Barnabas Kelemen is a
Hungarian violinist and teacher born (in Budapest) on June 12, 1978. He is known for having won the prestigious
Indianapolis Violin Competition in 2002.
His repertoire is very extensive and includes Schumann’s concerto and
Bruch’s second concerto which are seldom heard live. Kelemen also plays a great deal of
contemporary music. On May 2, 2013, he
premiered (in New York’s Carnegie Hall) a long lost concerto by Mihaly Nador,
composed in 1903 (and revised in 1941-42) but never performed. Reviewers of the performance compared Kelemen
to Heifetz. The audience applauded after
each movement of the concerto, which is not typical, especially in the case of
more modern works. Kelemen began
studying violin at age six with Valeria Baranyai. He entered the Franz Liszt Academy at age 11
and studied with Eszter Perenyi. He
graduated in 2001. He was 23 years
old. By then, he had already won first
prize in the Mozart Violin Competition in Salzburg (1999.) Three years after winning the Indianapolis
competition, he began teaching (in 2005) at the same school from which he
graduated. In 2010, he founded (with his
violinist wife Katalin Kokas) the Kelemen Quartet. (Among violinists who married other concert
violinists are Olga Kaler, Adele Anthony, Marina Markov, Ruth Posselt, and
Elizabeth Gilels.) The Kelemen Quartet
has also received top prizes at chamber music competitions. In addition, several of Kelemen’s recordings
have also received awards from music periodicals and critics. Interestingly, except for the cellist, the
Kelemen Quartet players sometimes switch places with each other – alternating
between first violin, second violin, and viola.
Kelemen has taken conducting lessons from Leif Segerstam and has already
conducted a few concerts in Europe. He
often appears in the dual role of soloist-conductor with chamber orchestras. Needless to say, Kelemen has toured the world
several times (and continues to do so) as a soloist and with the quartet. In 2014, he began teaching at the Advanced
School for Music and Dance in Cologne, Germany.
Here is a YouTube video of his playing a well-known Mozart sonata. It shows how different his temperament and
style are from a more conventional concert violinist but you be the judge. After winning the Indianapolis competition,
Kelemen played the 1683 Stradivarius (Martinelli Stradivarius) that all
Indianapolis competition winners get to use for four years. (The Martinelli was “restored” in 2014 and is
currently being played by Jinjoo Cho)
Kelemen is currently playing a Guarneri (del Gesu) constructed in 1742.
Jose Luis Garcia (Jose Luis Garcia Asensio) was
a Spanish violinist born (in Madrid) on February 25, 1944. He is best known for being the concertmaster
of the English Chamber Orchestra for about 25 years. Just as the names Ferdinand David, Raymond Gniewek, Glenn Dicterow, Norman Carol, and Richard Burgin unfailingly bring up the names of their respective orchestras (the Gewandhaus, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony, respectively), Garcia's biography is inextricably linked to the history of the ECO. He spent nearly his entire career in England. His first studies were with his father
beginning at age 6. If he studied with
anyone else in Spain, I do not know who that was. In 1960, he received first prize at the
Sarasate competition in Pamplona. He was
16 years old. Thereafter (in 1961) he traveled to
London to study with Antonio Brosa at the Royal College of Music. He appeared in
concert in a Vivaldi concerto (for four violins in B minor) at a Proms concert (in
1963) at age 19 with the BBC Symphony.
Malcolm Sargent was on the podium. Two years later, in 1965, he joined the pit orchestra of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. In 1967, he toured South America with the English Chamber Orchestra (playing Principal Second Violin.) However, by then, he had already (intermittently) played several concerts with the orchestra. In 1968, he was appointed associate concertmaster of the orchestra. He was 24 years old. In 1970, he made his second debut as a
soloist at another Proms concert. On that
occasion, he played Michael Tippett’s Fantasia Concertante (on a theme by
Corelli) with the English Chamber Orchestra, of which, as previously mentioned,
he was then Associate Concertmaster. The
composer was on the podium. By that
time, Garcia was already teaching at the Royal College of Music, where he had
begun teaching at age 22, being the youngest to ever get a teaching appointment at that school. (Garcia taught at the Royal College of Music until 1982 - a total of fifteen or sixteen years.) At age 23, he
led the string section for one of the Beatles’ most famous albums. With the English Chamber Orchestra, Garcia
would also conduct and perform as soloist.
