Gregor Piatigorsky
Gregor Piatigorsky (originally Григорий Павлович Пятигорский / Grigory Pavlovich Pjatigorski * April 4 jul. / 17th April 1903 greg. In Yekaterinoslav , Russian Empire ; † 6. August 1976 in Los Angeles ) was an American cellist Ukrainian origin and is one one of the most important cellists of the mid- 20th century .
Life
The son of musicians, Piatigorsky was born into a Jewish family in Yekaterinoslav (today Dnipro, Ukraine) . On his seventh birthday he received his first violoncello . He was taught by local cello teachers after lessons from his own father, a violinist , had proven ineffective. At the age of eight, he received a scholarship to study at the Moscow Conservatory and performed in cafes in Moscow.
After big arguments with his father, Piatigorsky ran away from home at the age of 15 and was now struggling to survive. Due to his extraordinary abilities, however, in the same year he was given the position of first cellist in the Bolshoi Theater , whose orchestra was the largest in the Soviet Union .
After a dramatic escape via Poland, Piatigorsky studied in Germany with Julius Klengel in Leipzig and with Hugo Becker in Berlin. In 1924 he was accepted into the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Wilhelm Furtwängler , after spending several nights on benches as a homeless person. As principal cellist he remained in this orchestra until 1929. Piatigorsky played together with some of the most outstanding musicians ever: Jascha Heifetz , Nathan Milstein , Arthur Rubinstein , Sergei Rachmaninow , Artur Schnabel , Wladimir Horowitz and Bronislaw von Pozniak (1887–1953) (as a temporary member of the Pozniak Trio) were among his chamber music partners . He later taught at various American universities. In January 1937, in Ann Arbor , he married Jacqueline Rebecca Louise de Rothschild of the Rothschild banking family , sister of Guy de Rothschild . They returned to France, where their first daughter, Jephta, was born that autumn. After the German occupation of France in World War II, the family fled to the United States and settled in Elizabethtown in the Adirondack Mountains , where their son Joram was born in 1940.
Piatigorsky and his wife Jacqueline, herself a chess player and artist, were very interested in the game of chess and sponsored two major tournaments : 1963 in Los Angeles and 1966 in Santa Monica.
In 1965 Piatigorsky published his autobiography Cellist (in German My Cello and I and Our Encounters ), which is one of the most famous musicians' autobiographies .
At the age of 73 years died of a Piatigorsky in Los Angeles on August 6, 1976 of cancer .
Works
- My cello and me and our encounters , 16th edition, Dtv, Munich 1998. ISBN 3-423-20070-7 (1st edition: Tübingen 1968, translation by Cellist , Doubleday, 1965)
literature
- Margaret Bartley: Grisha. The Story of Cellist Gregor Piatigorsky , Otis Mountain Press, New York, 2006.
- Harald Eggebrecht : Great Cellists. Piper, 2007, pp. 162-173.
- Julius Bächi: Famous Cellists , Atlantis, Zurich, 6th edition, 2003, pp. 131–133.
Web links
- Gregor Piatigorsky at the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Literature by and about Gregor Piatigorsky in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ^ Dylan Loeb McClain: Milestone for a Benefactor of Historic Matches. In: nytimes.com . November 19, 2011, accessed August 18, 2019 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Piatigorsky, Gregor |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Pyatigorsky, Grigory Pavlovich; Пятигорский, Григорий Павлович (Russian) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American cellist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 17, 1903 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Yekaterinoslav , Russian Empire |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 6, 1976 |
| Place of death | los Angeles |