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.
Stanley Ritchie is an Australian
violinist, author, conductor, and teacher born (in Yenda, New South Wales – about
350 miles west of Sydney, Australia) on April 21, 1935. He is known for a successful career
encompassing a wide range of musical activity.
He is, however, probably best known for his later involvement in Baroque
music, being a specialist in period instrument performance. In fact, he may well have been one of the
first artists to teach (historically-informed) early music practice in America,
if not the first. Sergiu Luca also
pioneered early music playing on baroque instruments in the mid-1970s and was
the first to record the Bach unaccompanied violin works on a period
instrument; however, he did not become as well-known in the field as later violinists did. It is interesting to note
that (in 1980) Austrian violinist Norbert Brainin became involved in a
widespread movement in England and elsewhere to lower the tuning of “A” from
440 hz to 432 hz but without success. This
would have applied across the board, not just Baroque music. I personally favor a lowering of the standard
tuning. The 440 tuning has made music
sound a little too brittle and brilliant.
Nevertheless, I think we should keep modern strings – they simply last
longer. Ritchie began his violin studies
at age 7 with someone whose name is unknown to me. He enrolled at the Sydney Conservatory of
Music as a young man and graduated in 1956.
He was 21 years old. Two years
after that, he went to Paris where he studied with Jean Fournier (pupil of
George Enesco and brother of cellist Pierre Fournier.) Ritchie finally came to the U.S. in 1959. He was 24.years old. In New York, he studied with Joseph Fuchs,
Oscar Shumsky, and Samuel Kissel. In
1963, he became concertmaster of the New York City Ballet. After two years, he moved to the Metropolitan
Opera where he served as Associate Concertmaster. Raymond Gniewek was the concertmaster at the
time. From 1970 to 1973, Ritchie was a
member of the New York Chamber Soloists.
He was appointed Assistant concertmaster of the Vancouver Symphony and
played in that orchestra from 1973 to 1975.
In 1975, he joined the Philadelphia String Quartet (University of
Washington - Seattle, Washington) as first violinist. Since 1970, he had developed an interest in
early music performance as played on instruments fitted to original Baroque
standards or specifications (if one can call them that), using Baroque bows as
well. Supposedly, German
violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter has said that period instrument players are
“players who ordinarily wouldn't make it, who make silly accents with the bow,
cannot produce a sound, and think they are making something
profound." If she in fact made that
statement, she has since changed her opinion to a highly positive view. Ritchie
has been professor of violin at Indiana University since 1982 but has continued
to concertize and teach far and wide. He
has recorded for various labels, including EMI, Decca, Dorian, Nonesuch, and
Harmonia Mundi. Opinions vary, of
course, but my choices for the best authentic (period) instrument ensembles in
the world are: the English Concert, the Academy of Ancient Music, Tafelmusik,
Europa Galante, Il Giardino Armonico, the Venice Baroque Orchestra, and Les Musiciens du Louvre. Ritchie’s recording
of Vivaldi’s concerto in e minor (with the Academy of Ancient Music) is
available on YouTube here. Vivaldi wrote
more than 200 violin concertos – eleven of them are in e minor. This one is the second in Opus 11 - Opus 11
contains 5 violin concertos and number 2 is the one in e minor. Whether it’s true or not, it has been widely
reported that Igor Stravinsky (or Luigi Dallapiccola or Darius Milhaud) once
said that Vivaldi - one of the most important Baroque composers - didn’t
compose 600 concertos; “he composed one concerto six hundred times.” Ritchie
has played a Jacob Stainer violin of 1679 for some time. I do not know if he is still playing it.
Christian Tetzlaff is a German violinist and teacher born (in Hamburg)
on April 24, 1966. As was Joseph
Szigeti, he is known for his intellectual approach to playing, though that is a
very limiting characterization of his style.
He is also one of the few (male) violinists who does not wear casual
clothing when performing and does not make an issue of appearing “non-elitist”
by wearing casual clothes when he performs.
Joshua Bell, Leonidas Kavakos, Stefan Jackiw, Gilles Apap, and Nigel
Kennedy (among others) have long-ago abandoned the formal attire of a traditional
concert violinist (white tie and tails) in favor of grungy and casual
clothes. His three siblings are also
professional musicians, as were all four Spivakovsky brothers. He is also rather unique in that he favors a
modern violin to his Stradivarius. Tetzlaff
did not enter a conservatory as a child, as have many violinists before
him. He took up the violin at age 6 but
proceeded to get a regular academic education.
