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73-453: Poème , Op. 25, is a work for violin and orchestra written by Ernest Chausson in 1896. It is a staple of the violinist's repertoire, has very often been recorded and performed, and is generally considered Chausson's best-known and most-loved composition. Poème was written in response to a request from Eugène Ysaÿe for a violin concerto . Chausson felt unequal to the task of a concerto, writing to Ysaÿe: "I hardly know where to begin with

146-436: A bit he produced heart-rending beauty. Violinist Yehudi Menuhin comments at length about Szigeti in his own memoirs, remarking as many others did on Szigeti's intellectual approach to music, but in a somewhat more critical fashion: Apart from Enesco , he was the most cultivated violinist I have ever known but while Enesco was a force of nature, Szigeti, slender, small, anxious, was a beautifully fashioned piece of porcelain,

219-497: A certain laziness and indifference brought on by the then-typical life of a young prodigy violinist. He had grown accustomed to playing crowd-pleasing salon miniatures and dazzling virtuosic encores without much thought. He knew little of the works of the great masters; he could play them, but not fully understand them. As Szigeti put it, Busoni—particularly through their careful study of Bach's Chaconne —"shook me once and for all out of my adolescent complacency". In 1913, Szigeti

292-514: A comic performance of Frantisek Drdla 's Souvenir in the film Hollywood Canteen . During the 1950s, Szigeti began to develop arthritis in his hands and his playing deteriorated. Despite his weakened technical mastery, his intellect and musical expression were still strong, and he continued to draw large audiences to his concerts. In Naples , Italy, in November 1956, just after the Soviets crushed

365-657: A companion piece to "Opus 27, No. 1" ( Piano Sonata No. 13 in E-flat major , 1800–01), paired in same opus number, with both being subtitled Sonata quasi una Fantasia , the only two of the kind in all of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas. Furthermore, the Piano Sonata, Op. 27 No. 2, in C-sharp minor is also catalogued as "Sonata No. 14", because it is the fourteenth sonata composed by Ludwig van Beethoven. Given composers' inconsistent or non-existent assignment of opus numbers, especially during

438-420: A composer's juvenilia are often numbered after other works, even though they may be some of the composer's first completed works. To indicate the specific place of a given work within a music catalogue , the opus number is paired with a cardinal number ; for example, Beethoven 's Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor (1801, nicknamed Moonlight Sonata ) is "Opus 27, No. 2", whose work-number identifies it as

511-571: A composer's works, as in the sets of string quartets by Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827); Haydn's Op. 76, the Erdödy quartets (1796–97), comprises six discrete quartets consecutively numbered Op. 76 No. 1 – Op. 76 No. 6; whilst Beethoven's Op. 59, the Rasumovsky quartets (1805–06), comprises String Quartet No. 7, String Quartet No. 8, and String Quartet No. 9. From about 1800, composers usually assigned an opus number to

584-453: A composition, Prokofiev occasionally assigned a new opus number to the revision; thus Symphony No. 4 is two thematically related but discrete works: Symphony No. 4, Op. 47, written in 1929; and Symphony No. 4, Op. 112, a large-scale revision written in 1947. Likewise, depending upon the edition, the original version of Piano Sonata No. 5 in C major, is cataloged both as Op. 38 and as Op. 135. Despite being used in more or less normal fashion by

657-533: A concerto, which is a huge undertaking, the devil's own task. But I can cope with a shorter work. It will be in very free form with several passages in which the violin plays alone." It was commenced in April 1896 and finished on 29 June, and was written while Chausson was holidaying in Florence, Italy. He wrote three different versions of Poème : with orchestra; with piano accompaniment (later rewritten by other hands); and

730-402: A famous French flutist of the day, as well as the young singer John McCormack , were also part of these tours. The most significant of the new contacts was Busoni. The great pianist and composer became Szigeti's mentor during these formative years, and the two would remain close friends until Busoni's death in 1924. By Szigeti's own admission, before meeting Busoni his life was characterized by

