Enjoy learning of the legacy gifted to us by these great 'cellists, and human beings.
PABLO CASALS
Birthday of Pablo Casals
December 29
By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Even when he was 90 years old, Pablo Casals known as the world's greatest cellist, practiced this instrument for four or five hours every day. Someone asked him why at his age, he still worked so hard on the music, and he responded, "Because I think I am making some progress."
Pablo Casals was born on this day in 1876 and died in 1973. By the age of four, he was playing the piano and by six, he was composing songs with his father. Casals found inspiration in the natural world and in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. His expressive style of playing the cello influenced many others. Throughout his life this virtuoso was an opponent of tyrannical governments including Francisco Franco's.
To Name This Day:
In celebration of this musical genius's birthday, ponder and take to heart one of these pithy quotations of his:
This Special Moment
"Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe; a moment that never was before and never will be again."
Cherish Your Uniqueness
"Do you know who you are? You are unique. In the world, there is no child exactly like you."
Caring
"The capacity to care is the one thing which gives life its deepest meaning."
Human Enterprize
"I am everyday more convinced that the main-spring of any human enterprise must be moral strength and generosity."
Reframing Love Of One's Country
"To love one's country is a splendid thing but why should love stop at the border?"
Article from:
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/days/features.php?id=22055
Birthday of Pablo Casals
December 29
By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Even when he was 90 years old, Pablo Casals known as the world's greatest cellist, practiced this instrument for four or five hours every day. Someone asked him why at his age, he still worked so hard on the music, and he responded, "Because I think I am making some progress."
Pablo Casals was born on this day in 1876 and died in 1973. By the age of four, he was playing the piano and by six, he was composing songs with his father. Casals found inspiration in the natural world and in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. His expressive style of playing the cello influenced many others. Throughout his life this virtuoso was an opponent of tyrannical governments including Francisco Franco's.
To Name This Day:
In celebration of this musical genius's birthday, ponder and take to heart one of these pithy quotations of his:
This Special Moment
"Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe; a moment that never was before and never will be again."
Cherish Your Uniqueness
"Do you know who you are? You are unique. In the world, there is no child exactly like you."
Caring
"The capacity to care is the one thing which gives life its deepest meaning."
Human Enterprize
"I am everyday more convinced that the main-spring of any human enterprise must be moral strength and generosity."
Reframing Love Of One's Country
"To love one's country is a splendid thing but why should love stop at the border?"
Article from:
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/days/features.php?id=22055
GREGOR PIATIGORSKY
by Robert Battey
One of the pre-eminent string players of the 20th century, Gregor Piatigorsky was born in Ukraine in 1903, and died in Los Angeles in 1976. His international solo career lasted over 40 years, and especially during the 1940's and early 1950's he was the world's premier touring cello virtuoso -- Casals was in retirement, Feuermann had died, and the three artists who were to succeed Piatigorsky (Starker, Rose, and Rostropovich) were still in their formative stages. His one true peer, Fournier, was limited in his traveling abilities by polio. Thus, Piatigorsky had the limelight almost to himself. He was gregarious, loved to travel and perform anywhere, and he hobnobbed as easily with farmers in small towns as he did with Toscanini, Stravinsky, Rubinstein, and Schoenberg. It was a legendary career.
He began to play at age 7, and was accepted as a student at the Moscow Conservatory two years later. By age 15 he was principal cellist of the Bolshoi Opera. Escaping the upheaval of the Russian Revolution in 1921, he studied with Julius Klengel (also Feuermann's teacher) in Leipzig, and at age 21 became principal cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic under Furtwängler. In 1929 he left the orchestra to pursue a solo career. His first marriage (to Lyda Antik) ended in divorce (she later married Fournier!). He then married Jacqueline Rothschild and moved to America in 1939, becoming a US citizen three years later.
He lived first on some property he had bought in the Adirondacks (and helped found the Meadowmount School with Ivan Galamian), then moved to Philadelphia (where he succeeded Feuermann as cello professor at Curtis), and finally settled in Los Angeles in 1950, where he taught with Heifetz at USC. He was a dedicated teacher, and the quality of his studio was legendary. His pupils included Lorne Munroe, Mischa Maisky, Nathaniel Rosen, Stephen Kates, Lawrence Lesser, Dennis Brott, John Martin, Christine Walewska, Rafael Wallfisch, Leslie Parnas, and countless others.
