Henri Temianka
Encyclopedia
Henri Temianka was a virtuoso violinist, conductor, author and music educator.
with Carel Blitz in Rotterdam
from 1915 to 1923, with Willy Hess
at the National Conservatory in Berlin
from 1923 to 1924, and with Jules Boucherit
in Paris
from 1924 to 1926. He then enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music
in Philadelphia, where he studied violin with Carl Flesch
, who reported of him in 1927, “Was brought over by me. First class technical talent, somewhat sleepy personality, has still to awake.” In 1928, Flesch said, “His violinistic personality is for the moment still above his human one. Life shall be his best teacher in this regard.” Later he stated, "...he has made an intensive study of my method of teaching, of which I consider him the best exponent in England." In his memoirs he said, "...there was above all Henry [sic] Temianka, who did great credit to the Institute: both musically and technically, he possessed a model collection of talents." Temianka's playing was further influenced by Eugène Ysaÿe
, Jacques Thibaud
and Bronisław Huberman. He also studied conducting with Artur Rodziński
at Curtis, and became its first graduate in 1930.
debut in 1928, described by Olin Downes in The New York Times
as “one of the finest accomplishments in years,” Temianka returned to Europe and rapidly established himself as one of the era’s foremost concert violinists. He made extensive concert tours through almost every country in Europe and appeared with major orchestras both in Europe and the U.S. under conductors including Pierre Monteux
(who gave him his first Paris appearance), Sir John Barbirolli
, Sir Adrian Boult
, Fritz Reiner
, Sir Henry J. Wood, George Szell
, Otto Klemperer
, Dimitri Mitropoulos, and William Steinberg
. In Leningrad he was engaged for a single performance, but his virtuosity was so impressive that he was retained for five performances with five complete programs within a week.
In 1935 he won third prize in the first Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition
in Warsaw, Poland; Ginette Neveu
took first prize, and David Oistrakh
second. In that year he also premiered a suite that the then-unknown Benjamin Britten
had written for him and pianist Betty Humby, and performed music by Sergei Prokofiev
, with the composer at the piano in Moscow; and Ralph Vaughan Williams
conducted his violin concerto for him in London. In 1936 he founded the Temianka Chamber Orchestra in London. He was the concertmaster of the Scottish Orchestra from 1937 to 1938. He gave his first concert in Los Angeles, a violin recital, at the Wilshire Ebell in 1940. From 1941 to 1942 he was the concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony under Fritz Reiner
, performing as soloist in concertos including the Beethoven
and Mozart A major
.
His appearances as violin soloist and guest conductor in Europe and both North and South America were interrupted by World War II, during which he became a senior editor in the U.S. Office of War Information. Because of his fluency in four languages (English, French, German and Dutch), he translated and edited sensitive documents. Through a combination of his bureaucratic connections there and contacts from his international performing career, and with assistance from HIAS
, he was able to secure the release of his parents from the Nazi concentration camp in Gurs, France, in 1941. However, upon arriving in Spain, they were thrown in jail by Franco's police. Temianka recalled that a concert he had given in Madrid in 1935 had been attended by a powerful Spanish aristocrat and president of the Bilbao Philharmonic Society, Ignacio de Gortazar y Manso de Velasco, the 19th Count of Superunda (see also José Manso de Velasco, 1st Count of Superunda). The Count personally escorted Temianka’s parents from jail to his mansion, and then arranged for their passage by ship to Cuba and the United States, where they became citizens. Temianka described these remarkable events in his second book Chance Encounters (not yet published).
In 1945 he performed at Carnegie Hall
. In 1946 he performed all the Beethoven violin sonatas with pianist Leonard Shure
at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Over the next 45 years he made appearances in more than 3,000 concerts in 30 countries, with some 500 concerts in the Los Angeles metropolitan area alone, appearing as violin soloist, conductor of the California Chamber Symphony
, first violinist of the Paganini Quartet
, and in remarkable chamber music recitals such as the Beethoven sonata cycles with pianists Lili Kraus
, Leonard Pennario
, Rudolf Firkušný
and George Szell
, and the Bach violin sonatas with Anthony Newman. He performed the Bach
Double Violin Concerto
with David Oistrakh
, Yehudi Menuhin
, Henryk Szeryng
and Jack Benny
. His chamber groups performed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Los Angeles Music Center and the Mark Taper Forum. In the 1980s his California Chamber Virtuosi gave concerts at Pepperdine University
and at the J. Paul Getty Museum
in Malibu, California.
