Endre Granat

Endre Granat is a Hungarian violinist, music editor, and teacher born (in Miskolc, Hungary – about 100 miles northeast of Budapest) on August 3, 1937.  He is best known for having recorded prolifically in Los Angeles as a studio (session) musician, (as did Louis Kaufman, Toscha Seidel, and Israel Baker before him), where he almost always served as concertmaster.  He has played and recorded for hundreds of movie soundtracks, CDs, and Television shows.  Granat is easily the most experienced studio violinist working today.  He may also be the only concert violinist in history whose wife was a murder victim (1975).  His first teacher was his father (Josef Granat) who was the concertmaster of the Budapest Philharmonic for many years.  He then studied with Gyorgy Garay at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest in his native country.  I don’t know at what age he entered the Academy.  He fled the country during the revolution in 1956.  He was 19 years old.  He then spent five years living in Switzerland although his initial plans were to go to Paris, France.  Between 1956 and 1964 he was concertmaster or a section violinist with the Hamburg Symphony, the Orchestra of the Suisse Romande, and the Gothenburg Symphony.  He also graduated from the conservatory in Basel with a Master’s degree during that time.  In 1962 he entered and won a violin competition at Heidelberg, Germany.  He was 25 years old.  He came to the U.S. in 1964 and studied further with Josef Gingold at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.  Granat was assistant concertmaster with the Cleveland Orchestra from 1964 to 1966.  In 1967 he participated in the Queen Elizabeth violin competition and came in lower than fifth place – I don’t know how much lower.  He was 30 years old.  He then studied for five years with Jascha Heifetz in Los Angeles.  Between 1975 and 1977, he played very little, spending two years in South Korea studying God-knows-what.  I did not take the trouble to find out; however, he and pianist Edith Kilbuck did record the complete works for violin and harpsichord by J.S. Bach in 1976.  When he returned from Korea, he began playing in the studios in Los Angeles where he has been working ever since.  Granat has taught at various music schools during different times in his career, including the Royal Academy of Music in Gothenburg (Sweden), Seoul National University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and USC in Los Angeles, where he might still be teaching.  He has also frequently participated in several music festivals in the U.S. and abroad and intermittently concertized as a soloist working with some of the world’s conducting luminaries, including George Szell, Zubin Mehta, and Georg Solti.  He was concertmaster of the Pacific Symphony in California from September 1983 to June 1993.  With regard to that experience, Granat has said: “It's one thing to have a great number of wonderful players; it's another thing to have a great orchestra.  Eighty extraordinary musicians do not equal an extraordinary orchestra.  That takes years.”  Granat plays a 1721 Domenicus Montagnana violin which he acquired in 1968.  He may have sold that violin in 2005. 

Israel Baker

Israel Baker was an American violinist and teacher born (in Chicago) on February 11, 1919.  He is best known for having played second fiddle to Jascha Heifetz in several chamber music concert series and recordings begun in 1961.  He is also known for having led innumerable Hollywood movie soundtrack recording sessions as had Toscha Seidel and Louis Kaufmann before him.  In fact, he was concertmaster of the orchestra that recorded the soundtrack for Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous movie, Psycho, in 1960.  His sight reading abilities became legendary.  Although a classical violin soloist and recitalist, Baker spent most of his career as concertmaster of various studio or concert orchestras, just as has David Nadien, who was concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic for four years.  There is scant information on Baker (on the internet) prior to his turning 20.  However, it is common knowledge that he played in public (in Chicago) at age 6.  The performance is said to have been broadcast nationwide on the radio.  It is also known that his first job as concertmaster was with the Dayton (Ohio) Philharmonic.  A year later, Leopold Stokowski recruited Baker for his All American Youth Orchestra.  At age 22, while still a student at Juilliard, Baker became its concertmaster.  (At this point, I contacted Hilary Baker.) That was the summer of 1941.   Baker studied first with Adolf Pick in Chicago.  Later, he took lessons from Jacques Gordon (concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony), Louis Persinger (teacher of Yehudi Menuhin), and Bronislaw Huberman.  Two sources state that he later joined the NBC Symphony in New York (under ill-tempered and rude conductor Arturo Toscanini) but I could not find his name on any lists of NBC Symphony musicians - they somehow missed him.  After a lengthy tour with Stokowski, Baker did join the first violin section of the NBC Symphony.  He also recorded Scheherazade with the legendary maestro (Stokowski) - much later, he would record the solos a second time.  During this time with Toscanini, Baker also had a nationally broadcast weekly radio program on NBC.  During World War Two, he was a violinist in the Army Air Force playing for wounded veterans in the U.S. (Atlantic City, New Jersey.)  Afterward, he worked for Phil Kahgan in New York for a few years.  Kahgan was a contractor for free-lance musicians.  Through Kaghan’s connections, Baker ended up in Los Angeles and quickly established himself firmly in the recording world.  On August 24, 1947, he made his debut playing the Tchaikovsky concerto with the Los Angeles Philhamonic, William Steinberg conducting.  Baker was 28 years old.  In 1950, in Los Angeles, he formed a duo with Yaltah Menuhin, violinist Yehudi Menuhin’s younger sister.  In 1951, they gave a joint debut recital in New York.  I don’t know where the debut took place – both artists were in their very early thirties.  Although I’m sure one exists, I could not find a review of that recital on the internet.  However, after their debut in San Francisco in 1950, Alfred Frankenstein - music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle - called their recital a "brilliant achievement." With pianist Alice Shapiro and cellist Edgar Lustgarten, he formed the Pacific Arts Trio.  Baker also led orchestras on the West Coast – in addition to the Paramount Pictures studio orchestra - which recorded with many popular artists, including Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Harry Belafonte, Benny Carter, Sammy Davis, Bill Haley, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Mel Torme, Chet Atkins, Bobby Darin, Neil Diamond, Count Basie, Nancy Wilson, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, and Sarah Vaughn.  CBS recordings done with Bruno Walter with the Columbia Symphony included Israel Baker as concertmaster.  Being in the studio naturally meant that he also worked closely with film composers, among whom were Andre Previn, John Williams, Bernard Hermann, Lalo Schifrin, Franz Waxman, and John Barry.  As a soloist or chamber music player his discography is not extensive but as an orchestral player his sound (even if not individual, except for his recording of Scheherazade with Erich Leinsdorf) is on hundreds of recordings and movie soundtracks.  In any case, his recordings of music by Viotti, W.A. Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Antonin Dvorak, Cesar Franck, Rimsky-Korsakov, George Antheil, Vernon Duke, Eric Zeisl, and Alban Berg are easy to find.  Heifetz was quoted as saying that Baker was "a fine fiddler" (a typical Heifetz understatement) and that he was easy to work with.  Except for Erick Friedman, Heifetz never recorded with any other violinist.  Igor Stravinsky himself picked Baker to record his violin concerto; however, he was overruled by executives at CBS who insisted on Isaac Stern as soloist.  In 1981, Baker was concertmaster of the (Orange County, California) Pacific Symphony.  He was also briefly concertmaster of the Los Angeles Symphony – not to be confused with the Los Angeles Philharmonic – as well as the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.  In fact, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra was made up almost entirely of highly accomplished studio musicians.  Baker taught at Scripps College (a private school in Claremont, California, near Los Angeles) for a time and his best known pupil was Jack Benny.  Baker played the Garcin Stradivarius (1731) as well as other violins.  The Garcin Strad is now in the hands of violinist Kees Hulsmann.  Israel Baker died in Los Angeles on December 25, 2011, at age 92.  

