Laura Archera

Laura Archera (Laura Archera Huxley) was an Italian violinist, writer, filmmaker, and lay psychologist born (in Turin, Italy) on November 2, 1911.  She is best known for having been the wife of writer, philosopher, and LSD guru Aldous Huxley.  Her career somewhat mirrors that of Olga Rudge, a highly accomplished violinist who gave up her career for Ezra Pound, the controversial writer, poet, composer, and political activist.  Several sources state that Archera began her violin studies at the age of ten in Turin, Italy.  Encouraged by her father, she dropped out of formal school at age fourteen in order to focus on her music studies.  At that age also, she played for the Queen of Italy (Marie-Jose’.)  According to a usually reliable source, she then traveled to Berlin, Paris, and Rome for further study.  The same source states that she earned her degree in Rome at age 17.  Another source, however, states she graduated at age 21.  In Paris she studied with George Enesco; in Berlin, with Carl Flesch; in Rome, I do not know.  She gave numerous recitals throughout Europe during these years.  It is also stated in various easily available sources that she traveled between Europe and the U.S. for several years.  She made her U.S. debut in 1937 in Carnegie Hall playing Mozart’s fifth concerto, accompanied by the New York Women’s Orchestra.  She was 26 years old.  She then went on to study at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.  How much playing she did (or where) in the U.S. is not well-documented on the internet, so I have no clue about that.  Some sources state that she played at Carnegie Hall as a teenager but those same sources say that she first came to the U.S. shortly before the war.  Both statements cannot be right.  After the start of World War II (1939), she did not return to Europe.  She played in the Los Angeles Philharmonic from the beginning of the 1943-1944 season to the end of the 1945-1946 season.  She owned and played a 1705 (Cozio says 1703) Guarnerius violin, an early gift from her father (a stockbroker), which, supposedly, she later donated to violinist Yehudi Menuhin, though I find that very, very hard to believe.  Even extremely generous people do not donate such valuable instruments, unless they are wealthy philanthropists.  In any case, Menuhin had the violin until 1978, after which the violin was auctioned off.  Archera did have her precious Guarnerius at least up until 1961.  It was one of the few things she was able to save when her house in Hollywood burned down.  She began working as a free-lance film editor at RKO Studios at about the time she quit her job with the Los Angeles Philharmonic though she had been delving into documentary filmmaking since 1945.  If she ever played the violin again after 1946 is anybody’s guess.  She was only 35 years old.  Along the way, she wrote several self-help books, a memoir-biography of Huxley (whom she married in 1956), and started a group that helps children and parents of children.  Archera died on December 13, 2007, at age 96.  As far as I know, she died without ever having recorded anything.  

I told you so

The following is an abstract from an article which appeared earlier this month in some journal of the academy of science. The New York Times said something about it too.  It testifies to something I have been saying for years. New instruments are just as good, if not better, than old ones. Anyone spending a million dollars on an old violin is just wasting their money, unless they are buying it as an investment, the way one would buy an antique.  If you just want a violin to actually play on, buy a new one.  You will save a bundle.  By the way, the exact same thing applies to bows.  “Most violinists believe that instruments by Stradivari and Guarneri “del Gesu” are tonally superior to other violins - and to new violins in particular.  Many mechanical and acoustical factors have been proposed to account for this superiority; however, the fundamental premise of tonal superiority has not yet been properly investigated.  Player's judgments about a Stradivari's sound may be biased by the violin's extraordinary monetary value and historical importance, but no studies designed to preclude such biasing factors have yet been published.  We asked 21 experienced violinists to compare violins by Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu with high-quality new instruments.  The resulting preferences were based on the violinists’ individual experiences of playing the instruments under double-blind conditions in a room with relatively dry acoustics.  We found that (i) the most-preferred violin was new; (ii) the least-preferred was by Stradivari; (iii) there was scant correlation between an instrument's age and monetary value and its perceived quality; and (iv) most players seemed unable to tell whether their most-preferred instrument was new or old.  These results present a striking challenge to conventional wisdom.  Differences in taste among individual players, along with differences in playing qualities among individual instruments, appear more important than any general differences between new and old violins.  Rather than searching for the secret of Stradivari, future research might best be focused on how violinists evaluate instruments, on which specific playing qualities are most important to them, and on how these qualities relate to measurable attributes of the instruments, whether old or new.”  

