Norman Carol

Norman Carol is an American violinist and teacher born (in Philadelphia) on July 1, 1928.  He is best known for being the Philadelphia Orchestra’s concertmaster from 1966 to 1994.  Among orchestral musicians and concert artists around the world, his name is instantly recognized.  When musicians speak of concertmasters, Norman Carol is one of a small handful who immediately come to mind.  He began his violin studies at age 6 and made his first public appearance at age 9.  At age 13, he entered the Curtis Institute (Philadelphia) from which he graduated in 1947.  There, he studied with Efrem Zimbalist (one of Leopold Auer’s famous pupils) and William Primrose, among others.  In that same year, Carol, then 18 or 19 years old, was invited (by conductor Serge Koussevitsky) to join the Boston Symphony but Carol declined.  He gave his Town Hall debut two years later – April of 1949.  He was 20 years old.  The debut was very successful and was highly praised.  Interestingly, Carol then joined the Boston Symphony (first violin section, but I don’t know at which desk) and played in that orchestra from 1949 until 1952.  Thereafter, he embarked on a solo career which was soon interrupted by the Korean War.  After his military service, he restarted his solo career but was soon tempted to join the New Orleans Symphony as concertmaster.  He remained there between 1956 and 1959.  In 1959, Carol became concertmaster of the Minneapolis Symphony and stayed until 1965.  He and conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski began their tenures with the Minneapolis Symphony in the same year.  In 1965, Eugene Ormandy chose Carol to lead the Philadelphia Orchestra as concertmaster and his career there began in the 1966-1967 season.  He was 39 years old.  His first of dozens of appearances with the orchestra took place on December 26, 1966.  However, he had already appeared as soloist with the orchestra back on March 12, 1954, during his brief concertizing career.  On that occasion he played the Mendelssohn concerto.  He played (in 1966) the Barber concerto, the same concerto which Albert Spalding had premiered with the orchestra (with Ormandy on the podium) in 1941.  Coincidentally, Carol was by then playing the same violin Spalding had used for his premiere performance of this concerto.  [On November 13, 1954, Carol  made his New York Philharmonic debut, playing Mozart's fifth concerto.]  Carol stayed in Philadelphia for 28 seasons.  His retirement in 1994 was mostly due to a shoulder injury he had sustained three years previously.  Other violinists who have sustained injuries which affected their careers are Rodolphe Kreutzer, Bronislaw Huberman, Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein, and Erick Friedman.  It is likely that only concertmasters Richard Burgin (Boston Symphony) and Raymond Gniewek (Metropolitan Opera Orchestra) exceed his longevity with a single orchestra.  He may also have been the first to play the concertos of Benjamin Britten, Paul Hindemith, and Carl Nielsen, as well as Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade in Philadelphia.  In 1979, Carol began teaching at the Curtis Institute and is still teaching there.  He has played a 1743 Guarnerius del Gesu since about 1957.  It had been previously owned by Felix Slatkin, father of conductor Leonard Slatkin, and by Albert Spalding before him.  He has also owned a 1966 Sergio Peresson violin and a 1695 Stradivarius previously owned (and played) by American violinist Leonora Jackson and, before her, by Emil Mlynarski (one of the founders of the Warsaw Philharmonic and father-in-law of pianist Artur Rubinstein.)  One of Norman Carol's recordings – done for RCA in 1958 – is available here.  

