Music Weblog

Gil Shaham [b. 1971], a classical violinist, was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, to Israeli husband-and-wife scientists who were working at the time at the University of Illinois.  He returned with them to Israel when he was two, and five years later began violin lessons at Jerusalem’s Rubin Academy of Music.  At age nine he played for several professional violinists, Isaac Stern among them, and a year later made his professional debut as a soloist with the Jerusalem Symphony.

In 1982, when he was 11, Shaham won the Claremont Competition and used that prize to help secure a scholarship to the Juilliard School; he is one of the youngest students to attend that institution.  Along with his sister, the pianist Orli Shaham, Gil also attended classes at Columbia University.  At the age of 19 he was awarded the Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Shaham’s solo career has included appearances with most of the world’s top orchestras.  This list includes the New York, Israel, Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Toronto Symphony Orchestras, and the Russian National Orchestra.  His list of recordings is broad and extensive, including many of the most popular violin concertos—by Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Bruch—but also a number of lesser known pieces which have become more popular thanks to his stewardship.  These include Violin Concertos No. 1 and No. 2 by Polish composer Henryk Wieniawski, violin concertos by Edward Elgar, Bela Bartok and Samuel Barber, and chamber pieces by Messiaen, Prokofiev, Franck, and Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.

Shaham is a multiple Grammy Award winner and has also received acknowledgements for excellence in classical recording from Gramophone and in winning the Grand Prix du Disc.  In 2007 he formed his own record label, Canary Classics, for which he has recorded five CDs thus far.  These include Mozart’s Six Sonatas (Op. 1) with Orli Shaham on piano, and the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio in A minor (Op. 50) with Truls Mørk on cello and Yefim Bronfman on piano.  Shaham’s instrument is the 1699 “Comtesse de Polignac” Stradivarius, on loan to him by the Stradivarius Society of Chicago.

Shaham performs the final part of Carmen Fantasy by Pablo de Sarasate (Berlin Philharmonic; Claudio Abbado, conductor):

Joshua Bell [b. 1967], a native of Bloomington, Indiana, is one of the few child prodigy violinists of the past half-century to go on to a significant and rewarding professional career.  He took up the instrument at the age of four; however, by all accounts he was able to enjoy a perfectly normal childhood outside of his musical studies.  He made his professional debut at 14 with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and he went on to earn a degree from Indiana University in 1989.

His recording career, exclusively with Sony Classical, encompasses nearly 40 CDs at last count.  In addition to capturing on disc some of the more traditional works one associates with the solo violin—the Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Brahms concertos, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, etc.—Bell has also performed on several original movie soundtracks, including Angels and Demons, For Colored Girls and The Red Violin.  Bell also received a Grammy nomination for the premiere of a new work, Gershwin Fantasy, which was based on themes from the opera, Porgy and Bess.  He was also the first to perform specific violin works by Nicholas Maw, John Corigliano and Jay Greenburg, among other current American composers.

One of the reasons for Bell’s immense following—his extraordinary skill with the instrument notwithstanding—is his willingness to make a great many appearances on television and in other public venues.  He has appeared numerous times as a guest on The Tonight Show and CBS Sunday Morning, as well as on public television’s Great Performances and Live From Lincoln Center.

Bell has received a number of awards for his playing as well as for his humanitarianism.  In 2010 he was Instrumentalist of the Year as declared by the organization, Musical America, and he received the Avery Fisher Prize in 2007.  The World Economic Forum named Bell a “young global leader,” and he has received the Humanitarian Award from Seton Hall University.  Bell’s violin is a 1713 Stradivarius, known as the “Gibson ex Huberman.”

In January 2007, Bell participated in a social experiment at the instigation of a Washington Post columnist, where he played the part of a random street busker in one of Washington’s Metro stations.  His 45-minute performance went virtually unnoticed, with fewer than 10 people bothering to stop and listen to his music out of more than a thousand passers-by.  The article that resulted from this experiment won writer Gene Weingarten a Pulitzer Prize in 2008.

Joshua Bell plays the opening to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra [Tokyo, 2005] (Part 1):

(Part 2):

Jean-Pierre Rampal [1922–2000], a native of Marseilles, France, was a classical flautist whose musical talent and sparkling personality is often credited for reviving interest in the flute as a solo instrument.  His father taught the flute at the local conservatory and played first-chair flute in the orchestra, but the younger Rampal instead embarked on a career in medicine.  During WWII while enrolled in his third year of medical school, he was in danger of being conscripted as a forced laborer for transport to Germany.  Instead he joined the underground and resurfaced in Paris under an assumed name, attending the National Conservatory as a flute player.  When the war ended, a Parisian orchestra hired Rampal as its principal flautist.