Custom Violins

I will soon be ordering a custom violin - my very first. It will be a replica of the Paganini Cannone. I am not yet at liberty to disclose the maker but in time I will. I expect it will be a fabulous violin. It will not play itself of course, but playing Mozart and Beethoven on it will be that much more pleasurable. Perhaps Prokofiev and Poulenc as well.
I have long believed that 60% of the sound of any violin comes from the player - the violinist's bow arm. The rest comes from the instrument. If you don't believe me, go hear a concert by the San Francisco Symphony. The current concertmaster is playing Heifetz' Strad. I think it's the Dolphin. It does not sound the way it did when Heifetz had it. It has nothing to do with the technique because Barantschik is a great player. It is all bow arm and that comes from intuition. A great violin however, makes it that much easier to get the sound out - your sound.

Joseph Silverstein

Joseph Silverstein is an American violinist, conductor, and teacher born on March 21, 1932 (Heifetz was 31 years old.) He is best known for being a long-time concertmaster of the Boston Symphony and Conductor Laureate of the Utah Symphony (as of 1998.) At an early age, he began his violin studies with his father but eventually entered the Curtis Institute of Music (Philadelphia) where he studied with Efrem Zimbalist, Josef Gingold, Mischa Mischakoff, and William Primrose, among others. Prior to joining the Boston Symphony in 1955, he was a violinist in the orchestras of Houston (1950), Philadelphia (1952 - 8th desk), and Denver (1953). He became concertmaster of the Boston Symphony in 1962 (after Richard Burgin) and served in that capacity until 1984. He was also assistant conductor of the BSO from 1971 until 1984. He was appointed conductor of the Utah Symphony in 1983 and was there until 1998. From 1987 to 1989, he was Music Director of the Chautauqua Symphony as well. He also conducted the Florida Orchestra from 2001 until 2003. Along the way, he has conducted and recorded (for Telarc, RCA, CBS, Nonesuch, DG, Pro Arte, etc.) with a large number of orchestras worldwide. Silverstein has taught at the Curtis Institute, Yale University, Boston University, and the New England Conservatory. He plays a 1742 Guarnerius (and he used to play a 1773 J.B. Guadagnini formerly owned by Arthur Grumiaux.) 

List of Violinists part four

S-Z: Julia Sakharova, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Emanuel Salvador, Emile Sauret, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Pieter Schoeman, Julius Schulman, Erik Schumann, Robin Scott, Lynnette Seah, Toscha Seidel, Berl Senofsky, Gil Shaham, Hagai Shaham, Sayaka Shoji, Oscar Shumsky, Calvin Sieb, Joseph Silverstein, Alexander Sitkovetsky, Baiba Skride, Alexander Skwortsow, Felix Slatkin, Joel Smirnoff, Tamara Smirnova, Robert Soetens, Livia Sohn, Denise Soriano, Evgeny Sorkin, Josef Spacek, Nils-Erik Sparf, Vladimir Spivakov, Daniel Stabrawa, Simon Standage, Steven Staryk, Eva Stegeman, Arabella Steinbacher, Mark Steinberg, Oliver Steiner, Arnold Steinhardt, Isaac Stern, Malcolm Stewart, Lara St John, Petar Stojanovic, Emmy Storms, Josef Suk, Harold Sumberg, Akiko Suwanai, Christian Svarfvar, Joseph Swensen, Vilmos Szabadi, Antal Szalai, Henryk Szeryng, Joseph Szigeti, Kyoko Takezawa, Gerhard Taschner, David Taylor, Christian Tetzlaff, Jeff Thayer, Jacques Thibaud, Anna Tifu, Richard Tognetti, Ertan Torgul, Roman Totenberg, Caitlin Tully, Eleonora Turovsky, Uto Ughi, Eugene Ugorski, Elena Urioste, Elina Vahala, Mary VanOsdale, Adrian Varela, Tibor Varga, Sandor Vegh, Alexander Velinson, Maxim Vengerov, Zino Vinnikov, Kai Vogler, Ion Voicu, Edith Volckaert, Olena Vrublevska, Elizabeth Wallfisch, Reiko Watanabe, Camilla Wicks, Wanda Wilkomirska, Jasper Wood, Eric Wyrick, Toru Yasunaga, David Yonan, Eugene Ysaye, Thomas Zehetmair, Wang Zhijiong, Isaak Zhuk, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Yulia Ziskel, Nicolaj Znaider, Pinchas Zukerman, Jaap van Zweden.