At age 14, he made his orchestral debut playing the Beethoven
concerto. After that, he studied with
Uwe-Martin Haiberg at the Lubeck Music School – Lubeck is about 40 miles north
of Hamburg. In 1985, he came to the U.S.
to study with Walter Levin (pupil of Ivan Galamian) at the University of
Cincinnati. He was 19 years old. He has subsequently played with virtually
every major orchestra in the world and has given recitals in the most important
venues as well. Though his discography
is not extensive, every one of his recordings has been highly praised. There are many classical music lovers who
consider him underrated by critics and the general public. The same thing has been said many times of
Pinchas Zukerman. YouTube has several
videos of his performances. Here is one
with the Brahms concerto. Tetzlaff is
the only violinist I know who regularly plays all of the Bach Partitas in one
single program. Several others do play
all of the Paganini Caprices in a single recital but he prefers doing that with
Bach. Tetzlaff organized the Tetzlaff
String Quartet (with Elisabeth Kufferath, Hanna Weinmeister, and
Tonja Tetzlaff) in 1994. He was 28 years
old. Since 2002, his violin of choice
has been one by German Luthier, Peter Greiner.
It sounds like a Stradivarius, if not better. Leonidas Kavakos also owns a Greiner
violin. Tetzlaff teaches at the Kronberg
Academy, situated near Frankfurt, Germany.
A famous quote by Tetzlaff goes like this: “Trying to turn lead into
gold is nothing compared to taking something mechanical like an instrument – a
string and a bow - and using it to evoke a human soul, preserved through the
centuries.”
Lynn Kuo is a
contemporary Canadian violinist, teacher, and lecturer with a very successful
and versatile career. In the orchestral
world, she is the Assistant Concertmaster of the orchestra of the National
Ballet of Canada. It is a prestigious
position. Not too many people know that
Joseph Joachim was assistant concertmaster in Leipzig under Felix Mendelssohn,
Zino Francescatti was assistant concertmaster with a French orchestra prior to
dedicating most of his career to touring, and Arnold Steinhardt (first
violinist of the Guarneri Quartet) was assistant concertmaster of the Cleveland
Orchestra. In the concert world, Kuo has
already toured Europe, including Austria, Hungary, Wales, Croatia, Serbia,
Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine, both in recital and with many major orchestras. As most concert violinists do, she also
performs with many chamber music ensembles and has frequently programmed the
works of several modern composers, whom she champions. She has also served as guest concertmaster of
Pinchas Zukerman’s orchestra, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, one of the
premier orchestras of Canada. Her music
studies began in her native St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, at age
7. However, her first instrument was not
the violin – it was the piano. Among her
first teachers were Mark Latham, Nancy Dahn, and Eileen Kearns. Kuo later attended summer music festivals in
Aspen (Colorado), Kent-Blossom (Ohio, USA), Quebec, Banff, and Schleswig-Holstein
(in Northern Germany.) Her later
teachers in Toronto included Erika Raum, Mayumi Seiler, and Lorand Fenyves
(pupil of Jeno Hubay and one of the original members of the Israel
Philharmonic, having personally been invited by Bronislaw Huberman.) As do other contemporary violinists – Nigel
Kennedy, Itzhak Perlman, Alexander Markov, and Miranda Cuckson among them - Kuo
does not limit herself to purely classical music. Her collaborations with artists in other
genres are well-known. Many of Kuo’s performances
have been broadcast on radio and television as well, in Canada and
overseas. She has also been chosen to
present world premieres of several new works.
She has recorded for the NAXOS label and her new CD – simply titled LOVE:
Innocence, Passion, Obsession - is scheduled to be released soon. Critics have written that “her technique
appears flawless and her playing is dramatic, both rousing and melancholy.” You can hear for yourself here. She also has a Facebook page here where she
documents some of her career events - she recently received her DMA degree from
the University of Toronto. Kuo plays an
1888 Vincenzo Postiglione violin.
Natasha Korsakova is a Russian violinist and writer born on January 24, 1978 (Itzhak Perlman was 32 years old and Jascha Heifetz was 77 years old.) She is the only concert violinist that I know of who is fluent in five languages. (The only other violinists who were fluent in that many languages were Henryk Szeryng and Otakar Sevcik.) She is also the only one who has an exclusive concert dress designer (Laura Biagiotti) and the only one named artist-of-the-year in two different countries (Italy and Chile.) It is noteworthy that while female concert violinists are moving towards more glamorous fashions, (witness Sophie Mutter, Sarah Chang, and Akiko Meyers), the males are becoming more ungraceful and casual, perhaps even grotesque (witness Joshua Bell, Leonidas Kavakos, and Nigel Kennedy.) It has been said that Korsakova is very bold and charismatic. Her violin studies began at age 5 and her first public performance took place at age 7 in Moscow. However, her first teacher was not her father but her grandfather (Boris Korsakov), although she later studied with her violinist father (Andrej Korsakov, who studied with the legendary Leonid Kogan.) She later studied in Germany with Ulf Klausenitzer and Saschko Gawriloff (at the Advanced Music School – Musikhochschule - in Cologne – 1995-1999.) Nevertheless, her orchestral debut was back in 1985 with the Voronezh (Russia) Orchestra. (This