Word: riga
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Born in Russia, where his grandfather had been a bandmaster to Czar Nicholas I, Efrem, along with an older brother, Arved, escaped to Riga, after the Bolshevik Revolution. Edmund soon joined them. All three brothers finished their musical training in Berlin, then went separate ways. Efrem got his big chance to conduct with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1921; Edmund made his concert debut in Rome in 1924. After nine years in Stuttgart, and another nine conducting the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo orchestra on international tours, Efrem settled down in the U.S., built up the Kansas City Philharmonic for five...
Professional Background: Entered the U.S. foreign service at 22, was spotted as a bright young man in 1933 and pulled out of the U.S. legation in Riga, Latvia, to help U.S. Ambassador William Bullitt open the first U.S. embassy in Moscow since the Russian Revolution. In 1946, when he was chargé d'affaires in Moscow, his urgent warnings of Russian aggressive intentions so impressed Secretary of State George Marshall that Kennan was picked in 1947 to head a new policy-planning staff. His "policy of firm containment" (first outlined under the pseudonym "X" in Foreign Affairs...