List of Violinists part three

M-R: Nicolai Madoyev, Ara Malikian, Bracha Malkin, Robert Mann, Andrew Manze, Alexander Markov, Henri Marteau, Neville Marriner, Mihaela Martin, Johanna Martzy, Ralph Matson, Petri Mattson, Edouard Matzener, David McCarroll, Yuri Medianik, Tymur Melnyk, Yehudi Menuhin, Joseph Meyer, Anne Akiko Meyers, Stefan Milenkovich, Nathan Milstein, Shlomo Mintz, Steven Moeckel, Alma Moodie, Barennie Moon, Erica Morini, Victoria Mullova, Irina Muresanu, Anne Sophie Mutter, David Nadien, Ginette Neveu, Piotr Nikiforoff, Kurt Nikkanen, Gordan Nikolitch, Takako Nishizaki, Siegmund Nissel, Domenico Nordio, Mark O'Connor, David Oistrakh, Igor Oistrakh, Valery Oistrakh, Raphael Oleg, Elmar Oliveira, Theo Olof, Sergey Ostrovsky, Michaela Paetsch, Rusanda Panfili, Susie Park, Gyorgy Pauk, Marek Pavelec, Elisa Pegreffi, Adela Pena, Myvanwy Penny, Itzhak Perlman, Louis Persinger, Anna Petrova, Johanna Pichlmair, Christine Pichlmeir, Igor Pikaysen, Elizabeth Pitcairn, Rachel Podger, Alina Pogostkina, Anton Polezhayev, Hristo Popov, Maud Powell, Andrej Power, Hubert Pralitz, William Preucil, Vasa Prihoda, Liviu Prunaru, William Pu, Rodrigo Puskas, Anastasia Pylatyuk, Riele Queling, Philip Quint, Julian Rachlin, Manuel Ramos, Nazrin Rashidova, Helena Rathbone, Henry Raudales, Jonathan Rees, Jesus Reina, Ossy Renardi, Vadim Repin, Yuri Revich, Gerardo Ribeiro, Ruggiero Ricci, Nate Robinson, Aaron Rosand, David Rubinoff, Peter Rybar.