He eventually toured almost every country in the world. Although he recorded as a soloist, he far
more frequently recorded as an orchestral leader with the ECO. His best-known solo recording is probably
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. He also recorded
Mozart’s five concertos and the Bach Double Concerto with the ECO. The recordings are easily found on the internet. It has been said that the English Chamber
Orchestra is the most recorded chamber orchestra in the world, having recorded
more than 1,500 individual works, even though multiple recordings of the same
works (the Mozart piano concertos, for instance) are probably included in that number. (Although the orchestra generates quite a bit
of revenue on its own, the orchestra also has an outstanding Patron - the
Prince of Wales.) Garcia never wavered
from his romantic interpretations of baroque works, unlike other British chamber
ensembles (the English Concert, the Academy of Ancient Music, Orchestra of the
Age of Enlightenment, English Baroque Soloists, etc.) which embraced the period
instrument (authentic performance practice) musical movements beginning in the late
1960s. It is quite interesting that in
1983-1984 Garcia offered his services to the musical establishment in Spain to
conduct master classes free-of-charge (in Spain) but never got a call in response. Later on – between 1992 and 1999 – he taught
at the Queen Sofia School of Music in Madrid and conducted the school’s
orchestra with which he also toured extensively. Garcia studied conducting with Sergiu
Celibidache. Among the orchestras he guest
conducted (outside of England and Spain) are the National Symphony (Washington,
D.C.), the Detroit Symphony, and the Israel Chamber Orchestra. He also guest conducted the Ft Worth (Texas,
USA) Chamber Orchestra many times, beginning with a concert going back to
October of 1977. His last concert with
that orchestra was probably in October of 1992.
As does another famous concertmaster in the U.S. (from the Boston
Symphony), Garcia loved golf. He was
also one of the very few musicians (and possibly the only violinist anywhere)
who owned a Rolls Royce automobile. Garcia played the (Fritz) Hirt Stradivarius from 1704, also known as the Prince (Serge) Obolensky Strad and now known as the Hirt-Garcia Strad. Among
the many other violins he played was a modern violin constructed by American
luthier Terry Borman. (Among the many players
who also play Borman violins are Pinchas Zukerman, Jaime Laredo, Pamela Frank,
and Joseph Silverstein.) The Strad is presently owned by a private collector but is on loan to American violinist Esther Yoo. If there are
any videos of Garcia's myriad solo concerts out there, they have not yet been uploaded to
YouTube. Garcia died on August 11, 2011,
at age 67. (Photo is courtesy of the English Chamber Orchestra)
Lydia Mordkovitch (Lydia Shtimerman
Mordkovitch) was a Russian violinist, violist, and teacher born (in Saratov) on
April 30, 1944. She spent much of her
later career in England. She began her
violin studies at the local music school in Kishinev (Kishniev or Kishinyov), a
city in Moldova where her family returned after World War Two. Since Kishinev was a shambles during the war,
her mother fled as far as she could (980 miles eastward, all the way to Saratov, in this case) to get away from
the fighting forces. Mordkovitch may
have been six or seven years old when she first began her studies. I didn’t take the trouble to find out. Beginning in 1960, at age 16, she studied briefly
in Odessa (Ukraine) at the Stolyarski School of Music. (Odessa is only 96 miles southeast from
Kishinev.) She then moved her studies to
the (Nezhdanova) Odessa Conservatory. One of her teachers there was Monzion Mordkovich, a violinist I had never heard about before. She
was there two years and graduated. She
was 18 years old. Later still, she
entered the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.