803-523: A friendship that would last until Bartók's death in 1945. Szigeti was allowed to visit Bartok for the last time in 1943 at Mount Sinai Hospital (Manhattan) , New York with his illness worsening, reading Turkish poems while they spread out on his hospital bed. In 1917, having by then made a full recovery, at age 25 Szigeti was appointed Professor of Violin at the Geneva Conservatory of Music . Szigeti said that this job, although generally satisfying,

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876-522: A general strike, and the trains were not running. His scheduled concert could not go on as planned, but he was forced to stay in Berlin for "interminable days" while the Putsch ran its course. Szigeti writes: "... the impossibility of communicating by phone or wire with my wife--whose condition I pictured with the somewhat lurid pessimism usual to young prospective fathers--was certainly a greater torment to me than all

949-458: A man of whom I was very fond". During his time in America, Szigeti took to writing; his memoirs, With Strings Attached: Reminiscences and Reflections were published in 1947. The New York Times reviewed it favorably: although in their description the book was "constructed along utterly anarchistic lines, with each episode and anecdote left pretty much on its own", they asserted that "It also has

1022-526: A mountain cliff after takeoff from an intermediate stop in Las Vegas, killing everyone on board. In 1950, Szigeti was detained at Ellis Island upon returning from a European concert tour and was held for five days under the Internal Security Act . He was released after an Immigration and Naturalization Service inquiry cleared him of unrevealed charges. At the time of his release from Ellis Island,

1095-553: A number of important early-twentieth-century composers, including Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and Anton Webern (1883–1945), opus numbers became less common in the later part of the twentieth century. To manage inconsistent opus-number usages – especially by composers of the Baroque (1600–1750) and of the Classical (1720–1830) music eras – musicologists have developed comprehensive and unambiguous catalogue number-systems for

1168-481: A priceless Sèvres vase. Curiously for a Hungarian, from whom one expects wild, energetic, spontaneous qualities, Szigeti travelled even farther up a one-way road of deliberate intellectualism. A young accompanist who worked with Szigeti told me that two hours concentration wouldn't get them beyond the first three bars of a sonata--so much analysis and ratiocination went into his practice ... A similar persnicketiness marked his adjudication. Shortly before he died in 1973, he

1241-403: A quiet sincerity which grew upon the audience, though not with the virility and sweep that other violinists find ... it is clear that Mr. Szigeti is a player to command esteem and respect for his musicianship, for the genuineness of his interpretations, and his artistic style. Among his fellow musicians, Szigeti was widely admired and respected. Violinist Nathan Milstein wrote that Szigeti...

1314-562: A recently discovered version for violin, string quartet and piano, a companion to his Concert in D for piano, violin and string quartet, Op. 21 (1892). The solo violin parts of these versions are identical except for one minor detail. The work is notionally in the key of E-flat , and lasts about 16 minutes. It was dedicated to Ysaÿe, who gave its early performances. Chausson initially called it Le Chant de l'amour triomphant , then changed it to Poème symphonique , and finally to simply Poème . The first two rejected titles are crossed out on

1387-776: A result, the plural opera of opus tends to be avoided in English. In other languages such as German, however, it remains common. In the arts, an opus number usually denotes a work of musical composition , a practice and usage established in the seventeenth century when composers identified their works with an opus number. In the eighteenth century, publishers usually assigned opus numbers when publishing groups of like compositions, usually in sets of three, six or twelve compositions. Consequently, opus numbers are not usually in chronological order, unpublished compositions usually had no opus number, and numeration gaps and sequential duplications occurred when publishers issued contemporaneous editions of

1460-571: A sonata recital at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. ) During the 1930s, 1940s and into the 1950s, Szigeti recorded extensively, leaving a significant legacy. Notable recordings include the above-mentioned Library of Congress sonata recital; the studio recording of Bartók's Contrasts with Benny Goodman on clarinet and the composer at the piano; the violin concertos of Beethoven , Brahms , Mendelssohn , Prokofiev (No. 1) and Bloch under

1533-636: A work or set of works upon publication. After approximately 1900, they tended to assign an opus number to a composition whether published or not. However, practices were not always perfectly consistent or logical. For example, early in his career, Beethoven selectively numbered his compositions (some published without opus numbers), yet in later years, he published early works with high opus numbers. Likewise, some posthumously published works were given high opus numbers by publishers, even though some of them were written early in Beethoven's career. Since his death in 1827,

