Henri Temianka

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Henri Temianka

Henri Temianka (born November 19, 1906 in Greenock , Scotland , † November 7, 1992 in Los Angeles , California) was an American violinist , conductor and music teacher . He founded the Paganini Quartet and the California Chamber Symphony (California Chamber Symphony Orchestra).

Life

Henri Temianka, son of Polish-Jewish immigrants, was born in Scotland but grew up in Liverpool . (“I was in Liverpool before the Beatles,” he later joked.) When he was five, his parents moved to Holland, where his father was in the diamond business. At the age of nine he became a student of Carel Blitz in Rotterdam in 1915 (until 1923). He then received further training from Willy Hess in Berlin (1923–1924), then with Jules Boucherit in Paris (1924–1926). He earned his living with orchestras in the circus and as a violinist in restaurants.

In America Temianka studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia with Carl Flesch and orchestral conducting with Artur Rodziński and graduated there in 1930. Even before his graduation, he made his debut in New York in 1928. Then he started a tour that took him through Europe, Russia and the USA.

In 1935 he took part in the Wieniawski Competition in Warsaw, where he took third place behind Ginette Neveu and David Oistrach .

In 1936 he founded the Temianka Chamber Orchestra in London. 1937–1938 he was concertmaster of the Scottish Orchestra in Glasgow under George Szell . Temianka was back in America in 1939 and from 1940 to 1941 concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Fritz Reiner . However, he went to great lengths to expand his career as a soloist.

Then the Second World War interrupted his musical career. During the war he worked for the Office of War Information because he was fluent in four languages. When the war broke out, his parents lived in Antwerp and, as Jews, had to fear for their lives. Fortunately, he was given visas for her by an employee at the US State Department. After escaping through France, they were captured by General Franco's secret police in Bilbao . Through his previous connections to Bilbao, influential friends managed to get his parents free and put them on a ship destined for the USA.

In 1945 Temianka received American citizenship. After the war he resumed his concert tours and played in over 30 countries.

In 1946 Temianka played all ten Beethoven sonatas for violin and piano with the pianist Leonard Shure at the invitation of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge in the auditorium of the Library of Congress . These recordings from late January / early February 1946 have been painstakingly restored by Jacob Harnoy and have been available on CD since 2011.

Also in 1946 Temianka founded the Paganini Quartet, which became very successful and lasted until 1966 ( see below ). During this time he played the Stradivarius Comte Cozio di Salabue, built in 1727 . After the Paganini Quartet was dissolved, he played a violin made by Michelangelo Bergonzi from 1759. For his recordings of Handel's sonatas, he played an Andrea Guarneri from 1687.

At the suggestion of some local personalities, he founded the Beverly Hills Concerts for Youth in 1958 . These "concerts for young people" took place in the Royce Hall of the University of California, Los Angeles , the orchestra was called The Temianka Little Symphony . Here he introduced young people to works such as Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns . Contributors as narrators were celebrities such as Ray Bradbury , Victor Borge , Hans Conreid , Peter Ustinov and Sam Jaffe . He also gave concerts for disabled children. In a performance of Benjamin Britten's children 's opera Noye's Fludde (Noah's Deluge), he involved children from the audience.

As the successor to the Temianka Little Symphony , the California Chamber Symphony was created in 1960 as the first real chamber orchestra in Los Angeles. In the following 23 years there were more than 100 concerts in the Royce Hall, including premieres of works by the composers Aaron Copland , Dmitri Shostakovich , Darius Milhaud , Alberto Ginastera , Gian-Carlo Menotti and Malcolm Arnold . Under the motto Let's Talk Music (“ Let's talk about music”) Temianka was one of the first conductors to speak to the audience at the concerts to explain the works. He also introduced the subscription system for the concerts and directed the subscription concerts for more than 20 years.

In the 1980s the California Chamber Virtuosi was added.

Temianka taught from 1960 to 1964 as a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and from 1964 to 1976 at Long Beach State College (now California State University, Long Beach ). He was also visiting professor at universities in the USA ( University of California , University of Southern California , University of Kansas , University of Illinois , University of Michigan , University of Colorado ) and abroad ( University of Toronto , Osaka Music Academy of Japan) and gave master classes at various universities.

Henri Temianka died of cancer on November 7, 1992 at his Los Angeles home.

Paganini quartet

Niccolò Paganini had compiled several Stradivarius instruments in the early 19th century . The instruments passed through several hands after Paganini's death. After almost a century, Emil Herrmann, a well-known dealer and restorer of musical instruments in New York, managed to reunite them. The wealthy widow and music lover Anna E. Clark (1878–1963) bought the instruments from Herrmann in 1946 for 155,000 dollars and made them available to Temianka, who then founded the Paganini Quartet .

The four instruments are also referred to as the " Paganini Quartet ". Each instrument is named after a previous owner:

  • First violin: Comte Cozio di Salabue (1727)
  • Second violin: Desaint (1680), a Stradivarius in the early Amati style
  • Viola: Mendelssohn (1731)
  • Cello: Ladenburg (1736)

Besides Temianka, the quartet played:

  • Second violin: Gustav Rosseels (founding member), later Charles Libove, Stefan Krayk, Harris Goldman
  • Viola: Robert Courte (founding member), later Charles Foidart, David Schwartz, Albert Gillis
  • Cello: Robert Maas (founding member), later Adolphe Frezin, Lucien Laporte

The quartet became very well known and was also the "house quartet" of RCA Victor . It performed for twenty years and was disbanded in 1966.

After its dissolution, the instruments of the Paganini Quartet were transferred to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC. According to the last will of the founder, Anna E. Clark, they have always remained united as an instrument quartet. They have been loaned to various string quartets, including the Cleveland Quartet. The Nippon Music Foundation purchased the instruments in 1994 for $ 15 million. They were played by the Tokyo String Quartet from 1995 to 2013 , then by the Hagen Quartet and since September 2017 by the Quartetto di Cremona .

Publications

Temianka wrote a humorous autobiography with numerous anecdotes, Yehudi Menuhin contributed the foreword :

  • Facing the music. An Irreverent Close-up of the Real Concert World. Publisher: David McKay Company, New York, June 1973, ISBN 978-0-679-50374-3 .
  • German: Disrespectful memories from a life with music . Albert Müller Verlag, Zurich 1976, ISBN 3-275-00615-0 .

Temianka has also written more than 100 articles for various magazines including Instrumentalist, The Strad, Reader's Digest, Saturday Review, Esquire, Hi-Fi Stereo Review, Musical America, The Etude and Holiday . About a third of these articles deal with the technique and teaching of playing on string instruments. Some examples:

  • Bronislaw Huberman, The Triumph of a Great Personality . In: The Etude , February 1957.
  • Creators in a Creative Society In: The Saturday Review, Sept. 23, 1967, pp. 30-33.
  • My George Szell In: The Saturday Review, September 26, 1970, pp. 50-51.

Web links

YouTube

Individual evidence

  1. ^ 1st International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition Warsaw, March 3-16, 1935 wieniawski.com
  2. ↑ See Bold but Undersung Talents The New York Times, January 6, 2012.
  3. ↑ See three photographs by Temianka at the Beverly Hills Youth Congress on February 28, 1958 (USC Library). The image description mentions the planning of the Beverly Hills Concerts for Youth at the time.
  4. ^ Temianka Selects a Slower Tempo Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1991.
  5. ^ Instruments Owned by Nippon Music Foundation , see Stradivarius: Paganini Quartet .
personal data
SURNAME Temianka, Henri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American violinist and orchestra founder
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Greenock (Scotland)
DATE OF DEATH November 7, 1992
Place of death los Angeles