by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 12 Noon, The Pandan Quartet plays music by Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate and Ludwig van Beethoven on the Tuesday noon series at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle.
Tonight at 7:30 in Finney Chapel, the Oberlin Artist Recital Series presents VOCES8 (pictured), the globally-touring British a cappella ensemble that performs everything from early Renaissance music to traditional folk song, contemporary and popular music, plus their own arrangements.
For more information, please visit our Concert Listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Jarrett Hoffman
Because of his connection to Northeast Ohio — thirteen years as concertmaster of The Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell — we’ll focus today on Josef Gingold, the Russian-born violinist who was born on this date in 1909, and became one of America’s foremost pedagogues of his instrument.
Gingold also held tenures in the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini, and as concertmaster of the Detroit Symphony. As for his time with The Cleveland Orchestra, he later noted the important influence Szell had had on him “as a musician and, without my realizing it at the time, as a teacher.” He taught at Case Western Reserve University and The Music Settlement before spending over thirty years on the faculty of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
The list of his famous students is long, so I’ll name just three: Gil Shaham, Joshua Bell, and Jamie Laredo. But as Alex Ross wrote in Gingold’s obituary for The New York Times, “he was noted less for the manufacture of virtuosos than for the broader values of musicianship he instilled in master classes and the close guidance he gave to chamber and orchestral musicians…He is remembered as a vibrant man who played a paternal role in his students’ lives.”
As for his own lineage, he was a student of Eugène Ysaÿe (whose Third Sonata he premiered), and was considered one of the final links to an earlier era of violin playing.
Here’s a recording of Gingold playing Mendelssohn’s Song Without Words, and here’s a tribute video titled “A Musical Life” followed by his 75th Birthday Concert (the latter coming at the 27:33 mark). One great quote from Gingold early in the video, best heard in his own scruffy voice and Russian accent: “The greater love of the violin is everything in the world to me. That’s what I cherish more than anything.”