The late 1940s marked Rampal’s debut as a soloist, where he toured extensively with a close friend from his conservatory days, keyboardist Robert Veyron-Lacroix.  Together they performed a string of highly acclaimed flute–piano recitals, a rarity in the days when “chamber music” almost always involved at least some sort of stringed instrument.  The duo enjoyed rising popularity after performing on French national radio, which was followed by a series of international tours that ultimately led them to make their U.S. debut in 1958.  At the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., Rampal and Veyron-Lacroix performed a program of works by Mozart, Beethoven and Poulenc.

Much of Rampal’s early popularity has been ascribed to the fluidity of his playing technique, a strong contrast to the vibrato-laden methodology favored during his father’s generation and one that stretched back into the 19th century.  Although he did not shy away from more modern pieces, Rampal preferred to perform music from the Baroque period, notably works by Bach, Handel, Telemann, and Scarlatti.  He also recorded a significant amount of flute music by Mozart.

His nickname, “The Man with The Golden Flute,” was not an allusion to his magical prowess, but instead derived from the fact that he owned a solid gold (18K) flute, the only such instrument manufactured (in 1869) by renowned artisan Louis Lot.  Rampal played this instrument exclusively until receiving a 14-karat gold flute from the Haynes Company, a U.S. concern that used a pattern of the original Lot piece to craft its own version in 1958.

In addition to his vast recording and performing career—Rampal’s discography includes more than 60 recordings on the CBS label alone—he also taught a number of students who have gone on to significant flute careers of their own, including James Galway and Robert Stallman.  The awards he received during his lifetime included being named a chevalier to the French Legion of Honor [1966], and grand prizes from multiple organizations on behalf of his many recordings.  Beginning in 1980, the Jean-Pierre Rampal Flute Competition began its tri-annual run in conjunction with the Concours Internationaux de la Ville de Paris.

Rampal performs the second movement of Francis Poulenc’s flute sonata, with the composer at the piano:

Pinchas Zuckerman was born in 1948 in Tel Aviv, Israel.  He studied music with his father from a very young age, experimenting with various instruments before settling on the violin.  He came to the United States in 1962 (age 13) with financial support from violinist Isaac Stern, cellist Pablo Casals, and several charitable foundations.  He studied at the Juilliard School, taking the first place award in the highly prestigious Edgar Leventritt Competition in 1967.  His career has continued unabated for more than 40 years, marked by notable performances with major orchestras around the world.  Zuckerman has also made a name for himself as a conductor and music director, oftentimes appearing in the dual role of performer and orchestra leader while playing any number of well-known violin concertos.

From 1980–87, Zuckerman was music director for the St. Paul [Minn.] Chamber Orchestra and a primary catalyst in that ensemble’s rise to prominence as one of the best small orchestras in the United States.  In addition, he ran summer music festivals for both the Baltimore Symphony and the Dallas Symphony for three seasons each, as well as the South Bank Festival in London.  Zuckerman is also an accomplished chamber musician, having appeared alongside such famous soloists as Itzhak Perlman, Yefim Bronfman, Daniel Barenboim, and the late Jacqueline du Pré.  He is a regular participant at the Santa Fe [N.M.] Chamber Music Festival and created the Zuckerman Chamber Players in 2003.  The group has performed in more than 40 venues since its formation and has recorded several CDs.

In April 1998, Zuckerman was named music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra (NACO) in Ottawa, Canada.  He is the first non-Canadian to hold that post since the orchestra’s inception in 1969.  He is also a member of the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music and he operates the Zuckerman Musical Instrument Fund, which is dedicated to helping orchestra musicians acquire affordable instruments.  Zuckerman has more than 100 recordings to his credit—five with the NACO—and has received 21 Grammy Award nominations, winning twice.  His television appearances have included several performances on Live from Lincoln Center as well as the PBS special Mozart by the Masters.  Zuckerman married Amanda Forsyth in 2004.  She is the principal cellist for the NACO and the daughter of composer Malcolm Forsyth.  He was formerly married to professional musician and novelist Eugenia Zuckerman [1968–1983], and actress Tuesday Weld [1985–1998].  Zuckerman plays a violin built in 1742 by Guarnerius del Gesù.