Fritz Kreisler

Friedrich (Fritz) Kreisler was an Austrian violinist and composer born on February 2, 1875 - it is assumed that Jascha Heifetz was born on the same day in February in 1901. Kreisler is rememberd for his warm sound, his singing style of playing, and for the many violin pieces he composed which became a permanent part of the violin repertory. As were Tartini, Vivaldi, Paganini, Spohr, Wieniawski, and Sarasate, he was a violinist whose compositions were not quickly forgotten. His attention was never spent on a showy display of brilliant technique. It has been said that he practiced sparingly or not at all. His early studies were at the Vienna Conservatory under Jacob Dont and Joseph Hellmesberger (Jr.), among many others. He also studied with Joseph Lambert Massart, from whom he almost certainly picked up a new thing for violinists (back then) called the continuous vibrato. On November 10, 1888, he made his U.S. debut (age 12) in New York City. He then toured the U.S. for a brief time. As a teenager, he tried joining the Vienna Philharmonic but was not accepted. Shortly thereafter, he gave music up entirely in order to study medicine. Then, in 1899, he took up the violin again and did not stop concertizing until about 1950. In 1910, he commissioned Edward Elgar's violin concerto which he subsequently premiered, though he never recorded the work. Between 1924 and 1938 he lived in Berlin (despite being semi-Jewish) then in France (until 1939.) He lived in the U.S. from 1940 until his death on January 29, 1962, at (almost) age 87. Several recordings of his are posted on YouTube, including an arrangement of the first Paganini Concerto in D, re-orchestrated and re-harmonized.

Heifetz

Jascha Heifetz was a legendary Russian violinist born on February 2, 1901. That is the traditionally given date of his birth - some sources dispute it. His micro biography is posted here, among the February, 2009 blogs.

Sarah Chang

Sarah Chang is a Korean (some would say American) violinist born on December 10, 1980 (Itzhak Perlman was 34 years old.) She was a child prodigy and has been highly praised by many of the world's greatest musicians and violinists, including Yehudi Menuhin. Her father, who is also a violinist, was one of her first teachers. When she entered Juilliard (New York) at age 6, she played the Bruch g minor concerto as her audition piece. At age 8, she played the Paganini concerto (in D) with the New York Philharmonic. At age 9, she recorded her first CD for EMI Classics, becoming the youngest violinist to be professionally recorded. She effectively began her concert career at the same age. (Chloe Hanslip was signed to a recording contract at age 13.) It is said that it took Ms Chang no more than two weeks to learn the Tchaikovsky concerto when she was only 12. Although she has garnered many awards (including the Avery Fisher Prize), she has never entered any violin competitions - possibly because she never had to. Chang has recorded most of the standard repertoire. As is usual with modern violinists, there are several videos of her playing on YouTube. In 2010, she got into an unpleasant controversy over her scheduling a concert in Detroit during the Detroit Symphony's strike.  I don't know if she has a page on MySpace. She plays a 1717 Guarnerius.

Isaac Stern

Isaac Stern was a Russian (Ukrainian) violinist, teacher, and writer born on July 21, 1920 (Heifetz was 19 years old.) His family came to the U.S. when he was less than two years old; he thus received his entire training in the U.S. Other than as a touring virtuoso with a vibrant, robust sound, he is remembered for saving Carnegie Hall from demolition (1960), for his tours of China, and for a comprehensive discography (more than 100 recordings.) Having started music lessons with his mother, he enrolled at the San Francisco Conservatory in 1928 (age 8). One of his first teachers in San Francisco was Robert Pollak, an Austrian violinist who had recently arrived in the U.S. In 1931 (age 11), he studied privately (in New York) with Louis Persinger, who also taught Yehudi Menuhin, Ruggiero Ricci, and Zvi Zeitlin, among others. He returned to the San Francisco Conservatory to study with Naoum Blinder (a student of Adolph Brodsky) for five years. Blinder had taught at Juilliard (New York) between 1929 and 1931. Blinder was concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony until 1957. Stern gave most of the credit for his training to Blinder. Stern made his public debut at the age of 15 (February 18, 1936) with the San Francisco Symphony. Some sources say he played Saint Saenz’ third concerto on this occasion and others say it was the Brahms concerto. Yet another source says he played the Bach Double concerto with his teacher (Blinder.) [His memoirs probably mentions something about this but I haven't read the book and I have no intention of reading it.] The following year, he made his New York Town Hall debut, which did not go well. He returned in 1943 to debut at Carnegie Hall, after which his career took off. Stern soloed with the New York Philharmonic for the first time in 1944. His European debut came in 1948 and his Russian debut in 1956. So influential did he become, that it has long been rumored that he could make or break any classical musician’s career. He was married three times and had 3 children from his second wife. Stern owned several fine violins, including the Ysaye Guarnerius Del Gesu (1740) which he sold three years before he died. He died on September 22, 2001, at age 81.

