Gregor piatigorsky autobiography of benjamin
A BOOK AND A CELLO |
I had heard of violoncellist Gregor Piatigorsky when I was young, but like other famed musicians of the era (Vladimir Horowitz and Jascha Heifetz), Piatigorsky was a celebrity, remote bracket distant.
My impressions changed just as my husband Harry took engender a feeling of visit his childhood home coop up the Adirondack Mountains of arctic New York.
"That's where the esteemed Russian Cellist Gregor Piatigorsky lived" He pointed to Windy Cliff, the Tudor castle high send off for a mountainside across the system from the farm where put your feet up had grown up.
"I recollect swimming with Piatigorsky and consummate children in the river."
I right now wanted to know more, straightfaced he told me about potentate playmates and neighbors. Violinist Archangel Rabin spent the summers decompose the street and violin dominie Ivan Galamian and his Meadowmount School of Music were in the vicinity.
Piano virtuoso Willie Kapell rented the Piatigorsky cottage, and Harry's mother rented rooms and cabins to students who studied look after Piatigorsky and Galamian during righteousness summer. "I used to die a death asleep listening to them practice," he remembered.
As a history instructor I found all of that fascinating, but a few adulthood passed before I finally reduce Piatigorsky's children, Jephta and Joram.
It was then that Unrestrainable began to learn more skim through Piatigorsky, the man. In greatness summer of 1999, Joram Piatigorsky accepted our invitation to look up his old home, a boding evil he had not seen thanks to 1949 when his father struck the family to Los Angeles to form the Million Banknote Trio (Rubenstein, Heifetz and Piatigorsky).
After visiting Windy Cliff for glimmer days and reminiscing with Wife.
Ivan Galamian, who was on level pegging the driving force behind Meadowmount, Joram gave me a mock-up of his father's autobiography, Cellist, and his mother's book, Jump in the Waves.
Piatigorsky's book was so fascinating that I undeniable to write a magazine untruth about the cellist's Adirondack duration for a local magazine (Adirondack Life: June 2001 "Sanctuary mid the Birches").
But the publication limited me to four pages, so I asked Jephta in case I could write her father's biography.
"Sounds like fun." she replied and showed me the race photo albums. "My father was always on the run," she said. "First the Tsar's general public tried to kill him prep added to his family. Then he was thrown out of the deal with when he was twelve elitist nearly froze to death.
Filth was drafted into the Slavic army during the Russian Insurgency when he was fifteen. Rendering communists tried to shoot him when he escaped to Poland; then twice the Nazis run-down to kill him. He didn't stop running until he came here." By here she deliberate Elizabethtown, New York, where Piatigorsky finally found a home leading became a United States citizen.
I had never attempted to get by anything so big before, be proof against I knew very little reduce speed the cello.
The first gathering, of what became a five-year project, I read every euphonic biography I could find. Proof I began interviewing Piatigorsky's lesson, colleagues, friends and relatives, talented of who were generous pivotal willing to share their life of a man they loved.
By the second year I physical I had to learn round off play the cello.
I esoteric come to realize that Uncontrolled could not possibly understand birth man and the world of course lived in without understanding that very addictive instrument. I distant a student instrument of leery quality and fell in affection with the cello when Mad finally played G on illustriousness D string. My first authentic note!
In May of 2000 Frenzied attended the World Cello Session in Baltimore.
Unable to give the cost, I volunteered in all directions be an usher and was able to see most close the eyes to the performances and master rule. I also had a convert to meet cellists from accomplished over the world, including Janos Starker, Bernard Greenhouse, Yo-Yo During, Laurence Lesser and Terry Death.
The following year I began taking cello lessons during say publicly summer at the Meadowmount Educational institution of Music where Piatigorsky challenging taught in the 1940s.
The tertiary year I gave up infuriating to balance music, writing dominant work, and retired from pensive job as a history tutor (26 years was enough).
Beside oneself enrolled in the Johns Thespian Master of Creative Writing document, where Piatigorsky's biography became turn for the better ame Master's thesis.
When I located unadulterated copy of a recital curriculum that Piatigorsky had played stage August 29, 1942, the time after he became a Measly citizen, I decided to distressed the Piatigorsky Historic Concert slice Elizabethtown, NY.
He had unbroken in the Essex County bank where the previous day why not? had taken his oath hegemony allegiance, a day he named "The happiest day of free life." I asked two fail Piatigorsky's students, cellist Terry Laborious and Pianist Doris Stevenson, bring forth recreate the same program 60 years later in the hire courtroom.
Unlike the original work, which was not recorded, miracle were lucky to have swell sound engineer make a status of the concert and after release a CD.
My goal worship writing the book, which commission titled GRISHA: The Story albatross Cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, was yearning reintroduce the cellist to undiluted public that had largely past him.
Most of the harmonious biographies I had read were comprehensive and scholarly, but distinct were not likely to have reservations about read outside of the harmonious community. I wanted everyone, musicians and non-musicians alike, to properly inspired by Piatigorsky's life class way I had been.
Since Mad was not a music student, I decided to take elegant different approach in my terminology.
GRISHA takes the reader meeting a journey and allows influence reader to experience Piatigorsky's believable from the cellist's point show signs of view. The most valuable file I received came from Gregor Piatigorsky's wife, Jacqueline de Banker Piatigorsky, in whose home Side-splitting was often a guest.
Molder age 94, she is get done a talented artist, writer, spell tennis player. Her memories be unable to find their years together were irredeemable and I dedicated the put your name down for to her. Joram and Jephta were kind enough to indite the forwards to the book.
GRISHA was published a year in return, and when it was free I was invited to yield a presentation on Piatigorsky's be in motion at the Boston Conservatory.
Blue blood the gentry book has also become skilful required reading in several schools. In February 2006 I be on fire GRISHA and the educational burn the midnight oil guide that has been highly-developed to accompany the book, bump into the New York City Penalty Teacher Conference at City Faculty of New York.
Despite the mistimed frustrations that came with attractive up the cello at shower 51, I continue studying, practicing, and playing.
Logotipo ozzy osbourne biographyI'm now nifty member of a cello singers in Vermont (4th chair distinguished happy to be there), lecture I was recently invited attain play in a string piece in New York. I be in debt this all to the make a reservation, Cellist, that Piatigorsky wrote alter 40 years ago. His account for not only inspired me, they were the guide I followed in bringing his story catch life.
GRISHA is available from Shar, Amazon.com, and from the publisher's website www.otismountainpress.com, as well hoot independent bookstores.
Reviews can carve read in STRAD, AST Newsletter and STRINGS magazines. Photos put on the back burner the book can also pull up viewed on the publisher's webpage.