efrem zimbalist, jr

Description

From the album "Violinists - Library of Congress" Efrem Zimbalist (1889 -- 1985) was one of the world's most prominent concert violinists, as well as a composer, teacher, conductor and a long-time director of the Curtis Institute of Music. Zimbalist was born in the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don (Rostov-na-Donu), the son of Jewish parents Maria (née Litvinoff) and Aron Zimbalist, who was a conductor. By the age of nine, Efrem Zimbalist was first violin in his father's orchestra. At age 12 he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and studied under Leopold Auer. He graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1907 after winning a gold medal and the Rubinstein Prize. After graduation he debuted in Berlin (playing the Brahms concerto) and London in 1907 and in the U.S. in 1911, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He then settled in the U.S. He did much to popularize the performance of early music. In 1917, he was elected as an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the national fraternity for men in music, by the fraternity's Alpha Chapter at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. In 1928, Zimbalist began teaching at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He was director of the school from 1941 to 1968. His pupils included such distinguished musicians as Aaron Rosand, Harold Wippler, Oscar Shumsky, Felix Slatkin, Shmuel Ashkenasi, and Hidetaro Suzuki. He retired as a violinist in 1949, but returned in 1952 to give the first performance of the Violin Concerto by Gian Carlo Menotti, which is dedicated to him. He retired again in 1955. He served as a juror of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1962 and 1966. His own compositions include a violin concerto, the American Rhapsody, a tone poem called Daphnis and Chloe, a Fantasy on themes from The Golden Cockerel by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and a piece called Sarasateana, for violin and piano. He also wrote an opera Landara, which premiered in Philadelphia in 1956. He married the famous American soprano Alma Gluck and they toured together for a time. Alma Gluck died in 1938. In 1943, having been a widower for 5 years, he married the school's founder, Mary Louise Curtis Bok, daughter of publisher, Cyrus Curtis, and 14 years his senior. He died in 1985, at the age of 94. His and Alma's son, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., and their granddaughter, Stephanie Zimbalist, both became popular actors. César Cui: 1835 - 1918 Cui's father, Antoine, came to Russia with the invading army of Napoleon, and settled in Lithuania where he met Julia Gucewicz. Cesar had three brothers and one sister. He was not a child prodigy, but his father made him take violin lessons, where he learned theory but not composition. Around the age of 15 Cesar went to military engineering school in Petersburg. In Petersburg he met the rest of the members of the "Mighty Five" or kutchka (the group of Russian Nationalist Composers), and began composing music. Cui also became one of the main spokesmen for the "new Russian School," by publishing reviews and views regularly. Many of his articles criticized "modernist" composers like Claude Debussy, and Richard Strauss. Cui was not the greatest composer, and is in fact the least known of the "Mighty Five." He wrote 14 operas, several hundred songs, some short orchestral and string quartet works, and piano music. Later in his life he wrote many works for children, including operas like Puss-in-Boots. Cui became blind before his death and passed away in 1918. He is still little remembered, even though his writings influenced Russian Music greatly.