Jascha Heifetz

Jascha Heifetz was a Russian (Lithuanian) violinist, composer, and teacher born on this day (February 2) in 1901 - some sources say January 20, 1901. He has often been called the greatest violinist of the Twentieth Century. After Paganini, he is probably the most famous violinist who ever lived. Ironically, he did not record any of the Paganini concertos. He first took lessons – at age three - from his father (Ruben, concertmaster of the Vilna Symphony Orchestra), and then began lessons at age five with Ilya Malkin. He first played in public at age 7. At age 9 he entered the St Petersburg Conservatory to study under Leopold Auer. While still a very young student, he toured much of Europe, playing with the Berlin Philharmonic as a 13-year-old. His first performance with the Berlin Philharmonic occurred on October 12, 1912.  He played the Tchaikovsky concerto on that occasion.  Arthur Nikisch was on the podium.  On January 4, 1933, he played the 5th concerto by Mozart, the Beethoven concerto, and the Brahms concerto on the same program.  He was 31 years old.  He did not set foot in Germany ever again.  A few violinists have played two concertos on the same program and even fewer have played three concertos on the same program.  Until recently, I did not know that Heifetz had done the same thing.  Heifetz came to the U.S in 1917 and debuted in Carnegie Hall on October 17, 1917, still only sixteen years old. His concertizing and recording career took off after that.  Eddy Brown stated afterward that Heifetz made everyone else, including Kreisler, sound like students.  Heifetz composed a very small quantity of original music but made many arrangements and transcriptions which are still in wide use. He is probably the most recorded violinist of all time, although Louis Kaufman and Ruggiero Ricci biographers claim the same thing about Ricci and Kaufman. Heifetz taught for many years at UCLA and USC (both in Southern California, U.S.A.). Two of his famous pupils were Erick Friedman and Eugene Fodor.  He played the famous Dolphin Stradivarius (1714), a 1742 Guarneri, a 1731 Stradivarius, a 1734 Stradivarius, and a 1736 Carlo Tononi violin. Heifetz died on December 10, 1987, at age 86.

Mozart's violin

I was not there so I cannot guarantee this is correct - nonetheless, the Hill brothers from London say it is verifiable. Do you know what violin Mozart played? It was not a Strad and it was not a Guarneri. It was not a Kloz and it was not a Stadlmann. It was not a Montagnana and it was not a Storioni. It was not a Stainer either. It was a Pietro Antonio Dalla Costa. The violin on the left is a Dalla Costa, but it's not the one Mozart owned.

Girolamo Amati - 1609

This is one of Girolamo Amati's violins from 1609. It's an early violin, considering that the modern violin was developed (or took form) around 1520 - five hundred years ago. This one is by the first Girolamo (there are two, although the second one is sometimes referred to as Geronimo). He was the son of Andrea Amati. Girolamo (1551-1635) had two sons - Antonio and Nicolo. Nicolo (1596-1684) was the father of Geronimo (the second Girolamo - 1649-1740), who was the last in line of the Amati violin makers. If you click on the photo, it will probably give you an enlarged version so that you can see all the tiny scratches. This violin is probably worth more than $1,000,000, although I am just guessing.

Leduc

I am not certain but I think this violin is now in the hands of the concertmaster of the National Symphony in Mexico City. It could also be in Israel. What do I know? Nothing. It is a nice violin though. It was owned by the late Henryk Szeryng, the Polish violinist. He made his home in Mexico and elsewhere. Guarneri was, of course, a pretty good maker of violins. He made this one in 1743 - some say 1745. It makes no difference - it sounds good. Stradivari was dead by then and he was a good maker as well. I do not know if either one actually knew how to play.