She was 24 years old by then. Her main
teacher there was David Oistrakh. In
fact, when she first met Oistrakh to prepare for her entrance exam, he asked
her why she had “come so late,” referring to her age. From 1968 to 1970, she was Oistrakh’s
teaching assistant as well. From 1970 to
1973 she taught at the Institute of Arts in Kishinev. A couple of sources say she studied there
between those same years but that is highly unlikely – Mordkovitch was already an
established violinist by then. In
Israel, she taught at the Academy of Music in Jerusalem between 1974 and
1979. Mordkovitch made her British debut on January 7, 1979, playing the Tchaikovsky concerto with the Halle Orchestra (Manchester, England) conducted by Walter Susskind. She moved to England permanently
in 1980. She was 36 years old. All the while, she was concertizing in
Europe, England, Russia, Israel, and the US.
Her American debut came in 1982 with the Chicago Symphony (in
Chicago.) George Solti was on the
podium. In 1980, she began teaching at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England. In 1995, she began teaching at
the Royal Academy of Music in London. Mordkovitch
made over sixty recordings, mostly under the (British) Chandos label. Some of them are unique in that they feature
works for violin which are seldom heard – John Veale’s violin concerto, for
instance. Her recording of the
Shostakovich concertos won awards from British and French music critics. Most of her recordings are easy to find on
the internet. Her best-known pupil is probably British violinist Pip Clarke. Mordkovitch played a 1746
Nicolo Gagliano violin for many years but she would use other instruments as
well (mostly Strads and Guadagninis on loan from friends or the Royal Academy), especially when recording. Here is a YouTube audio file of her recording
of the first Szymanowski concerto.
Mordkovitch died on December 9, 2014, at age 70.
Melanie
Clapies is a French violinist, teacher, and composer born (in Paris) on
December 16, 1981. She is one of less
than a handful of concert violinists who currently write works for their own
use, in the style of so many violinists of past generations – Tartini, Corelli,
Nardini, Geminiani, Biber, Vivaldi, Locatelli, Mozart, Leclair, Paganini, Viotti,
Lipinski, Gavinies, Spohr, Wieniawski, Joachim, Ernst, Vieuxtemps, De Beriot, Conus,
Enesco, Ysaye, Kreisler, Spalding, and Markov are among them. In fact, the tradition of the
violinist-composer has so much been neglected that violinists do not even write
their own cadenzas to concerti anymore.
Clapies does. As did Bronislaw
Huberman so many years ago, Clapies has had a good number of teachers. She began her violin studies at age 5 in
Paris and later, in the southern coastal city of Toulon, beginning at age 8,
with Solange Dessane (Toulon is located about 520 miles south of Paris but only
25 miles west of Saint-Tropez.) Her
public debut came at age 14. She later
studied with Pavel Vernikov and Christophe Poiget at the Lyon
Conservatory. She graduated in
2003. While studying in Lyon, she also
studied with John Glickman at the Guildhall School in London as an exchange
student. She later entered the Paris
Conservatory where she was a student of Ami Flammer and Claire Desert, graduating
in 2011. Clapies also received her
Master’s from Yale University in the US this year (2014.) Her chamber music studies were under the
tutelage of the world-famous Tokyo String Quartet and the Emerson String
Quartet. Clapies has already taught at
the conservatories in Toulon and Bordeaux, and at the Alfred Cortot Music
School in Paris (Zino Francescatti, Pablo Casals, Charles Munch, Jacques
Thibaud, and Paul Dukas were once teachers there.) She has also founded (with French cellist Yan
Levionnois) a Chamber Music Festival in Burgundy, France. Clapies has performed most extensively in
England, France, Italy, Russia, Canada, and the US. Leonard Bernstein once said that “music can
name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.” In a similar vein, Clapies has stated that
her compositions are attempts to catch something from the inexpressible. She has also stated the following: “To me, a
good interpreter is a researcher, someone able to find new ways to express and
reveal what the pieces possess. I find a
direct path to composition from there.
