Word: violiniste
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...aware that there is a long march ahead. Says his close friend, Violinist Isaac Stern: "Slava knows that there are certain elements of the classic repertoire that he still has to grow into. He will not pretend that he can match the 30 or 40 years of experience of any master conductor...
Perhaps in this undertaking, as in so many others, Yehudi Menuhin is the exception, Violinist par excellence, condunctor, music educator and humanist fervently committed to causes as diverse as Amnesty International and organic foods, Menuhin is one of a handful of classical musicians whose world-wide fame promises to endear his recently published memoirs to a public beyond devoted specialists. But for those expecting either a pristine dissertation on performance or a spicy self-revelation, "Unfinished Journey" will be a disappointment: it is above all a book about people, ideas and music and is only secondarily the thoroughly polite exposure...
...more importantly, there is the music. Noting with characteristic humor that "it is a feature of the violinist's career to burst abruptly into view...like Aphrodite washed ashore on Cyprus, beautifully complete, and often younger than she," Menuhin makes clear that his own career had less exciting origins. At two, his parents smuggled him into a matinee of the San Francisco Symphony; at four, unappeased by a toy violin ("this travesty of my longings enraged me"), he acquired his first instrument; by the time he was twenty he was an established master on both sides of the Atlantic...
Tongue-in-cheek, Menuhin describes the typical violinist as "more sensual than intellectual, somewhat narrow in outlook, and probably vain." But for those who might in actuality be considered his rivals he has nothing but praise, defending Jascha Heifetz against charges of coldness and mourning the late David Oistrakh as "a friend beyond price...
...celebrated his 90th birthday last week. For the occasion, his friend and fellow Russian, Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, helped to organize a gala concert in Nice, not far from Chagall's hillside home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Among the other performers who played or sang in his honor: Violinist Isaac Stern, Baritone Hermann Prey and Flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal. Chagall attended the concert as well as a nearby exhibition of his biblical paintings of the past decade. Said he: "To work with love in his heart is a painter's mission, to make the world better." Besides...