As an avid chamber music player, Temianka hosted frequent private musical evenings in his Los Angeles home, playing with the likes of Yehudi Menuhin, Jascha Heifetz
, Isaac Stern
, Joseph Szigeti
, David Oistrakh
, Henryk Szeryng, Leonard Pennario
, William Primrose
, Gregor Piatigorsky
, Jean-Pierre Rampal
and other luminaries. Temianka was equally adept on the viola as the violin, and sometimes played it during these evenings, as well as in concert in 1962 with Isaac Stern in a performance of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante (which he also performed on violin with William Primrose on viola).
In 1980 the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians said of Temianka that he was "...known for his flawless mastery of his instrument, a pure and expressive tone, and forceful yet elegant interpretations."
in 1946. The quartet drew its name from the fact that all four of its instruments, made by Antonio Stradivari
(1644–1737), had once been owned by the Italian virtuoso violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini
(1782–1840). The other original members were Gustave Rosseels, second violin; Robert Courte, viola; and Robert Maas, cello. Subsequent members included Charles Libove, Stefan Krayk and Harris Goldman, violin; Charles Foidart, David Schwartz and Albert Gillis, viola; and Adolphe Frezin and Lucien Laporte, cello.
The quartet made its world debut at the University of California at Berkeley. Critic Alfred Frankenstein wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle on 11 November 1946, "Perhaps never before has one heard a string quartet with so rich, mellow and superbly polished a tone."
During its 20-year international career, the Paganini Quartet concertized continuously in large cities and small towns throughout the United States, as well as in famous concert halls around the world. In 1946-47 they played all the Beethoven string quartets in concert at the Library of Congress
. At Mills College in 1949, the Paganini and Budapest Quartets presented the world premiere of Darius Milhaud
's 14th and 15th string quartets, followed by the two groups' performance of both works simultaneously as an octet.
In subsequent years they made joint appearances with Arthur Rubinstein
, Andrés Segovia
, Claudio Arrau
and Gary Graffman
. The quartet recorded many of the Beethoven quartets as well as those of Gabriel Fauré
, Giuseppe Verdi
, Claude Debussy
, Maurice Ravel
and others. They also played the world premieres of works by Darius Milhaud
, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
and Benjamin Lees
.
. The orchestra gave more than 100 concerts over the ensuing 23 years, including premieres of major works by such major composers as Aaron Copland
, Dmitri Shostakovich
, Darius Milhaud
, Alberto Ginastera
, William Schuman
, Gian Carlo Menotti
, Malcolm Arnold
and Carlos Chávez
. Soloists who performed with the CCS under Temianka's direction included David Oistrakh
, Jean-Pierre Rampal
and Benny Goodman
.
Temianka broke tradition by speaking to his audiences from the stage about the music and composers. (For this reason the series was originally titled "Let's Talk Music".) He created a “Concerts for Youth” series and also brought music to hospitals, prisons, and schools for the handicapped. He recognized and was in many instances responsible for the first appearances of a number of rising musicians, including Christopher Parkening
, Jeffrey Kahane, Nathaniel Rosen
, Paul Shenley, Timothy Landauer, Daniel Heifetz, and Los Romeros, a family of guitarists from Spain. He also made a number of major television appearances with the CCS, and appeared as conductor with other orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic
and Buenos Aires Philharmonic.
