisingly comfortable, but they require a very specific wardrobe commitment. If your closet is already deep into Rick Owens, they’re a natural endpoint.
Sizing and Mainline vs DRKSHDW
Rick Owens sneakers run about a full size large. A US 10 in Nike translates to roughly a 43 in Rick, maybe 42 depending on the model. Ramones and Geobaskets are the most generous. If you’re ordering from the official Rick Owens EU site, their size charts are reliable.
Every model comes in two tiers. Mainline is premium leather, made in Italy. DRKSHDW is the diffusion line — canvas, waxed cotton, denim — same silhouette, roughly half the cost. What nobody tells beginners: DRKSHDW is not a downgrade. Canvas Ramones develop a worn-in character that leather doesn’t replicate. If you shop Rick Owens online and see DRKSHDW — you’re not settling, you’re choosing.
Which One Should You Buy First?
Ramones. Always Ramones. DRKSHDW to start smart, mainline leather to start with a grail. Every other model builds on what the Ramones established. Once you own a pair, everything else in the Rick Owens EU clothing catalog makes more sense.
After that, the path is personal. Geobaskets for drama. Abstracts for warm weather. Megalaced Runners if you live in sneakers. Fogachines if you want to tower. Once you put on your first pair, regular sneakers start looking flat — that’s what twenty years of perfecting a sole shape does.
Features
Big Numbers, Small Print: Why Simpler Promotions Often Deliver More
Few things catch the eye more than a giant red sign advertising a 50% discount on a popular product. Just seeing it makes shoppers feel they’ve struck gold. However, experienced shoppers aren’t easily convinced, having seen many impressive offers shrink to next to nothing by the time they reach the checkout. The headline-grabbing number is rarely the full story.
Most of the gap between the advertised saving and the one found at the till comes down to the small print. Conditions, thresholds and expiry dates can all chip away at the discount. That’s why a modest promotion can sometimes offer better value for money, even if it doesn’t look as appealing on the poster.
Why Bigger Doesn’t Always Mean Better
Large discounts, cashback promises and bonus rewards are expressly designed to stand out. They are bright, bold and hard to ignore. Still, the advertised value doesn’t always translate into the same real-world benefit. A promotion is only worth what the customer can use, and the conditions behind it, not the headline figure, determine that.
Imagine two clothing stores on the same floor of a mall. One is offering a 30% discount on purchases over $200. The other offers 10% off everything with no underlying conditions. A shopper looking for a $60 pair of jeans will get a guaranteed $6 off at the second store, and nothing at the first. In this case, the smaller offer gives the customer greater value.
This doesn’t mean a smaller promotion is always best. A person spending $300 in a shop will get the better savings at the first store. When studying competing offers, the real question is which deal best fits the customer’s spending intent in that moment.
The Fine Print Behind Everyday Offers
Conditions are a part of modern-day promotions. Common conditions include minimum spending levels, limits on qualifying products and specific redemption windows. Others tie rewards to loyalty program membership or require extra steps before the reward unlocks.
Reward schemes are a clear example. A coffee chain might award loyalty points for every order, which customers can redeem for a free coffee on a future visit. A grocery store might add store credit onto a shopper’s loyalty card but tie it to a 30-day validity period. Both offers hold genuine value, but only if customers return.
Neither offer is unreasonable, as businesses need to manage costs while encouraging customers to return. But sometimes, having the extra condition makes customers pause and question what an offer is really worth.
Where Simpler Rewards Pull Ahead
When a promotion has few conditions, it holds an advantage over others because it is easy to understand. A straightforward discount or a free item with no extra steps before redemption leaves little room for confusion. Shoppers know what they are getting, and the reward’s value is clear.
This differs from an offer that requires shoppers to make two separate purchases, complete a mail-in form and then wait six weeks for a rebate cheque. The rebate reward might be bigger, but many people never get far enough to claim it because the steps are too confusing or too long-winded. When the offer isn’t claimed, the advertised value means nothing.
The same distinction is visible across digital entertainment. An online casino offering free spins, for example, often includes clauses such as wagering requirements. This means that any winnings that come from these free spins can only be withdrawn once their total value has been bet through a set number of times. Yet some casinos understand that an offer with no wagering requirements is a good promotion that carries real weight among players.
Even so, these promotions are often not free of all conditions. Many casino offers are restricted by caps on winnings, short validity periods and a limit on which games can be played.
Same Principle, Different Industries
Travel companies also follow a similar promotional pattern. A cheap city break in Vancouver or a discounted cottage stay may appear only on certain dates or may include a non-refundable clause. Blackout periods are also common, meaning the discount can’t be used during busy times.
Subscription services often go down a slightly different route, with a low introductory price that increases after a few months. Many tie the reduced price to contract length, meaning a longer contract comes with a lower introductory price. Bundling services is another way to reduce prices. However, the value only exists when the customer actually uses all of the services they buy.
Video games work similarly, with in-game currency and other bonuses available to players in exchange for a set number of daily logins or for completing certain challenges within the game. While the industries vary, the underlying concept remains consistent. Rewards are available, but the value depends on what the customer needs to do to get them.
