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.  

Miranda Cuckson

Miranda Cuckson is an American violinist, violist, and teacher known for her lucid and translucent performances of contemporary works.  She is also known for her stunningly precise technique.  Her extremely fine, silken sound is often and uniquely juxtaposed against angular, rugged, and muscular music which she champions.  However, her tastes are famously eclectic and her repertoire very broad.  She has played complete Beethoven sonata cycles as well as – on the opposite side of the spectrum - music by Luigi Nono (La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura) for violin and electronic tape.  She is largely responsible for bringing the music of a single person - Ralph Shapey, well-known but cantankerous Chicago composer - to the general public’s attention.  Cuckson’s career has taken her to the most famous concert venues in the U.S., Europe, and China, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Library of Congress, and the Berlin Philharmonie.  Anthony Tommasini, one of the most regarded music critics in the world at present, has described her playing this way: “Miranda Cuckson is a brilliant young performer who plays daunting contemporary music with insight, honesty, and temperament.”  (I should point out that her surname is often mispronounced: it is COOKSUN and not COXSUN.)  She first began to study violin at age 5, having arrived in the U.S. from Australia with her parents while still a very young child.  At the age of nine, Cuckson began her studies at Juilliard and went on to receive her BM, MM and DMA degrees there as well.  She studied with Dorothy DeLay, Shirley Givens, Robert Mann, and Felix Galimir, among others.  She made her recital debut in Carnegie Hall in 2003 playing an all-American program, and her concerto debut there in 2010 playing Walter Piston’s Concerto No. 1.  Precisely because she champions contemporary music, she has in recent years been a greatly sought-after advocate in that area of music performance.  She has also given numerous premieres of solo and chamber pieces, some of which have been written expressly for her.  Her father is composer Robert Cuckson and she sometimes plays his works, including several he has written for her.  This year, on February 3, she will perform a new work (at the Library of Congress) by Harold Meltzer, which was commissioned for her by the McKim Fund in honor of Fritz Kreisler.  The McKim Fund is tied to the late American violinist Leonora Jackson – Jackson played what used to be Joseph Joachim’s violin for many years but retired at age 36 and died in obscurity.  Cuckson’s first CD recording was a disk of concertos by Erich Korngold and Manuel Ponce with the Czech National Symphony, on Centaur Records.  She subsequently made four recital CDs of 20th-century American music for Centaur: disks of music by Ralph Shapey (a two-CD set), Donald Martino and Ross Lee Finney.  In 2010, Vanguard Classics released her CD “the wreckage of flowers”, comprising violin and violin/piano music by Michael Hersch, with pianist Blair McMillen.  Upcoming releases include solo and duo works by Anna Weesner and a disk of microtonal solo violin pieces. She directs the concert series nunc (previously called Transit Circle), which she founded in 2007.  Among the many organizations Cuckson plays with in New York are counter)induction, Sequitur, ACME, Talea Ensemble, Astoria Music Society, and the ISCM.  She was the founding violinist of the Momenta Quartet, with which she played for three years.  As of 2005, Cuckson has been teaching violin at Mannes College and also teaches classical violin to students of the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.  She is on the faculty at the Composers Conference at Wellesley College and has given numerous master classes and workshops for both performers and composers, at schools such as Peabody Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music, and Temple, Cornell, Columbia, Yale and Princeton universities.  Since 1996, Cuckson has been playing the Bazzini Guadagnini, the one from 1742 (there are two Bazzini Guadagninis – the other one is from 1758.)  As were Eugene Ysaye and  Jascha Heifetz, she is a devoted tennis fan.  YouTube has several videos of her, one of which is here.

Leonora Jackson

Leonora Jackson (Leonora Jackson McKim) was an American violinist born (in Boston, USA) on February 20, 1879 (Brahms was about 46 years old.)  One source gives the year of her birth as 1880.  She concertized at a time when female concert violinists were a rarity.  Although she lived a long life, she is almost completely forgotten today.  As did many artists before her, she received financial support from a benevolent patron to enable her to study in well-known conservatories.  In her case, the patron was none other than Frances Cleveland, wife of U.S. President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908.)  Another of her well-known patrons was George Vanderbilt.  The schools she attended were in Chicago, Paris, and Berlin.  I have no idea who she studied with in Chicago but I do know she won the well-regarded Mendelssohn Stipendium (Mendelssohn Scholarship) in October of 1897, the first American to do so.  The award consisted of about $90,000 in today’s dollars and was intended to assist foreign students to attend the Leipzig Conservatory.  For obvious reasons, it was discontinued in 1934 but later re-established.  Subsequent winners of this prize have included Ernst Toch, Kurt Weill, Max Rostal, and Roman Totenberg (Nina’s father.)  In Berlin, she studied with Joseph Joachim.  Her debut is said to have taken place in 1896.  Jackson often played for European royalty and was also decorated by Queen Victoria of England.  She performed with the top orchestras of Europe and the U.S., including those of Boston and London.  Her career was so successful that in the 1900-1901 season, she played over 160 concerts in the U.S. alone.  Nonetheless, on February 22, 1900, she played the Mendelssohn concerto in New York (with the Boston Symphony) and received a very unfavorable review.   Her retirement came in 1915, at age 36, after her marriage to William McKim (1855-1935.)  As far as I know, she never recorded anything; however, a well-known Stradivarius violin (1714) bears her name and is now owned by William Sloan of Los Angeles.  She sold it four years after her marriage.  The violin had been previously owned by Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim - one of her teachers.  Leonora Jackson died on January 7, 1969, at age 89, in complete obscurity.