Word: natalya
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Bull Fiddler. Koussevitzky has taken few of life's bumps. One good reason has been Natalya Konstantinovna Koussevitzkaya, his pleasant, portly, beak-nosed Russian wife. Koussevitzky is her career. Once a sculptress, she has not only spent the best part of her life smoothing out her husband's path; she also played an important part in putting him on the path in the first place...
...during his days as a mustachioed virtuoso on the string bass that he met Natalya Konstantinovna. While sawing the thick strings of his groaning instrument at a Moscow concert, he noticed a girl in the front row, gazing at him in maidenly admiration. Koussevitzky's heart jumped, he sawed away more sweetly than ever. After the concert he searched for his admirer, but she had gone. For weeks romantic Koussevitzky was in a lovesick daze. Months later, at another concert, he spied her again in the audience, made his pachydermatous instrument serenade her with mournful and passionate moans. Again...
Like many a successful conductor's wife, Natalya Konstantinovna was a woman of means. Together they financed an orchestra for Koussevitzky to practice on, and gave a series of concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The Koussevitzky Concerts began to catch on with the Russian public. The Koussevitzkys chartered a ferryboat, made a tour of the Volga. By 1910 Koussevitzky was the most widely-known maestro in Tsarist Russia. Meanwhile he had started a publishing house for music by contemporary Slavic composers, published for the first time (thus, incidentally, sparing himself the performance royalties) works by such famed artists...
...then the hardened libertine fell in love-by his own count, for the 113th time. Natalya Goncharova's family was not nearly as good as Pushkin's; she had no dowry; she was 13 years younger than he; but she was a beauty. That was enough for Pushkin. After a long and arduous courtship, he married her. Natalya made him a decorative and submissive wife, presented him with several children. But she never returned his love, and though apparently she was technically faithful, her flirtatiousness nearly drove Pushkin wild. On her side, Natalya never understood or cared...
...Natalya Koussevitzky, obscure in her balcony seat, had her own feast-day coming. Two days after the Symphony opening came her 60th birthday. Koussevitzky, patterning himself after Wagner, had Symphony men go to their Brookline home, play an early-morning serenade to his good wife...