Zuckerman performs the final movement of Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Israel Philharmonic (Zubin Mehta, conductor):

Yo-Yo Ma was born in Paris in 1955, the son of two Chinese musicians who relocated the family to New York City five years later.  Ma was a true prodigy who began to play the cello at the age of four, having already tried out the violin and viola.  When he was eight years old, Ma appeared on a U.S. television broadcast (along with his older sister), playing in a concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein.  He later studied at Julliard with cellist Leonard Rose but continued his education at Harvard, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1976.  That institution granted him an honorary doctorate in 1991.

Ma has rightfully earned a place as his generation’s top cellist, replacing the legendary Pablo Casals—for whom Ma played at the 1972 Marlboro Music Festival—in classical circles as well as a pop culture figure.  His performances have graced such feature films as Seven Years in Tibet; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; and Memoirs of a Geisha.  He has appeared as himself on a number of television programs, including The Simpsons.  Ma also formed the Silk Road Ensemble, a rotating group of 60-odd musicians who share a heritage of originating from and playing instruments popular in the vicinity of the Silk Road, the ancient Asian trade route that once ran from the eastern Mediterranean to China.  But it is as a classical cellist that Ma has captured the greatest attention.  He performs a wide variety of cello music from the Baroque and Romantic eras—Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Schubert are quite prominent—but also enjoys playing modern works by such late 20th century composers as Corigliano and Glass.  Ma’s primary instrument is a cello crafted by Montagnana in 1733.  He also performs with a Stradivarius given to him by the late Jacqueline du Pré.

Ma has won a number of awards throughout his career, including the Glenn Gould Prize [1999], the National Medal of the Arts [2001], the Sonning Prize [2006], and nearly 20 Grammys for recordings on Sony Classical as diverse as Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante [1993] and Soul of the Tango – Music of Ástor Piazzolla [1999].  His more notable live performances over the past few years have included Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration ceremony in 2008 (part of a quartet that included violinist Itzhak Perlman), and in accompaniment of tenor Placido Domingo at the funeral of Sen. Ted Kennedy in 2009.  He was named a peace ambassador for the United Nations organization in 2006.

Ma performs the first movement of Elgar’s Cello Concerto in a 1997 performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra:

Isaac Stern [1920–2001] emigrated from his birthplace in the Ukraine to San Francisco when he was barely a year old, as his parents escaped the final years of the Russian Revolution.  From early childhood, everyone who came into contact with him recognized his incredible prowess as a musician.  Stern’s parents took the unprecedented step of removing him from school at the age of eight so he could concentrate exclusively on playing the violin.  He made his professional debut at 15, performing the third Saint-Saëns violin concerto with the San Francisco Symphony.  Stern toured throughout the United States and Europe during the late 1940s and early 1950s, appearing with every major orchestra and regularly playing before sellout crowds.  As is expected, his vast collection of recordings includes the violin concertos by Brahms, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn, but also works by Samuel Barber, Igor Stravinsky, and Leonard Bernstein.  He also recorded the violin solo for the movie Fiddler on the Roof.

Stern held strong personal beliefs in the ability of classical music to transcend political differences.  He considered himself to be an ambassador of the art form, helping to open the Soviet Union to cultural exchange during the Cold War years and achieving something similar with a 1979 tour of China—a mere eight years after Richard Nixon held his historic meetings in Peking with Mao.  The documentary film made of Stern’s China trip subsequently earned an Academy Award.  Stern first appeared at New York’s Carnegie Hall at the age of 22, and he never forgot the impact it had on the rest of his career.  When rumors of demolition circulated in the late 1950s, Stern got involved politically and helped save it from destruction.  The main auditorium now bears his name as a memorial.  He was also a champion of young musicians and is credited with the discovery of such future stars as cellist Yo-Yo Ma, plus fellow violinists Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman.  His favorite instrument was a violin built by Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù prior to 1744 and once owned by “The King of the Violin,” Belgian musician and composer Eugène Ysaÿe.

A modest man throughout his life, Stern’s grave in Litchfield County, Connecticut, is marked by a stone that shows only his name, his dates of birth and death, and a single descriptive term—“Fiddler.”

Stern performs the final movement of the Brahms Violin Concerto [1980]: