Roman Totenberg

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Roman Totenberg - woodcut by Ilka Kolsky, 1930s

Roman Totenberg (born January 1, 1911 in Łódź , Russian Empire ; died May 8, 2012 in Newton , Massachusetts ) was an American violinist and violin teacher of Polish-Jewish origin.

Life

At the age of five, his parents Slanislava (Vinaver) and Adam Totenberg moved with him to Moscow, where his father had found work as a civil engineer. Roman received his first violin lessons from a neighbor who was the concertmaster of the Bolshoi Theater . When Roman returned to Warsaw at the age of ten, he made his debut with the Warsaw National Philharmonic a year later and was considered a child prodigy on the violin . With Karol Szymanowski , whom he met at the Warsaw Music Academy , he toured Europe in the late 1920s. In 1928 he became a student of Carl Flesch in Berlin and in 1931 received a third of the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy scholarship . He moved to Paris in 1932, where he studied with George Enescu and Pierre Monteux .

Following his US debut with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington in 1935, Totenberg was invited to the White House by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Three years later he emigrated from Europe to the USA.

Totenberg toured South America with Arthur Rubinstein . He gave numerous concerts and realized the complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas and all Brandenburg concerts . His broad repertoire included more than 30 concerts. Among the many contemporary works that he has presented are the Violin Concerto No. 2 by Darius Milhaud , the Concerto by William Schuman and the Capriccio by Krzysztof Penderecki . He premiered Paul Hindemith's Sonata in E (1935), the Concerto (new version) by Samuel Barber and a Sonata by Bohuslav Martinů .

In his career as a violinist he has played with major symphony orchestras in America such as the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Los Angeles and Washington Symphonies and in Europe with the Berlin Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic and the Concertgebouw Orchestra . The conductors included Stokowski, Kubelik, Szell, Rodzinski, Fitelberg, Jochum, Rowicki, Krenz, Monteux, Wit, Steinberg and Golschmann.

In 1943 he was a founding member of the Alma Trio with the pianist Adolph Baller and the cellist Gabor Rejto under the patronage of Yehudi Menuhin . In 1953 Totenberg ended his collaboration with the Alma Trio. He was succeeded by Maurice Wilk .

In the USA he also worked as a music teacher at various music colleges and at the summer courses in Aspen and Tanglewood , and was professor at Boston University , where he headed the string department from 1961 to 1978. Afterwards he taught at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge (Massachusetts) and at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore .

In 1980 Totenberg's Stradivarius “Ames” (built in 1734) was stolen after a concert in New York. He acquired it in 1943 and performed with it all over the world. The "Ames" only reappeared in August 2015. It turned out that the violinist Philip Johnson had stolen them; he had been suspected by Totenberg as early as 1980. The violin was given to Totenberg's daughters shortly after it was found.

In 2000 Roman Totenberg received the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.

In 1988 Totenberg received the Honorary Honor of Polish Culture and in 2000 the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland . He died on May 8, 2012 at his home in Newton, Massachusetts.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stolen Stradivarius violin back after 35 years
personal data
SURNAME Totenberg, Roman
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American violinist and violin teacher
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Łódź
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 2012
Place of death Newton (Massachusetts)