Word: violin
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...violin is a Jewish instrument. At least that is the popular conception in Israel, where, next to having a college professor in the family, the proudest parents are those who can boast about "my son the violin player." Indeed, the front rank of the world's best violinists is predominantly Jewish-David Oistrakh, Nathan Milstein, Leonid Kogan, Yehudi Menuhin, Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern...
This national affection for the violin, says Jerusalem Critic-Composer Yohanan Boehm, stems from the days when the wandering Jews of Eastern Europe adopted the instrument from the gypsies. "The violin was inexpensive," says Boehm, "easy to carry, and it could cry and sing like the human voice. So it best expressed the bittersweet emotions of the Jew in his homelessness." "The violin was the ticket out of the ghetto," explains Isaac Stern. "Pianos were scarce; woodwinds didn't mean anything." As a result, Israel teems with violinists. The tiny nation's 32 music schools are brimming over...
PROKOFIEV: VIOLIN CONCERTOS (Columbia). Isaac Stern is at ease in both concertos, one written just before and the other 18 years after the revolution. Prokofiev is more playful and shocking in the first, simpler and more romantic in the second. The orchestra is the Philadelphia, conducted by Eugene Ormandy...
HINDEMITH: KAMMERMUSIK NO. 4 and KURT WEILL: VIOLIN CONCERTO (Westminster). The young Hungarian-born violinist Robert Gerle has chosen some nearly trackless territory to explore, but he is led by that experienced pioneer, Hermann Scherchen. conducting the Vienna Wind Group and other instrumentalists...
Likewise preserving all the unities, its three acts bear the subtitles "Pas de Deux," "Pas de Trois," and "Coda." But the work suggests, more than ballet, a piece of polyphonic chamber music in which all the strings of a violin, viola and 'cello are tuned tighter than usual...