There are too many highlights in his career to mention them all. His annual tours took him throughout the world, appearing with the greatest orchestras and conductors of the time. He made the first recording of the Shostakovich Sonata, collaborated with Stravinsky on his Suite Italienne, premiered the Hindemith Concerto of 1940 and Sonata of 1948, and commissioned or premiered many other works including the Walton Concerto in 1957. He was also a prolific arranger, and many of his transcriptions are published and performed the world over. Piatigorsky always loved chamber music, and was a member of three different piano trios - first with Artur Schnabel and Carl Flesch, next with Vladimir Horowitz and Nathan Milstein, and finally with Artur Rubinstein and Jascha Heifetz!
Piatigorsky's recording career was fairly prolific, if somewhat spotty. His earliest recording, the Rococo Variations from 1925 on Parlaphone, already displays a well-formed sense of style and virtuosity, an "electric" sound that would become his hallmark. In the 1930's and 40's, he did most of his recording in London, for HMV or Columbia; in the 1950's and 60's he was an RCA artist. Among his finest solo recordings are an especially beautiful Don Quixote with Munch and the Boston Symphony, the Brahms E minor Sonata with Rubinstein, the Walton Concerto with Munch, the Debussy Sonata with Lukas Foss, and many of his short pieces from the HMV period. The specter of Casals kept him (and his classmate Feuermann) from recording any solo Bach, but otherwise his recordings covered all facets of the repertoire: Beethoven, Brahms, and Strauss sonatas, Dvorak, Saint-Saëns, Schumann, and Brahms Double concertos, encore pieces, etc. The bulk of his work for RCA consisted of chamber music recordings with Heifetz; they focused on works with piano or string repertoire other than quartets.
Piatigorsky was a very tall man, well over six feet, and he handled his Stradivarius like a toy. He would stride briskly onstage through the orchestra, holding the instrument horizontally with one hand, like a lance. He often closed his eyes and turned his handsome face to his right as he played, giving a regal bearing to his performing profile.
Due to his size, all the basic playing actions were simple for him; he had a huge sound, and drew full bows with same effort and extension that a smaller player like Casals needed for only half the bow. He could produce the widest spectrum of colors, from any spot on the bow. He delighted in quick changes of articulation, even if just for a few notes. Most dazzling of all was his staccato stroke, which is wonderfully showcased in a Kultur video entitled "Heifetz/Piatigorsky." There, in an arrangement he made of some Schubert Variations, he displays both a down- and up- bow staccato that is almost beyond belief, along with many other signature effects. His own set of variations on the famous 24th Caprice of Paganini is a minefield of specialized bowing challenges; no one has been able to play it with his ease and flair, though many have tried.
His left hand too was a law unto itself... and he ambled nimbly and effortlessly around the fingerboard. Trills were, again, "electric," and he drew incomparable richness from the lower strings....On balance, though, his playing displays a combination of stylishness, verve, and humanity that no one has ever matched.
All of Piatigorsky's concerto and chamber music recordings for RCA are available on CD; there are at least two discs of recital works that have not been reissued, however. Most of the earlier material is also available on various historical labels such as Testament, Biddulph, Arlecchino, and Pearl. Interesting historical tidbits include the octave-jumping in the repetitive bridge passage leading into the 5th Rococo variation (1925); the inexplicable blending of pizzicato and arco triplets in the string accompaniment to the slow movement of the Schumann Concerto (1934); the added embellishments in the Chopin Polonaise, much different than the standard Feuermann version (1940); and another version of the passage that now consists of glissando harmonics in the second movement of the Shostakovich Sonata (1940).
As mentioned, the Don Quixote with Munch is one of the greatest recordings ever of the work (which has had many great recordings, all of them on RCA for some reason), and the Kultur video belongs in every cellist's collection. There is a spectacular BBC film of the UK premiere of the Walton Concerto; God willing, someday they will see fit to make it available to the general public. For me, though, the quintessential Piatigorsky is heard on his live recordings and airchecks, despite sometimes poor reproduction. When onstage he seemed to draw energy and inspiration from his colleagues and from the audience; despite the occasional technical slip the music-making is always white-hot. There is, or used to be, a CD available of Schelomo with Rodzinsky and the NY Philharmonic from 1944. .... it is a spellbinding portrait of a great performing artist at the peak of his powers, captured in full flight. Experiences like that heard on this recording are simply not to be had today; no one gives so much of himself anymore.
Piatigorsky's legacy is deep and broad. Aside from the transcriptions that we all play, the annual seminar in his name at USC, where gifted young cellists from all over the world come to learn from top solo professionals, and the wonderful recordings and films, above all there is the legacy of spirit. Every Piatigorsky pupil I've ever spoken to had only the warmest praise for the man, his teaching, and his devotion to the fullest development of each student. His artistic vision has been passed down through younger artists, and thence to their pupils throughout the world. He has left the music world incomparably richer for having passed through it, and all of us are beneficiaries of his life.