orchestra has been associated with several leading Russian conductors, including Evgeny Svetlanov, Kiril Kondrashin, Emin Khachaturian, Neemi Yarvi, and Alexander Dmitriev, and regularly plays in Moscow and St Petersburg. It has also accompanied innumerable major artists: among them, Emil Gilels, Gidon Kremer, Vladimir Spivakov, Igor Oistrakh, Yuri Bashmet, Alexander Zhukov, Maxim Vengerov, and Mikhail Pletnev.) She spent the first seventeen years of her life in Russia where her musical lineage goes back about six generations and includes composer Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908), her great-grand uncle. Korsakova has already toured (practically) the entire world and, of course, played in most of the world’s prestigious concert halls, with top conductors and major orchestras. She has recorded several CDs which are available on the internet at ArizonaRecordings (and through ITunes and other electronic download venues) and there are several videos of her playing on YouTube. She also delves seriously into chamber music and far flung music festivals, as do all concert violinists nowadays. In the year 2004 she performed the Tchaikovsky concerto in Berlin for the 15th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. In 2008, she played a special concert in Vienna the night before the official opening of the European Football Championships. She has also been invited to play for the Italian State President and his guests at the Palazzo Quirinale in Rome. In 2010, she premiered and recorded (with the Czech Philharmonic) two concertos written for and dedicated to her – one by Robert Vinson (Concerto in F) and the second by Daniel Schnyder (Mozart in China.) Korsakova has played a Vincenzo Panormo (also known as Vincenzo Trusiano) violin but is currently playing a Giovanni Pressenda (Turin, 1843) from the collection of Giovanni Accornero, Italian expert on luthiers, author, and instrument collector and dealer. In 2011, she and Swiss violinist Manrico Padovani (the first Swiss violinist to have recorded the 24 Paganini Caprices) will record several double concertos by Alfred Schnittke, J.S. Bach, Arvo Part, and Antonio Vivaldi.
This type of thing has very few followers but that’s ok. Here is my arbitrary list of the top ten most-in-demand, darling, high-fee violinists, in no particular order: Sarah Chang, Nigel Kennedy, Maxim Vengerov, Hilary Hahn, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Leila Josefowicz, Gil Shaham, and Leonidas Kavakos. Except for Kavakos, Kennedy, and Mutter, they all live in New York. They are all brilliant players. Among that bunch, the only ones with a recognizable sound and style are Joshua Bell and Leila Josefowicz. The others all pretty much sound the same to me. Now, here are ten – again, arbitrarily chosen - who are just as brilliant but whose profiles are noticeably lower: Elmar Oliveira, Augustin Hadelich, Lara St John, Julia Igonina, Stefan Jackiw, Corey Cerovsek, Kyung Wha Chung, Miranda Cuckson, Eugene Fodor, and Vadim Gluzman. Except for Oliveira, Igonina, Fodor, and Gluzman, they, too, live in New York. What is the difference? Personality? Marketing? Patronage? Management? Looks? Social connections? I know not. It is certainly not playing ability. This ladder is very hard to climb to the top, especially when there are unknown, hard-to-identify factors and twists and turns in a career. Here’s to plain good luck.
Daisy Kennedy was an Australian violinist born on January 16, 1893 (Stravinsky was 11 years old.) She studied with Otakar Sevcik in Vienna in 1909, appeared in London in 1911, and toured widely in Europe and the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. She was also violinist Nigel Kennedy's second cousin. She made several recordings in 1919 and 1920. I don't know if she recorded after that. Daisy Kennedy died on October 12, 1981, at age 88.
Nigel Kennedy is an English violinist born on December 28, 1956 (Perlman was 10 years old.) He was born on the same day as Josef Hassid, though 33 years later. He studied with Yehudi Menuhin and Dorothy DeLay (Juilliard.) He is famous for wearing a funny outfit on stage, his funny haircut, and his very slow rendition of the Brahms violin concerto. He has been recording since 1984 and has recorded most of the standard violin repertory in addition to some jazz music. A few critics have said that his classical playing style lacks discipline, insight, and finesse, although that opinion is really open to question.
Joshua Bell (Joshua David Bell) is an American violinist born on December 9, 1967 (Perlman was 21 years old.) He is easily one of the most popular concert violinists currently on the scene. Bell began lessons at the age of four. Later on, he studied with Josef Gingold at Indiana University (Jacobs School of Music) from which he graduated in 1989. However, by 1985, he had already made his Carnegie Hall debut. Bell is best known for his soundtrack recording of the violin music on the 1998 film, The Red Violin. He is also known for having taken part in an experiment conducted by the Washington Post two or three years ago in which he played incognito at a D.C. metro station for which he collected about $40 from passersby. Bell has taught at the Royal Academy (London), MIT, and Indiana University. There is lots of information about him on the internet as well as videos on the YouTube and MySpace websites. He has also recorded most of the standard violin repertoire. He customarily wears informal attire for his concerts, as do Nigel Kennedy and Stefan Jackiw. He plays the 1713 Gibson Ex-Huberman Stradivarius, a notoriously famous violin, which, so far, has been stolen (and recovered) twice.
