Word: ricci
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Violinist Ruggiero Ricci appeared on the stage at Carnegie Hall for the first time dressed in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit with flowing white bow tie and velvet kneepants. He was nine years old, and his hair flopped over his ears. With such classic equipment, he could scarcely have failed to make it as a prodigy-and he made it big. The more uninhibited critics, recalls Ricci. "called me the greatest violinist playing, which meant that I have had to fight Ricci ever since." Now 41, Ricci is still fighting Ricci. He seems to be doing nicely. During a lull...
...Ricci was recording works by Pablo de Sarasate and a collection of compositions by one of his longtime admirers-Fritz Kreisler. who heard Ricci play as a child. Included were Sarasate's Malagueña and Zapateado, Kreisler's Liebesleid and Liebesfreud and La Gitana. Standing with a kind of Frank Sinatra slouch before the double microphones, tiny (5 ft. 4 in.) Violinist Ricci grasped his Guarnerius del Gesù fiddle in his short, square hands and produced a tone that was remarkable both for its control and its shading. He was at his best in the Sarasate...
...Inhibitions. Although Ricci has never quite overtaken the early critical estimate of Prodigy Ricci, his performances have earned him an honored place among the world's best violinists. "After Oistrakh," remarked an astonished Moscow critic last spring, "Ricci was designed by nature to play the violin." Ricci himself gives part credit for his style to his "Latin descent," is embarrassed that his passport still identifies him as Woodrow Wilson Rich, a name he picked up at birth after his onetime-trombonist father had decided to Anglicize the family name. Woodrow Wilson was presented with his first violin when...
Looking back on his career as prodigy, Ricci feels that he was only going through the motions: "I don't care what they say about how beautifully a child plays; the child himself does not know what he's doing." Today Ricci feels that he went into a slump in his early teens. One trouble, he thinks, is that "as a child you have no inhibitions-you just do it. As you grow older, it's harder to be natural." Ricci was almost 20 before he learned to be natural once more...
Ivan the Terrible. Accessories are as full of movement as the clothes themselves. Hats are young and flattering, tend to frame the face instead of sweeping down to smother it. Ricci's "Ivan the Terrible" model is a fat acorn of fur, and Cardin's "Davy Crockett" curls an entire fox (in brown, red or black) around the head. Feet, as well as bodies, are treated considerately once more after seasons of cramping toes into shoes that darted into stiletto points or simply blunted off the second joints, the rounded-toe look is back-although Dior...