[I am indebted to Dr. Joram Piatigorsky and Ms. Maggie Bartley for background information]
Webmaster: "webmaster"
Director: John Michel
Copyright © 1995-2000 Internet Cello Society
LEV ARONSON
by Robert Battey
One of the pre-eminent string players of the 20th century, Gregor Piatigorsky was born in Ukraine in 1903, and died in Los Angeles in 1976. His international solo career lasted over 40 years, and especially during the 1940's and early 1950's he was the world's premier touring cello virtuoso -- Casals was in retirement, Feuermann had died, and the three artists who were to succeed Piatigorsky (Starker, Rose, and Rostropovich) were still in their formative stages. His one true peer, Fournier, was limited in his traveling abilities by polio. Thus, Piatigorsky had the limelight almost to himself. He was gregarious, loved to travel and perform anywhere, and he hobnobbed as easily with farmers in small towns as he did with Toscanini, Stravinsky, Rubinstein, and Schoenberg. It was a legendary career.
He began to play at age 7, and was accepted as a student at the Moscow Conservatory two years later. By age 15 he was principal cellist of the Bolshoi Opera. Escaping the upheaval of the Russian Revolution in 1921, he studied with Julius Klengel (also Feuermann's teacher) in Leipzig, and at age 21 became principal cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic under Furtwängler. In 1929 he left the orchestra to pursue a solo career. His first marriage (to Lyda Antik) ended in divorce (she later married Fournier!). He then married Jacqueline Rothschild and moved to America in 1939, becoming a US citizen three years later.
He lived first on some property he had bought in the Adirondacks (and helped found the Meadowmount School with Ivan Galamian), then moved to Philadelphia (where he succeeded Feuermann as cello professor at Curtis), and finally settled in Los Angeles in 1950, where he taught with Heifetz at USC. He was a dedicated teacher, and the quality of his studio was legendary. His pupils included Lorne Munroe, Mischa Maisky, Nathaniel Rosen, Stephen Kates, Lawrence Lesser, Dennis Brott, John Martin, Christine Walewska, Rafael Wallfisch, Leslie Parnas, and countless others.
There are too many highlights in his career to mention them all. His annual tours took him throughout the world, appearing with the greatest orchestras and conductors of the time. He made the first recording of the Shostakovich Sonata, collaborated with Stravinsky on his Suite Italienne, premiered the Hindemith Concerto of 1940 and Sonata of 1948, and commissioned or premiered many other works including the Walton Concerto in 1957. He was also a prolific arranger, and many of his transcriptions are published and performed the world over. Piatigorsky always loved chamber music, and was a member of three different piano trios - first with Artur Schnabel and Carl Flesch, next with Vladimir Horowitz and Nathan Milstein, and finally with Artur Rubinstein and Jascha Heifetz!
Piatigorsky's recording career was fairly prolific, if somewhat spotty. His earliest recording, the Rococo Variations from 1925 on Parlaphone, already displays a well-formed sense of style and virtuosity, an "electric" sound that would become his hallmark. In the 1930's and 40's, he did most of his recording in London, for HMV or Columbia; in the 1950's and 60's he was an RCA artist. Among his finest solo recordings are an especially beautiful Don Quixote with Munch and the Boston Symphony, the Brahms E minor Sonata with Rubinstein, the Walton Concerto with Munch, the Debussy Sonata with Lukas Foss, and many of his short pieces from the HMV period. The specter of Casals kept him (and his classmate Feuermann) from recording any solo Bach, but otherwise his recordings covered all facets of the repertoire: Beethoven, Brahms, and Strauss sonatas, Dvorak, Saint-Saëns, Schumann, and Brahms Double concertos, encore pieces, etc. The bulk of his work for RCA consisted of chamber music recordings with Heifetz; they focused on works with piano or string repertoire other than quartets.
Piatigorsky was a very tall man, well over six feet, and he handled his Stradivarius like a toy. He would stride briskly onstage through the orchestra, holding the instrument horizontally with one hand, like a lance. He often closed his eyes and turned his handsome face to his right as he played, giving a regal bearing to his performing profile.
Due to his size, all the basic playing actions were simple for him; he had a huge sound, and drew full bows with same effort and extension that a smaller player like Casals needed for only half the bow. He could produce the widest spectrum of colors, from any spot on the bow. He delighted in quick changes of articulation, even if just for a few notes. Most dazzling of all was his staccato stroke, which is wonderfully showcased in a Kultur video entitled "Heifetz/Piatigorsky." There, in an arrangement he made of some Schubert Variations, he displays both a down- and up- bow staccato that is almost beyond belief, along with many other signature effects. His own set of variations on the famous 24th Caprice of Paganini is a minefield of specialized bowing challenges; no one has been able to play it with his ease and flair, though many have tried.
