Word: violist
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Years later, in Brussels, when his teacher, the late great violinist and tosspot Eugene YsaŸe, told William he had special aptitude for the viola, he switched to it for life. In 1937, when NBC officials were recruiting their new NBC Symphony, they heard a phonograph record of Violist Primrose playing a Paganini caprice. Never had they heard or heard tell of such fast & fluent viola playing, at first thought some super-brilliant violinist like Jascha Heifetz had made the record under an assumed name. They telegraphed Primrose, then on tour with the London String Quartet, and offered...
Sober, methodical and coolheaded, Violist Primrose is no sissy. His evenings are spent, not at musical tea parties, but at Manhattan's Madison Square Garden. Once a good boxer himself, still an avid connoisseur of right hooks and straight lefts, he no longer dares to get into the ring for fear of hurting his hands. Today, Primrose is generally considered the world's finest viola player. No longer does he have to play one-night stands, traipsing through snowdrifts to theatres and hotels in out-of-the-way Canadian and Midwestern towns. He reaches a bigger audience...
...occasion the Budapesters had with them two guest soloists: athletic William Primrose, world's No. 1 viola player and chief violist of Arturo Toscanini's NBC Orchestra; a small, plump, snub-nosed young woman who booped mightily through the brass coils of a big French horn. When she had finished the horn part of Mozart's Quintet in E Flat Major, with dignity she dumped the saliva from her horn, rose and went home to practice for this week's concert. The young woman's name was Ellen Stone, and playing with such topnotchers...
BRAHMS: SONATA IN E FLAT MAJOR FOR VIOLA AND PIANO (William Primrose and Gerald Moore; Victor: 6 sides). Brahms wrote this sonata originally for clarinet, then made his own arrangement for viola. NBC Symphony's William Primrose, widely regarded as today's No. 1 violist, gives it an impeccable performance...
...memberships at prices ranging from $1 to $5,000. Of the 130 young men and women who comprise the orchestra, many are on scholarships, pay as little as $1 a year tuition, and especially needy students receive money for rent and clothing. Conductor of the association is tall, slim Violist Leon Barzin (TIME, July 31, 1933), 37, who gathers the students thrice weekly in Carnegie Hall Chamber Music room for rehearsals, works them to a frazzle for two hours and a half, shouts at them when they play badly. He has been conductor since 1930. Though Conductor Barzin does...