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1606-438: Is happy, doing wonders with her gardening, chicken and rabbit raising, preserve and pâté de foie making. She doesn't budge from our place, doesn't want to come back to New York even for a visit, which I, for one, can well understand! Two dogs, an aviary full of exotic birds, tomatoes, grapes, strawberries, asparagus, artichokes, lovely flowers (camellias too!), right in our own little world. Szigeti narrowly escaped being killed in

1679-559: Is undiminished up to this day. Starker then describes a recital he attended late in Szigeti's career, illustrating both the extent to which Szigeti was suffering from arthritis and his ability to still communicate his musical ideas effectively: "He invited me to his recital in Town Hall ... the first few minutes were excruciating: as I saw later, his fingers had deteriorated to the point that he had almost no flesh on them. But once he loosened up

1752-503: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , Boris Schwarz commented: Szigeti's performing technique was not always flawless and his tone lacked sensuous beauty, although it acquired a spiritual quality in moments of inspiration ... Szigeti held the bow in an old-fashioned way, with the elbow close to the body, and produced much emphatic power, but not without extraneous sounds. Minor reservations, however, were swept aside by

1825-465: The New York Times reported that Szigeti had been a "sponsor or patron" of committees or organizations viewed as " subversive " by the U.S. government. Szigeti said after his release that he had never belonged to any political organization in his life, but that gave money or loaned his name to "this cause or that" during the war. The following year, he became a naturalized American citizen. In 1960,

1898-586: The Baroque (1600–1750) and the Classical (1750–1827) eras, musicologists have developed other catalogue-number systems; among them the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV-number) and the Köchel-Verzeichnis (K- and KV-numbers), which enumerate the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , respectively. In the classical period , the Latin word opus ("work", "labour"), plural opera ,

1971-711: The Russian Revolution of 1917. They married in 1919. In 1925, Szigeti met Leopold Stokowski and played the Bach Chaconne in D minor for him. Less than two weeks later, Szigeti received a telegram from Stokowski's manager in Philadelphia inviting him to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra later that year: it was his American debut. Szigeti had never played with an American orchestra before, nor heard one, and later he wrote of suffering stage fright . He

2044-518: The exposition could not have been written without the inspiration – or, indeed, the direct involvement – of Ysaÿe himself. This was later confirmed by Ysaÿe, who acknowledged he wrote the double-stopping "over Chausson's framework". Antony Tudor set Poème as a ballet called Jardin aux lilas ; it premiered in London in 1936 and was staged in the US in 1940 as Lilac Garden . Opus number In music ,

2117-492: The opus number is the "work number" that is assigned to a musical composition , or to a set of compositions, to indicate the chronological order of the composer 's publication of that work. Opus numbers are used to distinguish among compositions with similar titles; the word is abbreviated as "Op." for a single work, or "Opp." when referring to more than one work. Opus numbers do not necessarily indicate chronological order of composition. For example, posthumous publications of

2190-538: The Hungarian uprising, as soon as he walked onto the stage the audience burst into wild applause and shouts of Viva l’Ungheria! (Italian for "Long live Hungary!"), delaying the concert for nearly fifteen minutes. In 1960 Szigeti officially retired from performing, and returned to Switzerland with his wife. There he devoted himself primarily to teaching, although he still traveled regularly to judge international violin competitions. Top-class students from all over Europe and

2263-637: The Mediterranean coast of Spain. At a party hosted by the Catalan painter Santiago Rusiñol , Ysaÿe and Chausson's wife on piano gave an impromptu sight-read performance of Poème ; local townspeople who overheard it demanded it be encored three times. Present at the party were Enrique Granados and possibly Isaac Albéniz . Poème' s formal premiere was at the Nancy Conservatoire on 27 December 1896, conducted by Guy Ropartz , with Ysaÿe as soloist. But it