Mischa Mischakoff

Mischa Mischakoff was a Russian (Ukrainian) violinist, teacher, and conductor born (in Proskurov, later known as Khmelnitzky) on April 16, 1895.  His year of birth is also given as 1897.  He is known for having been concertmaster of many orchestras but especially the NBC Symphony under Arturo Toscanini, the well-known and ill-tempered conductor.  In fact, Mischakoff may well have been concertmaster of more orchestras than any other violinist in history – ten that I know of, not counting the St Petersburg Conservatory student orchestra.  For the record, those include the St Petersburg Philharmonic (1913), the Bolshoi Ballet (1920), the Warsaw Philharmonic (1921), the New York Symphony (1923), the Philadelphia Orchestra (1927), the Chicago Symphony (1929), the NBC Symphony (1937), the Chautauqua Symphony (during summer off seasons), the Detroit Symphony (1952), and the Baltimore Symphony (1969.)  He was a gifted artist who nonetheless (unjustly) became less recognized as time went on.  That is one of the disadvantages of playing in an orchestra.  However, even at age 75, Mischakoff was a phenomenal player.  You can hear for yourself here.  As a child, Mischakoff studied with Konstantin Konstantinovich Gorsky, an obscure but highly accomplished Russian violinist.  At about age 10, he entered the St Petersburg Conservatory where he studied under Leopold Auer’s assistant, Sergei Korguyev.  He made his orchestral debut on June 25, 1911, playing the Tchaikovsky concerto.  He was either 14 or 16 years old.  Upon graduation (1912), he played very briefly in Germany (Berlin - 1912) and then became concertmaster in St Petersburg.  Some sources have him playing in Moscow as well – for the Moscow Philharmonic and the Moscow Grand Opera.  He also served in a music regiment during World War One – 1914 to 1918.  He joined the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra as concertmaster in 1920.  He was 25 years old.  In 1917, he supposedly gave the world premiere of Prokofiev’s first concerto in Russia with Prokofiev conducting.  His name should therefore be very closely associated with the concerto but it isn’t.  A different source states that the world premiere was played in Paris on October 18, 1923, followed three days later by the Russian premiere by Nathan Milstein.  The truth might be found in one of Prokofiev’s diaries; unfortunately, I don't have access to them.  In 1921, greatly assisted by Polish violinist and conductor Emil Mlynarski, he fled Russia (accompanied by cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and, later, pianist Andre Kostelanetz) during a concert tour which took them very close to the border with Poland - Nathan Milstein too, later fled Russia while on a European tour with pianist Vladimir Horowitz in 1925.  Actually, the three musicians (Mischakoff, Piatigorsky, and Kostelanetz) spent about a year in Warsaw.  Twenty years earlier, Mlynarski had been a founder (as well as conductor) of the Warsaw Philharmonic and, therefore, still had considerable influence there.  An interesting fact about Mischakoff is that he sometimes used aliases.  In Poland, he was known as Michal Fieber.  In Germany he was known as Mischa Fibere and in provincial Russia as Mischa Mazia.  Most sources state that Mischakoff arrived in the U.S. (New York) in 1921 – a single (but very authoritative) source has him arriving in New York on Friday, September 22, 1922.  Mischakoff’s birth name had been Mischa Isaakevich Fischberg (or Fishberg.)  When he arrived in the U.S., his agent suggested he change it so he did.  He never had to change it again.  At the beginning, he had to do freelance work but he quickly established himself.  On November 9, 1924, he played the Tchaikovsky concerto with the New York Symphony under Walter Damrosch at Aeolian Hall.  That may have been his first solo appearance in the U.S.  With the same orchestra, on March 11, 1926, he played the Brahms concerto in Carnegie Hall with Otto Klemperer on the podium.  On May 14, 1946, he performed the Tchaikovsky concerto with the New York Philharmonic (which had by then merged with the New York Symphony) at Carnegie Hall.  His longest tenure was with the NBC Symphony.  Mischakoff regularly performed as soloist with the NBC and many other orchestras during his 70-year career.  His many pupils include Ani Kavafian, Joseph Silverstein, Isidor Saslav, Leonard Sorkin, and David Cerone.  Among several other music schools, Mischakoff taught at Wayne State University (Detroit), Boston University, and the American Conservatory in Chicago.  He also taught at Juilliard from 1940 to 1952.  According to one source, he played four Stradivarius violins during his career but I could find no evidence of that.  Cozio – a usually reliable source – gives his violins as follows: (in chronological order) an 1829 Pressenda, a 1737 Gagliano, a 1731 Guarnerius, and a 1714 Stradivarius.  Mischakoff died (in Southfield, Michigan) on February 1, 1981, at age 85.  

