Victor Salvi

Victor Salvi (born March 4, 1920 in Chicago , United States - † May 10, 2015 in Milan , Italy ) was an American harpist , harp maker and entrepreneur of Italian origin. The company NSM, in which the Salvi Harps named after him are manufactured, is a world leader as a producer of concert harps.

biography

Victor Salvi was born in 1909 into an Italian family of musicians. His father, originally a Venetian violin maker, immigrated to the USA in 1909 with his second wife from Viggiano near Potenza . The couple had five children. Victor's sister Aida became a harpist at the Chicago Opera , while his half-brother Rodolfo from his father's first marriage as a harpist at the New York Metropolitan Opera was praised by Nicanor Zabaleta as the greatest harpist of all time .

As a teenager, Victor Salvi learned to play the harp from his sister Aida. After working as a harpist in the United States Navy Band during World War II , he performed for the first time in concerts with the New York Philharmonic under Dimitri Mitropoulos . With the NBC Symphony Orchestra he recorded Claude Debussy's La Mer in 1950 under the direction of Arturo Toscanini . Further concert appearances took place with the conductors Bruno Walter , Leopold Stokowski and George Szell . However, his real passion was building harps. In 1954 he presented his first prototype in New York and moved to London in 1955 to be closer to the European market. In 1957 he settled in Italy and founded the company NSM (Abbreviation for Nuovi Strumenti Musicali , "New Musical Instruments") in Genoa , in which the later world-famous Salvi Harps are manufactured. 90 percent of the approximately one thousand instruments manufactured each year are intended for export. In 1974 the factory moved to Piasco , a village in Piedmont . Salvi contributed decisively to the development of the playing technique of the harp . In 1987 he acquired his main competitor, the American harp manufacturer Lyon & Healy , which was threatened with bankruptcy , in order to bring sales in America and Europe under one roof. A Salvi concert harp made on behalf of Prince Charles could be heard at the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in 2011 .

Salvi was made an honorary member of the Royal College of Music in London in 2004 and was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2014. He died in Milan in 2015.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Salvi, il regno dell'Arpa (Italian)
2. ^ Prince William and Kate Middleton wedding: Harpist to welcome royal couple