Tossi Spiwakowski

Tossi Spiwakowski

Natan / Tossi Davidovich Spiwakowski ( Russian Натан / Тосси Давидович Спиваковский * January 22 ^{. Jul} / 4. February  1907 ^greg. In Odessa , Russian Empire ; † 20th July 1998 in Westport (Connecticut) ) was a Russian violinist and high school teachers .

Life

Tossi Spiwakowski was the youngest of nine children of the Jewish cantor David Spiwakowski and his wife Rahel, almost all of whom became musicians and teachers: Semeon, Claire, Esfira, Adolf , Busi, Jascha , Albert, Isaak and Tossi.

Tossi Spiwakowski showed his musical talent early on. He was first taught by his father. During the pogrom of October 18th ^jul. / October 31,  1905 ^greg. until October 22nd ^July / 4th November  1905 ^greg. in Odessa (at the end of the Russian Revolution in 1905 ) the Spiwakowski family had only barely escaped death, but had lost all their belongings through looting. Tossi's brother Jascha Spiwakowski gave concerts as a pianistic prodigy to support the family and to earn money for an emigration.

After emigrating in 1907 to Berlin Tossi Spiwakowski studied privately with Arrigo Serato and at the University of Music and Performing Arts at Willy Hess violin . In 1917 he made his first public appearance as a violin prodigy. In 1920 he began a concert tour through Europe with his older brother Jascha, who as a well-known concert pianist formed the Spiwakowski duo with him . The Spiwakowski duo performed for many years with pieces by Fritz Kreisler , Niccolò Paganini and Johannes Brahms in particular , made recordings with parlophones and was also admired by Albert Einstein . In 1925, Tossi Spiwakowski was appointed by Wilhelm Furtwängler as the youngest concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic . In 1927 he gave up this position and now appeared as a soloist in Europe.

In 1930 the Spiwakowski duo expanded with the cellist Edmund Kurtz to form the Spiwakowski trio . The trio began a concert tour of Europe in The Hague. Returned to Berlin looked particularly Jascha Spiwakowski an angry NSDAP - press campaign exposed, he that after a cautionary note from Richard Strauss just before Hitler's seizure of power set off on a concert tour through Asia and Australia with the trio. The trio was appointed to the University of Melbourne so that they no longer had to return to Germany, albeit with the uncertainty that they could be expelled as undesirable foreigners due to Australian immigration laws. In 1935 Tossi Spiwakowski married the historian Dr. Erika Lipsker Zarden.

In 1940 Tossi Spiwakowski traveled with his wife and daughter to the USA and gave his first concert in the Town Hall in New York City. He became concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra under Artur Rodziński , where he also appeared as a soloist. In 1943 he played Bartók's 2nd Violin Concerto in the USA premiered under Rodziński at Carnegie Hall in New York. His game was extremely well received by the critics, so that Spiwakowski could now begin a solo career. He was a soloist in Leon Kirchner's Sonata Concertante and in David Diamonds Canticle and Perpetual Motion . He composed and published his own cadenzas for Beethoven's violin concerto and Mozart's five violin concertos .

Together with Artur Balsam , Spiwakowski produced the first studio recording of Bartók's 2nd Violin Sonata. Important recordings were Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra under Walter Goehr and Gian Carlo Menotti's Violin Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Charles Münch . 1974 to 1989 Spiwakowski taught violin and chamber music at the Juilliard School in New York.

VEGA BACH BOW by Spivakovsky

In order to achieve an extremely brilliant tone, Spiwakowski developed an innovative way of handling the bow, the so-called Spiwakowski bow stroke, as described by Gaylord Yost in the book The Spivakovsky Way of Bowing (Volkwein Bros. Inc., Pittsburgh, PA 1949). Throughout his life Spiwakowski was interested in exploring the composers' intentions by researching the original sources. This led him to the realization that Bach basically did not want the chords to be arpeggiated in his sonatas and partitas for solo violin . He summarized his reasons for this in his article Problem of Arpeggiation in Bach's Music for Solo Violin (Musical America, February 1954). After Spiwakowski had heard the recordings of Bach's solo works for violin with Emil Telmányi , who played with a round arch , in 1957, he in turn used this round arch model, built by Knud Vestergaard. His practical experience with playing polyphony found its way into another article, entitled Polyphony in Bach's Works for Solo Violin (The Music Review 28 (1967), No. 4), in which Spiwakowski now in more detail his theses on chordal playing on the Violin occupied. In the oral introduction to his performance of the "Chaconne", published by the DOREMI CD company, Tossi Spiwakowski explained his motivation for using the round arch.

Honors

• Honorary Doctorate from Fairfield University (1970)
• Honorary Doctorate from the Cleveland Institute of Music (1975)

literature

• Allan Kozinn: Tossy Spivakovsky, 91, violinist Who Created Bowing Technique . The New York Times July 27, 1998 (accessed February 22, 2016).
• Gluck, Beethoven, Paganini, Kreisler, Et Al, T. Spivakovsky (accessed February 22, 2016).
• Jonathan Woolf: Tossy Spivakovsky (accessed February 22, 2016).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Jascha Spivakovsky, the pianist. To interview . The Mercury, May 17, 1922, p. 9.
2. ^ Encyclopedia.com: Spivakovsky, Tossy (accessed February 22, 2016).
3. ^ Catherine J. Stevens: Spivakovsky, Jascha (1896-1970) . Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 16, Melbourne University Publishing 2002, (accessed February 18, 2016).
4. ↑ Printed in German in: Rudolf Gähler , Der Rundbogen für die Violin - ein Phantom? , Conbrio Verlag, Regensburg 1997, p. 146
5. ↑ http://www.doremi.com/spivakovsky.html