For me, composing is a means by which to interrogate my surroundings; to
make deeper my relation to it.” She
formerly played a Tommaso Carcassi violin and a modern violin by Italian
luthier Carlo Colombo Bruno but her current violin is a Joseph Gagliano from
1781. Nonetheless, Clapies also plays an
authentic (period instrument) baroque violin on occasion. Among the works in her extensive repertoire
is one of my favorites – the Schumann concerto.
Here is her recording of the second movement from it on YouTube with the
Amadeus Chamber Orchestra. You will
immediately notice that her playing is intensely poetic. Her recordings include a collection of duo
works – in a more contemporary vein - for violin and cello, available here. She is currently organizing a piano trio in
New York as well as a project which will feature the music of Ravel which
combines music and mime. In addition,
Clapies is also interested in conducting!
In her upcoming performances of the Beethoven concerto, she will be
using her own cadenza. (There are at
least ten cadenzas to the Beethoven concerto out there (Kreisler’s and
Joachim’s being the most played) and Heifetz used his own too (some of it
borrowed from Leopold Auer), but there are no contemporary violinists who play
their own original cadenzas so this will be a unique joy for her audiences.) Photo of Melanie Clapies is used courtesy of
Francois Olivier de Sardan.
Daniel Stabrawa is a Polish violinist,
teacher, and conductor born (in Krakow) on August 23, 1955. He is very well-known as the concertmaster of
the Berlin Philharmonic and easily one of the best concertmasters in the
world. In addition, as almost all
concertmasters have done for centuries, he performs as soloist or chamber music
player as often as he can. Stabrawa began
his violin lessons at age 7. He later
studied with Zbigniew Szlezer at the Music Academy in Krakow. He entered the Paganini violin competition in
1978 and came in a respectable sixth place.
He became concertmaster of the Polish Radio Symphony in Krakow in
1979. He was 24 years old. He probably worked somewhere else prior to
this but I don’t know where. In 1980 he
again entered the Paganini violin competition and again came in sixth
place. He first joined the Berlin
Philharmonic in 1983. He was 28 years
old. Herbert Von Karajan was chief
conductor back then. Three years later,
Stabrawa was appointed concertmaster – actually one of three concertmasters. (German orchestras usually hire three
concertmasters considered equals – they are known as first concertmasters. They also hire two or three concertmasters of
lower rank. It is very unusual for all
three first concertmasters to be present for even a few concerts; however, it
is also highly unusual for all three first concertmasters to be absent at the
same time so this arrangement guarantees that a first concertmaster is always available
to play. Therefore, an associate or
assistant concertmaster rarely gets to sit in the first chair.) In 1985, Stabrawa began playing – as first
violinist – in the Philharmonia Quartet (with Christian Stadelmann on second violin, Neithard Resa on viola, and Jan Diesselhorst on cello - Dietmar Schwalke replaced Diesselhorst in 1999. All are Berlin Philharmonic players.) Here is a YouTube video of the quartet playing a movement from the second of
Beethoven’s Opus 59 quartets. The
quartet recently completed recording all of Beethoven’s string quartets. Stabrawa taught at the Orchestra Academy of
the Berlin Philharmonic for fourteen years - from 1986 to 2000. In 1994, he took an interest in
conducting. He began conducting the
Capella Bydgostsiensis Chamber Orchestra in 1995 (possibly 1994) and conducted
it for at least seven years, although I do not know if he is still conducting
that ensemble. It resides in Bydgoszcz,
Poland, about 225 miles northeast of Berlin and 175 miles northwest of
Warsaw. He has been quoted as saying
that he actually conducts very little, which is understandable given the heavy
concert schedule maintained by the Berlin orchestra. He has stated: “If you can direct, that helps
a lot as concertmaster. Orchestra
musicians have always felt they could do better than the conductor. But when you stand in front, you realize:
Conducting's like playing the violin, you have to have an incredible technique;
you need to know how it works. Every
little wrong movement is transferred to the orchestra. Conducting is as hard as playing
violin.” In 2008, he founded the
Stabrawa Ensemble Berlin. As far as
recording, Stabrawa has recorded most of the orchestral repertoire as a
concertmaster, though he has also recorded some solo works. His solos in Korsakov’s Scheherazade are
second to none (and I should say I have heard quite a few.) His sound has always been described as being
very beautiful. You can judge for
yourself here (in a short video, playing one of Jeno Hubay’s concertos with his
Berlin colleagues) and here, playing a Wieniawski piece (Opus 20.) This one features him with Nigel Kennedy
playing a little-known duo concerto by Vivaldi. Stabrawa has played a violin by Francesco Ruggeri from 1674 and might still be playing it - of that I am not certain.