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2336-964: The Mendelssohn heirs published (and cataloged) them as the Italian Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90 , and as the Reformation Symphony No. 5 in D major and D minor, Op. 107 . While many of the works of Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) were given opus numbers, these did not always bear a logical relationship to the order in which the works were written or published. To achieve better sales, some publishers, such as N. Simrock , preferred to present less experienced composers as being well established, by giving some relatively early works much higher opus numbers than their chronological order would merit. In other cases, Dvořák gave lower opus numbers to new works to be able to sell them to other publishers outside his contract obligations. This way it could happen that

2409-676: The United States came to study under him. One of these students was Arnold Steinhardt , who spent the summer of 1962 with Szigeti. He came to the conclusion that "Joseph Szigeti was a template for the musician I would like to become: inquisitive, innovative, sensitive, feeling, informed". Toward the end of his life, Szigeti suffered from frail health. He was put on strict diets and had several stays in hospital, but his friends asserted that this did nothing to dampen his characteristic cheerfulness. He died in Lucerne , Switzerland on February 19, 1973, at

2482-470: The age of 80. The New York Times ran a front-page obituary that ended with this 1966 quote from violinist Yehudi Menuhin : We must be humbly grateful that the breed of cultured and chivalrous violin virtuosos, aristocrats as human beings and as musicians, has survived into our hostile age in the person of Joseph Szigeti. In 1918, while teaching in Geneva, Szigeti met and fell in love with Wanda Ostrowska. She

2555-491: The batons of such conductors as Bruno Walter , Hamilton Harty and Sir Thomas Beecham ; and various works by J.S. Bach, Busoni, Corelli , Handel and Mozart . One of his last recordings was of the Six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin by Bach; although his technique had deteriorated noticeably by that time, the recording is prized for Szigeti's insight and depth of interpretation. In 1944, Szigeti joined Jack Benny in

2628-544: The best work of an artist with the term magnum opus . In Latin, the words opus (singular) and opera (plural) are related to the words opera (singular) and operae (plural), which gave rise to the Italian words opera (singular) and opere (plural), likewise meaning "work". In contemporary English, the word opera has specifically come to denote the dramatic musical genres of opera or ballet, which were developed in Italy. As

2701-410: The boy was sent to live with his grandparents in the little Carpathian town of Máramaros-Sziget (hence the name Szigeti ). He grew up surrounded by music, as the town band was composed almost entirely of his uncles. After a few informal lessons on the cimbalom from his aunt, he received his first lessons on the violin from his Uncle Bernat at the age of six. Szigeti quickly showed a talent for

2774-536: The case of Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47); after his death, the heirs published many compositions with opus numbers that Mendelssohn did not assign. In life, he published two symphonies ( Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 11 ; and Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56 ), furthermore he published his symphony-cantata Lobgesang , Op. 52, which was posthumously counted as his Symphony No. 2; yet, he chronologically wrote symphonies between symphonies Nos. 1 and 2, which he withdrew for personal and compositional reasons; nevertheless,

2847-466: The cases of César Franck (1822–1890), Béla Bartók (1881–1945), and Alban Berg (1885–1935), who initially numbered, but then stopped numbering their compositions. Carl Nielsen (1865–1931) and Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) were also inconsistent in their approaches. Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) was consistent and assigned an opus number to a composition before composing it; at his death, he left fragmentary and planned, but numbered, works. In revising

2920-490: The couple returned to Europe and settled near Lake Geneva in Switzerland, close to the home of their daughter and son-in-law. They remained there for the rest of their lives. Wanda died in 1971, predeceasing her husband by two years. Szigeti found his final resting place at the cemetery of Clarens next to his wife. Their daughter Irene and son-in-law Nikita Magaloff are buried just a few meters from their grave. Writing in

2993-464: The extant manuscripts. The original title came from the 1881 romantic novella The Song of Triumphant Love  [ it ; ru ] ( Le Chant de l'amour triomphant ; Песнь торжествующей любви) by the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev , who lived on the estate of the famed mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot and her husband near Paris; all three were acquaintances of Chausson's. The Viardots' daughter Marianne

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3066-415: The first four symphonies to be composed were published after the last five; and (c) the last five symphonies were not published in order of composition. The New World Symphony originally was published as No. 5, later was known as No. 8, and definitively was renumbered as No. 9 in the critical editions published in the 1950s. Other examples of composers' historically inconsistent opus-number usages include

