Lola Bobesco (Lola
Violeta Ana Maria Bobesco) was a Romanian violinist born (in Craiova, Romania)
on August 9, 1921. She spent most of her
career in Europe and many of those years were spent in Belgium, which is why Bobesco
is frequently referred to as a Belgian violinist. She initially studied with her father, a
noted composer and conductor. At age 6,
she gave her first public recital. From
1928 to 1935, she studied at the Normal School of Music in Paris. Her main teacher there was Marcel Chailley, a
well-known violinist of the time. She
almost simultaneously studied at the Paris Conservatory from 1931 to 1935, with
Jules Boucherit. She also studied
privately with George Enesco and Jacques Thibaud. She apparently made her orchestral debut in
Paris in 1936 with the (Edouard) Colonne Orchestra with Paul Paray
conducting. Paray would later become
chief conductor of the Detroit Symphony, when Detroit was in its prime. It was an unusual debut in that she performed
not a concerto from the standard repertoire but a work by a now-obscure
Romanian composer, Stan Golestan. She
was 17 years old. The next year, she won
seventh prize in the Queen Elizabeth (Eugene Ysaye) violin competition – David
Oistrakh came in first. After that, she
returned to Romania and established a career in Bucharest. On January 17, 1960 she made her first appearance with the Berlin Philharmonic, playing the Brahms concerto, She was 38 years old. She performed with most of the major European
orchestras, including the Concertgebouw, the London Philharmonic, and the
Berlin Philharmonic, under conductors famous at the time, including Rudolph
Kempe, Ernest Ansermet, Karl Bohm, and Otto Klemperer. Having relocated to Belgium in her early
thirties, from 1958 to 1978, she led the Royal Wallonia Chamber Orchestra in Mons,
Belgium. Mons is situated about 30 miles
south of Brussels. She was also violin
professor at the Brussels Conservatory. From
1962 to 1974, she taught at the Liege Conservatory. In 1990, she founded a string quartet as well
– the Arte Del Suono Quartet. She was 69
years old. You can hear how this quartet
sounds here and – I predict - you will most certainly be (pleasantly)
surprised. She recorded quite a bit for
various labels and those recordings – mostly standard violin sonatas and
concertos – are available and easily found on the internet. Her violin, among others, was a 1754 GB
Guadagnini. Bobesco died (in Spa,
Belgium) on September 4, 2003, at age 82, largely forgotten.
Alina Pogostkina is a Russian violinist born (in
Leningrad) on November 18, 1983. She
began her lessons at age 4 with her father and gave her first concert one year
later. When she was 8 years old (1992),
her family moved to Heidelberg, Germany.
According to one source, she and both of her parents - both are
violinists – for some time made a living playing on the street. Marie Hall did essentially the same thing in
England, though without her parents. Pogostkina
is said to favor modern music. She
attended the Advanced School for Music in Berlin, studying with Antje
Weithaas. Along the way, she
participated in several competitions, eventually winning the Jean Sibelius
Competition in Helsinki in December of 2005, using a modern violin by Falk
Peters. She had already won the Louis
Spohr Competition in 1997 (Freiburg, Germany) at age 14. She also participated in the Queen Elizabeth
and the Indianapolis Violin Competitions (2001 and 2002, respectively.) Pogostkina now plays all over the world,
accompanied by the best orchestras and the best conductors. She also participates in quite a few music
festivals around the world. Her sound
and technique is similar to Hilary Hahn’s – very crisp, emphatic, and clean
with flawless intonation - but her musicianship is different. YouTube has a few videos of her
performances. One is here, showing a
complete (and spectacular) performance of the Sibelius concerto. For a while, she was playing a 1709 Stradivarius
violin, a loan from the German Music Instrument Fund. Pogostkina now plays a modern violin by ChristianBayon. Of course, if you are a regular
reader of this blog, you know I absolutely favor modern violins over any old
instrument. The reason is that they are
at least equal to any Amati, Strad, Guadagnini, Goffriller, or Guarneri and, in
most cases, much better.
Edith Volckaert was a Belgian violinist born on August 27, 1949 (Heifetz was 48 years old.) Someone wrote a biography about her but I do not own it. Since there is precious little information about her on the web, I can only mention that she recorded several albums (works by Beethoven, Vivaldi, Bartok, Cesar Franck, and others) before her early death on July 2, 1992 (at age 42) and that she was the fifth prize winner in the Queen Elizabeth of Belgium violin competition in 1971. Volckaert also taught at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels until 1978. Her CDs can be easily found on the internet. She played a 1620 Maggini. That’s about it. On a different topic, I am guessing that great composers have always been pianists. It seems logical since the piano covers such a wide spectrum of notes all at once, obliging the player to think and see vertically, as if visualizing a score. Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev were pianists (or keyboardists.) Sibelius might be the only exception, if one considers him a great composer. There are many second (and third) tier composers who were violinists though: Vitali, Geminiani, Tartini, Molter, Vivaldi, Corelli, Paganini, Spohr, Rode, Viotti, Wieniawski, Enesco, Ernst, De Beriot, Sinding, Vieuxtemps, Bridge, Novacek, Sarasate, Kreisler, Elgar, Ysaye, and more.