Boris Kuschnir is a
Russian violinist and teacher born (in Kiev, Ukraine) on October 28, 1948. More than anything, he is known as a violin
pedagogue and chamber music player. Several
of his students play in the Vienna Philharmonic and some have international
careers as soloists. Just as Arthur
Hartmann and Tivadar Nachez knew so many of the musical luminaries in their
day, Kuschnir does in his own time. As
far as violinists go, Kuschnir’s website is probably the most comprehensive on
the internet. I don’t know at what age
he began his violin studies but, as a young man, he studied with Boris Belenky
and Valentin Berlinsky at the Moscow Conservatory. He also studied with David Oistrakh. In 1970, he founded the Moscow String
Quartet. He was 22 years old. In 1981, he left Russia and settled in Austria,
where one of his first jobs was playing concertmaster of the Bruckner Orchestra
in Linz (about 110 miles west of Vienna.)
In 1984 he began teaching at the Vienna Conservatory. He was 35 years old. That same year, he founded the Vienna
Schubert Trio (1985-1993, with Claus Schuster on piano and Martin Hornstein on
cello.) In 1993, he founded the Vienna
Brahms Trio with Orfeo Mandozzi (cello) and Jasminka Stancul (piano.) The trio is probably still active. He co-founded the Kopelman Quartet in
2002. This group is interesting because
the first violinist lives in New York, the second violinist lives in Vienna,
and the violist and cellist live (in different cities) in Spain. Here’s a YouTube video of the quartet playing
(in Cyprus) the eighth string quartet of Dmitri Shostakovich. In addition to judging at many violin
competitions around the world, Kuschnir also plays at music festivals far and
wide, including the Spoleto, the Verbier, and the Salzburg Festivals. His best known pupils are probably Alexandra
Soumm, Julian Rachlin, Nicolas Znaider, and Lidia Baich. There are many YouTube videos of Kuschnir in
performance. Here is one of them. Since 1991, Kuschnir has been playing a
Stradivarius from 1698 (or 1703, according to several sources) nicknamed La
Rouse Boughton.
Peter
Stojanovic (Petar Stojanovic Lazar) was a Serbian violinist, composer, and
teacher born (in Budapest) on September 7, 1877. He is largely forgotten. Several sources have him studying with Jeno
Hubay in Vienna and Budapest. I am not
aware that Hubay taught in Vienna but I do know he was at the Budapest College
of Music and Budapest Conservatory from 1886 onward. At the Vienna Conservatory Stojanovic studied
with Jacob Grun, who was also concertmaster of the Vienna Opera Orchestra. Grun was Joseph Joachim's close friend and colleague. In 1925, Stojanovic was appointed professor
of violin and composition at the conservatory in Belgrade. He was 48 years old. Stojanovic also concertized throughout Europe
as a soloist and with his string quartet. He later founded the Music Academy in
Belgrade. Among his compositions are 5
violin concertos, 2 viola concertos, 1 horn concerto, one flute concerto, 2
ballets, 2 tone poems, 3 operas, and diverse chamber music. His most famous pupil is probably Robert Virovai, another obscure violinist. Stojanovic died (in Belgrade) on September
11, 1957, at age 80. The world of
classical music had changed drastically by then and he had already become so
obscure that the Grove Dictionary of Music (edition of 1953) has no mention of
him. You can listen to one of his violin
concertos here.