His left hand too was a law unto itself... and he ambled nimbly and effortlessly around the fingerboard. Trills were, again, "electric," and he drew incomparable richness from the lower strings....On balance, though, his playing displays a combination of stylishness, verve, and humanity that no one has ever matched.
All of Piatigorsky's concerto and chamber music recordings for RCA are available on CD; there are at least two discs of recital works that have not been reissued, however. Most of the earlier material is also available on various historical labels such as Testament, Biddulph, Arlecchino, and Pearl. Interesting historical tidbits include the octave-jumping in the repetitive bridge passage leading into the 5th Rococo variation (1925); the inexplicable blending of pizzicato and arco triplets in the string accompaniment to the slow movement of the Schumann Concerto (1934); the added embellishments in the Chopin Polonaise, much different than the standard Feuermann version (1940); and another version of the passage that now consists of glissando harmonics in the second movement of the Shostakovich Sonata (1940).
As mentioned, the Don Quixote with Munch is one of the greatest recordings ever of the work (which has had many great recordings, all of them on RCA for some reason), and the Kultur video belongs in every cellist's collection. There is a spectacular BBC film of the UK premiere of the Walton Concerto; God willing, someday they will see fit to make it available to the general public. For me, though, the quintessential Piatigorsky is heard on his live recordings and airchecks, despite sometimes poor reproduction. When onstage he seemed to draw energy and inspiration from his colleagues and from the audience; despite the occasional technical slip the music-making is always white-hot. There is, or used to be, a CD available of Schelomo with Rodzinsky and the NY Philharmonic from 1944. .... it is a spellbinding portrait of a great performing artist at the peak of his powers, captured in full flight. Experiences like that heard on this recording are simply not to be had today; no one gives so much of himself anymore.
Piatigorsky's legacy is deep and broad. Aside from the transcriptions that we all play, the annual seminar in his name at USC, where gifted young cellists from all over the world come to learn from top solo professionals, and the wonderful recordings and films, above all there is the legacy of spirit. Every Piatigorsky pupil I've ever spoken to had only the warmest praise for the man, his teaching, and his devotion to the fullest development of each student. His artistic vision has been passed down through younger artists, and thence to their pupils throughout the world. He has left the music world incomparably richer for having passed through it, and all of us are beneficiaries of his life.
[I am indebted to Dr. Joram Piatigorsky and Ms. Maggie Bartley for background information]
Webmaster: "webmaster"
Director: John Michel
Copyright © 1995-2000 Internet Cello Society
LEV ARONSON
LEV ARONSON
June 09, 2013 10:36 PM CDT June 09, 2013 10:41 PM CDT
SMU hosts Lev Aronson Legacy Festival Week
Lev Aronson
Scott Cantrell, The Dallas Morning News, Classical Music Critic
scantrell@dallasnews.com
Published: 09 June 2013 10:36 PM
Thanks to recordings, great musical performers can be remembered, and treasured, long after they’re gone. Great teachers who form those performers, though, tend to be forgotten with the passing of their students.
Consider the case of Lev Aronson, for two decades principal cellist of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and a renowned teacher in his day. Among his protégés, Lynn Harrell and Ralph Kirshbaum have had high-visibility concert careers. Christopher Adkins is the superb principal cellist of today’s DSO.
Yet another of Aronson’s protégés, cellist and conductor Brian Thornton, is out to revive interest in, and respect for, his teacher. To that end, he has organized the Lev Aronson Legacy Festival Week, running Monday through Saturday at Southern Methodist University’s Owen Fine Arts Center and planned as an annual event.
The festival will include recitals by Harrell, Kirshbaum, Adkins and Tom Landschoot, master classes for cello students and sessions on subjects as varied as “Storytelling With the Cello — Young Audiences” and “Intro to Self Marketing.” Thornton will provide a presentation on Aronson’s life and work.
“I traveled to SMU to start a scholarship in Lev’s name,” Thornton says. “As I was talking to students and professors, I realized that not a lot of people knew about him. I felt like that was a failure on my part as his student, and it was something I wanted to bring back.
“He affected so many people, as a great cellist and cello teacher. It was time to bring back all the great stuff he brought to his students.”
Born in Germany in 1912 and raised in Latvia, Aronson began playing professionally at age 13. Between the World Wars he studied in Berlin with the famed cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and began a concert and recording career.