Why Businesses Build Complicated Offers
Consumers often blame companies and come to the belief that promotions are designed to trip shoppers up. However, the truth is more practical.
Promotions also need to benefit the business. Minimum spend thresholds and loyalty point accrual encourage customers to fill their baskets before checkout or give them a reason to return. Similarly, limited-time offers prompt immediate action by creating a sense of urgency. These are normal marketing tactics, and when implemented correctly, they deliver real benefits to both parties.
When a program is well designed, customers can earn consistent rewards over time rather than relying on a large upfront discount. If the business can balance its offers with clear explanations of the conditions behind them, customers are far less likely to be caught out.
How to Weigh Up an Offer Beyond the Headline
A simple way to judge a promotion’s value is to ask a few basic questions. What is the advertised saving or reward? Does it have any additional spending requirements to unlock? Are there any time limits for claiming the reward? And does the shopper meet the eligibility requirements in the first place?
Then it’s important to look at what the offer actually is and whether it is something that will be used. An offer that pushes a customer to buy something they never normally buy doesn’t really represent a saving.
An offer on a music streaming service is only useful for someone who listens to music. For someone who doesn’t even listen to music, the deal has no value, even at a reduced cost.
Reading Past the Headline
Big discounts and rewards can be highly beneficial, but only when customers understand the difference between the advertised value and what they’ll actually receive. A 30% discount that goes unused is worth nothing, while a 10% discount that applies to every purchase can offer real savings.
Although simple promotions tend to offer greater clarity surrounding conditions, more complex promotions can still be beneficial, provided they align with the customer’s existing plans or spending habits. However good the offer may seem, it is essential to weigh the value against the cost of obtaining it.
Features
Arabs in the coalition – yes or no?
By MARTY GREEN The Jewish People are facing a moment of decision today which will define who we are for generations to come. Should we, or should we not, form a coalition government with the Arab parties?
There was a moment in our recent history where we faced a parallel question…or, if not in our actual history, at least in the historical narrative which defines us. I am talking about Leon Uris’s masterwork, “Exodus”. I read it as a teenager, and I can’t imagine that there are many Jews my age whose worldview was not fundamentally influenced by that story.
Our protagonist, Ari Ben Canaan, grew up close to the Arab village of Abu Yesha, where he became close friends with the mukhtar‘s son, Taha. Now, twenty years later, on the eve of the War of Independence, Taha’s father is gone and the young man is now the village leader. Arab irregulars have made themselves at home in the village, and are preparing there for the coming assault on Gan Dafna. Ari goes to see his old friend to ask for cooperation. (I am paraphrasing here:)
“You said we would always be friends.”|
“Times have changed. I am an Arab.”
“You are first of all a human being.”
“What do you expect me to do?”
“If you don’t rein in the irregulars we will have to attack Abu Yesha.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“What do you expect me to do?”
The two are at an impasse. Then Taha speaks: “You said we were brothers, didn’t you? Well, if that is true, if you really meant it, then give me Jordana. Yes, give me your sister to be my wife; to bear my children…”
Ari’s fist shot out, sending Taha sprawling to a corner. He leaps up and instinctively grabs his knife and raises it towards Ari…
Now, let us pause in the telling, because I remember how I felt when I read this as a teenager. And I feel very differently when I read it today. Who was in the wrong? Was Taha in the wrong for demanding Jordana as a sign of brotherhood? Or was Ari wrong for responding with outrage?
I am all but certain that the answer to those questions is glaringly obvious to everyone who is reading here. And I am further all but certain that half of you choose Answer A and half of you choose Answer B.
Because that is exactly how the Jewish People appear to be divided on the question of whether or not to form a coaltion with the Arab parties who hold the balance of power. And the decision we make will have consequences just as far-reaching as the (fictional) decision made in the spur of the moment 80 years ago in the village of Abu Yesha.
Ari stood there dumbfounded by what he had done, unable to find the words to explain. But Taha understood perfectly well.
“Never mind”, he spoke. “You’ve told me everything I need to know. Now get out of my house, zhid!”
(It happens that the only copy of Exodus in my possession is an old samizdat version from the Soviet Union, kindly given to me many years ago by an elderly Russian immigrant. I couldn’t resist the chance to offer Taha’s final words using that particularly expressive insult from the Russian original. It also explains why my quoted passages are inexact, having passed from English to Russian and back again.)
And what is my point with all of this? It is the question of whether we should offer the Arab parties a place in the coalition government. From reading the online discussions, it is quite clear to me that we are just as divided on this question as we are on the Exodus question…should we or shouldn’t we. And each opposing side is equally vehement in the certainty that they are right.
What I can tell you for sure, is that if we make the choice which I fear, it will be just as it was between Ari and Taha. |If we manage to cobble together a coalition of parties that have nothing in common except a determination to keep 20% of our population out of the seats of power, we will have told the Arabs everything they need to know. I can only hope against hope that Eisenkot has the courage to do the right thing.
Ed. note: If you don’t remember this scene from the movie, that’s because it was only in the book.