3139-577: The force of his musical personality. This comment illustrates well the general nature of Szigeti's reception by both critics and fellow musicians: while his musical insights, intellect, and depth of interpretation were almost universally lauded, the purely technical aspect of his playing was awarded a more mixed reaction. His tone in particular seems to have been occasionally uneven from performance to performance. A 1926 recital review in The New York Times, for example, laments that ... his performance

3212-587: The formidable program, the event received mention only by a photograph in the Sunday supplement of the Berliner Tageblatt captioned: "A Musical Prodigy: Josef Szigeti". Szigeti spent the next few months with a summer theater company in a small Hungarian resort town, playing mini-recitals in between acts of folk operetta . In that same vein, the next year he played at a circus in Frankfurt , where he appeared under

3285-507: The law. I don't want to postpone the happiness of these two youngsters if we can help it. All laws have been twisted and tortured out of semblance of law, what with war and revolutions. For once let's twist and turn one for a good cause, yes? Just before the birth of their only child, daughter Irene (1920-2005), Szigeti found himself stuck in Berlin during the Kapp Putsch of 1920, unable to return to Geneva. The entire city had been paralyzed by

3358-452: The local conservatory in 1917. It was in Geneva that he met his future wife, Wanda Ostrowska, and at roughly the same time he became friends with the composer Béla Bartók . Both relationships were to be lifelong. From the 1920s until 1960, Szigeti performed regularly around the world and recorded extensively. He also distinguished himself as a strong advocate of new music, and was the dedicatee of many new works by contemporary composers. Among

3431-533: The more notable pieces written for him are Ernest Bloch 's Violin Concerto, Bartók's Rhapsody No. 1 , and Eugène Ysaÿe 's Solo Sonata No. 1 . After retiring from the concert stage in 1960, he worked at teaching and writing until his death in 1973, at the age of 80. Szigeti was born Joseph "Jóska" Singer to a Jewish family in Budapest , Austria-Hungary . His mother died when he was three years old, and soon thereafter

3504-460: The more overtly virtuosic repertoire; however, after making the acquaintance of pianist Ferruccio Busoni , he began to develop a much more thoughtful and intellectual approach to music that eventually earned him the nickname "The Scholarly Virtuoso". Following a bout of tuberculosis that required a stay in a sanatorium in Switzerland, Szigeti settled in Geneva , where he became Professor of Violin at

3577-540: The other discomforts put together". By 1940, the outbreak of World War II forced the Szigetis to leave Europe for the United States, while Irene remained in Switzerland, having married pianist Nikita Magaloff (1912-1992) earlier that year. They settled in California, where Wanda, always fond of nature, was delighted to be able to raise her own garden. In a letter to a friend, Szigeti describes their California life: Wanda

3650-679: The pants off my audiences!") By 1930, Szigeti was established as a major international concert violinist. He performed extensively in Europe, the United States and Asia, and made the acquaintance of many of the era's leading instrumentalists, conductors and composers. In 1939, to escape the war and Nazi persecution of the Jews, Szigeti emigrated with his wife to the United States, where they settled in California . (A year later, Bartók also fled to America, and just two days after his arrival, he and Szigeti played

3723-408: The permission only of Ostrowska's sister and the headmistress of the finishing school. Further bureaucratic entanglements threatened the young couple's hopes, but eventually the officials responsible granted them a dispensation to marry. Szigeti recalls in his memoirs the words of Consul General Baron de Montlong at the critical moment: Let us not, if we can avoid it, fall victim to the dead letter of

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3796-518: The plane crash that claimed the life of movie star Carole Lombard in January 1942. Szigeti, who was on his way to Los Angeles for a concert, was forced to give up his seat on TWA Flight 3 at a refueling stop in Albuquerque, New Mexico , to allow the plane to take on 15 soldiers who, it being wartime, had priority. The plane, off course at night and with wartime blackout conditions in effect, crashed into

