Word: starker
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Open & Informed. Cellist Starker has been called one of the greatest ever since he was 14. When he left Hungary after World War II ("I did not like the atmosphere"), other European critics also raved. After he reached the U.S. in 1948, he first landed a job with the Dallas Symphony and soon after with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. U.S. critics discovered his excellence on records (Period). He was the only principal player Conductor Reiner, a fellow Hungarian, took with him when he moved from the Met to the Chicago Symphony three years...
...half-humorously assumed, partly because of the tightlipped, tear-laden whine the instrument so easily develops in its upper register, partly because of the overenthusiastic use of that register by romantic composers. One cellist who does not deserve the description is the Chicago Symphony's Budapest-born Janos Starker, 31, who is unsentimentally aware that he is one of the world's finest cellists...
...cello is a little-liked instrument," he says. Then he explains: "The cello is about a century behind the violin. Paganini [1782-1840] was the turning point in the violin, 100 years before Pablo Casals [born 1876] who was the turning point in the cello." Those 100 years. Starker points out, enclose most of the great composers. Since they wrote relatively little music for the cello virtuoso, he reasons, the cello is an unfamiliar solo instrument to the public...
Tense & Silken. Moreover. Starker thinks, the instrument is not entirely familiar to the men who play it. "In cello playing, the accepted standards are lower than with the violin. Basic under standing of the instrument is not developed. Players may know how to go from one place to another, but not why it is difficult to do so, or how to do it better." To improve this situation, Cellist Starker hopes to start a professional school for string players, teaches cello privately, and travels among U.S. community orchestras as string consultant. Meanwhile, he plays solo whenever he gets the chance...
Last week, with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony, Janos Starker played a piece that might reduce many a strong man to sentimentality-Schumann's Cello Concerto. Under the pale lights, Starker's sunken cheeks looked drained of blood as he bent to the romantic work, but he never bowed to its maudlin potentialities. His tone was neither too plump nor too lean, but pure, tense and silken. He sculpted the long, melodic lines precisely, restraining himself where a lesser musician might have whipped up some phony passion, then letting his instrument sing passionately, when passion was called...