Peter Stolyarsky

Peter Stolyarsky (Pyotr Solomonovich Stoliarsky), was a Russian (Ukrainian) violinist and teacher born on November 18, 1871 (Brahms was 38 years old.)  He, like Leopold Auer, Carl Flesch, and Ivan Galamian, is remembered as a pedagogue and not a concertizing soloist.  He began his studies with his father then progressed to Stanislaw Barcewicz, Emil Mlynarski (the founder of the Warsaw Philharmonic) in Poland, and Josef Karbulka back in Odessa.   He graduated from the Odessa Conservatory in 1893 and went to work almost immediately in the orchestra of the Odessa Opera House where he played for about 26 years.  He started teaching privately in 1898 and opened his own music school in 1912 (some sources say 1911), at age 41.  From 1919 he taught at the Odessa Conservatory.  He was instrumental in the opening in Odessa of a music school for gifted children in 1933.  His famous pupils include David Oistrakh, Nathan Milstein, Boris Goldstein, Albert Markov, Naoum Blinder, Elizabeth Gilels, Eduard Grach, and Zakhar Bron (himself an eminent teacher.)  Stolyarsky died on April 29, 1944, at age 72.

Paul Kochanski

Paul Kochanski was a Polish violinist, composer, teacher, and arranger born on September 14, 1887 (Brahms was 54 years old.) He first studied with his father then, at age 7, with Emil Mlynarski, one of the founders of the Warsaw Philharmonic. In 1901, Mlynarski, having by then become a conductor, invited the then fourteen-year-old Kochanski to be concertmaster of the Philharmonic. That probably made him – with the possible exception of Amadeus Mozart – the youngest concertmaster in history. In 1903, Kochanski found himself in Brussels, at the Brussels Conservatory. By 1908, he was touring Europe with Artur Rubinstein. He became professor of violin at the Warsaw Conservatory in 1909 and was there until 1911. In 1916, Karol Szymanowski dedicated his first violin concerto to Kochanski, who had written the cadenza for it. In that same year, he took over for Leopold Auer at the St Petersburg Conservatory. He also taught for a year (1919-1920) at the Kiev Conservatory. During this time, he advised Prokofiev on matters of technique having to do with Prokofiev’s first violin concerto. Kochanski made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1921, playing Brahms' violin concerto. From 1922, he lived in New York, becoming the head of the violin teaching staff at Juilliard (1924-1934.) In 1933, Kochanski premiered Szymanowski’s second violin concerto and again, Szymanowski dedicated the work to him. On January 12, 1934, at age 47, Kochanski died, though not unexpectedly. Among his pall bearers were Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, and Efrem Zimbalist. Among Kochanski's pupils was Jacques Singer. 

Emil Mlynarski

Emil Szymon Młynarski was a Polish violinist, conductor, composer, and teacher. He was born on July 18, 1870 (Brahms was 37 years old.) He became Artur Rubinstein’s father-in-law when his daughter married Rubinstein in 1932 – her second marriage. Mlynarski was also one of Leopold Auer’s and Rimski-Korsakov’s not-so-well-known students. He was one of the founders, in 1901, of the Warsaw Philharmonic, which he conducted until 1905. From 1910 to 1916 he was principal conductor of the Scottish Orchestra (which became the Scottish National Orchestra in 1950 and then the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in 1991.) Among his compositions are a symphony and two violin concertos which are seldom heard. However, his second violin concerto has been recorded by English violinist Nigel Kennedy. Emil Młynarski died in Warsaw on April 5, 1935, at age 64, about four and a half years before the start of the Second World War.