Victor Young

Victor Young was an American violinist, composer, arranger, and conductor, born (in Chicago) on August 8, 1899 (two years before Heifetz was born.)  He is an example of instrumentalists who gravitate from concertizing to other endeavors – in his case, composing, arranging, and conducting for films and records.  Violinists Iso Briselli, Pierre Monteux, Jaap Van Zweden, Eddy Brown, and Joseph Achron are five others who more-or-less switched careers as other things drew their attention.  Young is remembered as having been nominated for an Academy Award 22 times (an all-time record) and never actually winning – in any case, not while he was alive.  He began violin studies with Isidor Lotto (pupil of Joseph Lambert Massart and teacher of Bronislaw Huberman) at the Warsaw Conservatory at age 10 and later studied piano with Isidor Philipp (pupil of Camille Saint Saens) at the Paris Conservatory.  Being highly gifted, at age 13, he made his debut with the Warsaw Philharmonic.  He toured Europe as a soloist for a while, but with the outbreak of World War One in 1914, his grandparents, who had been raising him since his arrival in Europe, sent him back to the U.S.  Young then embarked on a career as an orchestral violinist with popular and classical orchestras, often serving as concertmaster or conductor in theatre and radio orchestras, all the while teaching himself the art of arranging popular music.  He was barely 16 years old.  These activities were mostly centered in Chicago.  He played in the Isham Jones and Ted Fiorito orchestras during this time - other members of the Jones orchestra were Woody Herman and Benny Goodman, both of whom would become more famous than Young.  He participated in early recordings with Bing Crosby and radio programs with Betty Grable too.  In New York, where he moved in 1931, Young recorded with Tommy Dorsey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Al Jolson, and Lee Wiley (his girlfriend), among many others.  In 1933, he started writing music for films, his first one being Murder at the Vanities (a rather obscure but notorious film.  Some sources say his first movie score was Wells Fargo – a film about the stage coach company, not the bank.)  In 1934, Young signed a contract with Decca Records and stayed with them for the rest of his life.  In 1936, he moved to Hollywood, initially writing music for Paramount Pictures and leading the orchestra at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.  In Hollywood, he eventually wrote soundtracks for movies and television and recorded with many legendary stars, Judy Garland among them.  His scores include Golden Boy, Around the World in Eighty Days, Shane, Samson and Delilah, Scaramouche, Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.  It is known that Young was a workaholic.  In fact, he died while working on a movie score (China Gate), on November 10, 1956, at age 57.  By then, he had worked on over 350 movies and had spent almost 90 percent of his professional life in the popular music sphere.  It had been a long way from the Warsaw Philharmonic to the Hollywood sound studios.  Brandeis University (Boston) has  a collection containing more than one hundred scores and recordings of Young's music.  About Victor Young, Henry Mancini has been quoted as saying “All he had to do was sit down at the piano and the melodies fell out of his sleeves.”