3869-479: The preeminent teachers in Europe and a fountainhead of the Hungarian violin tradition. Szigeti joined such violinists as Franz von Vecsey , Emil Telmányi , Jelly d'Arányi and Stefi Geyer in Hubay's studio. In those days, Europe produced a great many child prodigies , inspired by the phenomenal success of the young Czech virtuoso Jan Kubelík and formed by rigorous teaching and enthusiastic parents. The Hubay studio

3942-795: The pretence of a royalty. Chausson never knew of Albéniz's role in this episode, which was done solely to boost his confidence in his compositional skills (he did not need the money, as he had financial security through wealth inherited from his father). It was also a way for Albéniz to repay Chausson's support and encouragement of him when he was a struggling student in Paris. Poème is scored for solo violin, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in B-flat, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, harp and strings. The work starts Lento e misterioso . Subsequent tempo indications are Molto animato , Animato , Poco lento , Poco meno lento , Allegro , Tempo I and

4015-433: The pseudonym "Jóska Szulagi". Also in 1906, Hubay took Szigeti to play for Joseph Joachim in Berlin. Joachim was impressed, and suggested that Szigeti should finish his studies with him. Szigeti declined the offer, both out of loyalty to Hubay and a perceived aloofness and lack of rapport between Joachim and his students. Soon after the meeting with Joachim, Szigeti embarked on a major concert tour of England. Midway through

4088-475: The same opus number was given to more than one of his works. Opus number 12, for example, was assigned, successively, to five different works (an opera, a concert overture, a string quartet, and two unrelated piano works). In other cases, the same work was given as many as three different opus numbers by different publishers. The sequential numbering of his symphonies has also been confused: (a) they were initially numbered by order of publication, not composition; (b)

4161-492: The score to Breitkopf & Härtel while he was in Leipzig on a concert tour. They were reluctant to publish the work, considering it "vague and bizarre" and of "extraordinary difficulty", and consequently would have "few adherents" (letter to Albéniz of 27 April 1897). They agreed to publish only when Albéniz undertook to pay for the costs of publication himself. He also gave Breitkopf 300 marks, which they were to send Chausson under

4234-543: The tour, in Surrey , he met a music-loving couple who effectively adopted him, extending an invitation to stay with them for an indefinite length of time. Throughout England, he gave many successful concerts, including the premiere of the first work dedicated to him: Hamilton Harty 's Violin Concerto. Also during this time, Szigeti toured with an all-star ensemble including legendary singer Dame Nellie Melba and pianists Ferruccio Busoni and Wilhelm Backhaus . Philippe Gaubert ,

4307-448: The un-numbered compositions have been cataloged and labeled with the German acronym WoO ( Werk ohne Opuszahl ), meaning "work without opus number"; the same has been done with other composers who used opus numbers. (There are also other catalogs of Beethoven's works – see Catalogues of Beethoven compositions .) The practice of enumerating a posthumous opus ("Op. posth.") is noteworthy in

4380-491: The violin. Several years later, his father took him to Budapest to receive proper training at the conservatory . After a brief stint with an inadequate teacher, Szigeti auditioned at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music and was admitted directly into the class of Jenő Hubay , without the usual delays and formalities. Hubay, who had been a student of Joseph Joachim in Berlin, had by that time established himself as one of

4453-511: The work ends Tranquillo . It does not follow any formal model but is rhapsodic and moody, with rising and falling tensions and an advanced harmonic style. It strongly reflects the melancholy and introspection with which Chausson was imbued from an early age. (He once wrote to his godmother about his childhood: "I was sad without knowing why, but firmly convinced that I had the best reason in the world for it".) Joseph Szigeti always believed "the typically Ysaÿean sinuous double-stop passages" in

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4526-548: The works of composers such as: Joseph Szigeti Born into a musical family, he spent his early childhood in a small town in Transylvania . He quickly proved himself to be a child prodigy on the violin, and moved to Budapest with his father to study with the renowned pedagogue Jenő Hubay . After completing his studies with Hubay in his early teens, Szigeti began his international concert career. His performances at that time were primarily limited to salon-style recitals and