With the German occupation of Latvia, Aronson, who was Jewish, was interned in a series of German concentration camps. His cellos were confiscated, never to be seen again. He was lucky enough to survive, though, and escape a subsequent Soviet imprisonment. After four years without a cello, he finally got one with help from Piatigorsky, who also helped him escape to the United States.
Auditioned by Antal Dorati, then music director of the DSO, Aronson was hired to share the principal cello stand with the great Janos Starker, who died April 28, 2013. When Starker left the next year, (after Arpnson was hired), Aronson assumed the first chair, remaining there for two decades.
He also taught at SMU for two periods, with a decade in between at Baylor University, and co-authored a classic two-volume work on cello technique. (The Complete 'Cellist) He died in 1988 at 76.
“His passion was incredible,” Thornton, a cellist in the Cleveland Orchestra, says of Aronson. “His experience in the Holocaust had kind of taken away his belief in religion, and even, probably, in most people. Music was the one thing he really latched on to and relied on for the rest of his life. That really came out in his lessons and his approach to students.
“He would mention technical aspects to get at a certain idea in the music, but he was all about telling stories with the music, always making statements when playing — a metaphorical approach. His own playing had a beautiful sound, and a sound that had character, that would say things about music when he played. Even his physical approach to the cello was demonstrative and made a big impression.”
SMU hosts Lev Aronson Legacy Festival Week
Lev Aronson
Scott Cantrell, The Dallas Morning News, Classical Music Critic
scantrell@dallasnews.com
Published: 09 June 2013 10:36 PM
Thanks to recordings, great musical performers can be remembered, and treasured, long after they’re gone. Great teachers who form those performers, though, tend to be forgotten with the passing of their students.
Consider the case of Lev Aronson, for two decades principal cellist of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and a renowned teacher in his day. Among his protégés, Lynn Harrell and Ralph Kirshbaum have had high-visibility concert careers. Christopher Adkins is the superb principal cellist of today’s DSO.
Yet another of Aronson’s protégés, cellist and conductor Brian Thornton, is out to revive interest in, and respect for, his teacher. To that end, he has organized the Lev Aronson Legacy Festival Week, running Monday through Saturday at Southern Methodist University’s Owen Fine Arts Center and planned as an annual event.
The festival will include recitals by Harrell, Kirshbaum, Adkins and Tom Landschoot, master classes for cello students and sessions on subjects as varied as “Storytelling With the Cello — Young Audiences” and “Intro to Self Marketing.” Thornton will provide a presentation on Aronson’s life and work.
“I traveled to SMU to start a scholarship in Lev’s name,” Thornton says. “As I was talking to students and professors, I realized that not a lot of people knew about him. I felt like that was a failure on my part as his student, and it was something I wanted to bring back.
“He affected so many people, as a great cellist and cello teacher. It was time to bring back all the great stuff he brought to his students.”
Born in Germany in 1912 and raised in Latvia, Aronson began playing professionally at age 13. Between the World Wars he studied in Berlin with the famed cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and began a concert and recording career.
With the German occupation of Latvia, Aronson, who was Jewish, was interned in a series of German concentration camps. His cellos were confiscated, never to be seen again. He was lucky enough to survive, though, and escape a subsequent Soviet imprisonment. After four years without a cello, he finally got one with help from Piatigorsky, who also helped him escape to the United States.
Auditioned by Antal Dorati, then music director of the DSO, Aronson was hired to share the principal cello stand with the great Janos Starker, who died April 28, 2013. When Starker left the next year, (after Arpnson was hired), Aronson assumed the first chair, remaining there for two decades.
He also taught at SMU for two periods, with a decade in between at Baylor University, and co-authored a classic two-volume work on cello technique. (The Complete 'Cellist) He died in 1988 at 76.
“His passion was incredible,” Thornton, a cellist in the Cleveland Orchestra, says of Aronson. “His experience in the Holocaust had kind of taken away his belief in religion, and even, probably, in most people. Music was the one thing he really latched on to and relied on for the rest of his life. That really came out in his lessons and his approach to students.
“He would mention technical aspects to get at a certain idea in the music, but he was all about telling stories with the music, always making statements when playing — a metaphorical approach. His own playing had a beautiful sound, and a sound that had character, that would say things about music when he played. Even his physical approach to the cello was demonstrative and made a big impression.”
- A new recording by Thornton and pianist Spencer Myer, featuring pieces composed by and associated with Aronson, will be available at the festival. The festival also will include a presentation on Aronson and other musicians during the Holocaust by Frances Brent, author of the 2009 book The Lost Cellos of Lev Aronson.
Printed in Dallas Times Herald: January 14, 1979