4599-587: Was a member of our jury at the City of London Carl Flesch Concours ... I was struck not only by the sharpness of his intellect but also by what seemed to me the perversity of his opinions. Some particular aspect of a competitor's playing would hold his attention, and he would take violent issue with it, to the exclusion of everything else. For him a violinist was made or broken, a prize awarded or withheld, on details that to me scarcely mattered. Nevertheless, Menuhin too referred to Szigeti as "a violinist whom I much admired and

4672-425: Was an incredibly cultured musician. Actually his talent grew out of his culture ... I always admired him, and he was respected by musicians ... in his late years, he finally got the appreciation he deserved from the general public as well. In his memoirs, published in 2004, cellist János Starker asserts that Szigeti was one of the giants among the violinists I had heard from childhood on, and my admiration for him

4745-557: Was born in Russia and had been stranded by the Russian Revolution of 1917 with her sister at a finishing school in Geneva. In 1919, Szigeti and Ostrowska decided to get married, but due to the turbulent political situation in Europe, many unexpected bureaucratic obstacles were thrown up in their path. The first problem was the impossibility of contacting Ostrowska's family, and the couple were forced to go ahead without parental consent, with

4818-479: Was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was sent to a sanatorium in Davos , Switzerland to recover, interrupting his concert career. During his stay at the sanatorium, he became re-acquainted with the composer Béla Bartók , who was recovering from pneumonia . His doctor recommended to practice the violin 25 to 30 minutes a day. The two had known each other only in passing during their conservatory days, but now they began

4891-439: Was engaged for some time to Gabriel Fauré , but broke it off and instead married Alphonse Duvernoy . Turgenev's novella seems to mirror this set of relationships, and it may be that Chausson initially attempted to portray it in music. However, it is clear his final intention was to create a work without extra-musical associations. In the autumn of 1896, Eugène Ysaÿe , Ernest Chausson and their wives were holidaying at Sitges on

4964-642: Was no exception; Szigeti and his fellow wunderkinder performed extensively in special recitals and salon concerts during their study at the Liszt Academy. He went to study at the Conservatory in Budapest for 2 years before his debut. In 1905, at the age of thirteen, Szigeti made his Berlin debut playing Bach's Chaconne in D minor , Ernst's Concerto in F-sharp minor, and Paganini 's Witches Dance . Despite

5037-466: Was not really noticed until Ysaÿe gave the Paris premiere, at a Colonne concert on 4 April 1897. Chausson was overcome by the sustained applause, something he had not experienced in his career to that point. Ysaÿe also gave the first London performance of Poème a week after Chausson's death in 1899. Poème was published in May 1897, but not at Chausson's own instigation. His friend Isaac Albéniz submitted

5110-436: Was often frustrating due to the mediocre quality of many of his students. The years teaching in Geneva provided an opportunity for Szigeti to deepen his understanding of music as an art, along with other aspects such as chamber music, orchestral performance, music theory and composition. Also during that time, Szigeti met and fell in love with Wanda Ostrowska, a young woman of Russian parentage who had been stranded in Geneva by

5183-417: Was stiff and dry in its observance of letter and its absence of spirit ... Mr. Szigeti was not only inclined to dryness of tone and angularity of phrase, but there were also passages of poor intonation. In contrast, a review from the previous year in the same journal remarked after a performance of the Beethoven concerto that Mr. Szigeti has a rather small but beautiful tone, elegance, finish. He played with

5256-639: Was taken aback by the American concert scene, and the way that its publicity and popularity driven agents and managers determined much of what was heard in American concert halls. He believed they were not interested in works by the great masters, but preferred the popular light salon pieces he had left behind in his prodigy days. (To the end of his life, Szigeti loved to quote one memorable, cigar-chewing impresario who told him, with regard to Beethoven 's Kreutzer Sonata , "Well, let me tell you, Mister Dzigedy—and I know what I’m talking about—your Krewtzer Sonata bores

5329-409: Was used to identify, list, and catalogue a work of art. By the 15th and 16th centuries, the word opus was used by Italian composers to denote a specific musical composition, and by German composers for collections of music. In compositional practice, numbering musical works in chronological order dates from 17th-century Italy, especially Venice . In common usage, the word opus is used to describe

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