Unique concerts given under the auspices of the CCS included the opera Noye's Fludde
by Benjamin Britten
, in which hundreds of children participated; a "Monster Concert", in which 12 Steinway pianos and 36 pianists were brought on stage for pieces by Louis Moreau Gottschalk
and others; Alberto Ginastera
's Cantata para America Magica, an extraordinary work based on pre-Columbian Latin American songs and scored for soprano and 53 percussion instruments; and Christus Apollo, a cantata written by Jerry Goldsmith
, based on a text by Ray Bradbury
and narrated by Charlton Heston
.
The Stradivari he played during the years of the Paganini Quartet was the "Comte Cozio di Salabue" of 1727. It is now played by Martin Beaver, first violinist of the Tokyo String Quartet
, which has played since 1995 on the same quartet of Stradivari instruments once owned by Paganini. These remarkable instruments—the viola had inspired Paganini to commission Hector Berlioz
's Harold en Italie -- were also played by the Cleveland Quartet for almost 15 years, beginning in 1982, and are presently owned by Nippon Music Foundation of Japan, after deacquisition by the Corcoran Gallery in the mid-1990s for $15 million.
When the years of the Paganini Quartet came to an end, Temianka played a Michelangelo Bergonzi of 1759. His recordings of the Handel Sonatas were made on an Andrea Guarneri
of 1687.
French Officier des Arts et des Lettres 1979.
American String Teachers Assoc.: Distinguished Teacher Award 1970 and Distinguished Service Award 1989.
Gramophone Award 1947 (for recordings of Beethoven "Rasumofsky" quartets).
Resolutions by the California Legislature, County of Los Angeles and City of Los
Angeles.
Franklin S. Harris Fine Arts Award at Brigham Young University 1977.
, Michael Mann, Dolores Miller, Phyllis Moad, Karen Tuttle
(who later became a violist) and Camilla Wicks
.
“The happiest times have always been when we have chamber music at our house—veritable orgies of informal music-making, gastronomy, and story-swapping, with everybody in shirtsleeves. The warmth of musical and human empathy is unique. As we play, unrehearsed, a quartet of Beethoven or Mozart, there are extraordinary flashes of insight, thrilling moments of truth when we share the same concept of an exquisite phrase, sculpt the same melodic line, linger and savor the same ritardando or diminuendo. In those moments we spontaneously look up from our music, exchanging ecstatic smiles and glances. It is a level of spiritual communication granted few human beings.” -- from Facing the Music.
, Gaetano Pugnani
, Franz Schubert
, Robert Schumann
, Johann Sebastian Bach
, Karol Szymanowski
, Pablo de Sarasate
, Camille Saint-Saëns
, Anton Arensky
, Jean Sibelius
and Frank Bridge
. In The Book of the Violin, Dominic Gill appraised Temianka’s recording of the Schubert Rondo in A, D.438, as follows: “The divine playing of this work in 1937 by Henri Temianka stands out as a pinnacle among the great violin recordings of all time.” All of these recordings were reissued on CD by Biddulph Recordings in 1992.
In the LP era, he recorded sonatas by George Frideric Handel
, Édouard Lalo
, Vincent d'Indy
, Edvard Grieg
and Antonín Dvořák
, and the Tchaikovsky
Piano Trio in A minor
. His live performances of the Beethoven sonatas in 1946 with pianist Leonard Shure
were restored by DOREMI and released by Allegro Music on CD's in 2011.
With the Paganini Quartet, he recorded many of the Beethoven
string quartets, Joseph Haydn
's “Emperor” and Mozart’s “Dissonant” quartets, and quartets by Britten, Debussy, Ravel, Schumann, Verdi, Ginastera, Lajhta, and Benjamin Lees; the Schumann Piano Quintet and Fauré Piano Quartet No. 1 with Arthur Rubinstein
(reissued on BMG CD in 1999); and the Brahms Piano Quintet with Ralph Votapek.
He also appeared as violin soloist in a 1941 recording of Richard Strauss
’s Don Quixote
by the Pittsburgh Symphony under Fritz Reiner, featuring cellist Gregor Piatigorsky
. Conducting the Los Angeles Percussion Ensemble, he recorded Ginastera’s Cantata para America Magica and Carlos Chavez’s Toccata for Percussion Instruments for Columbia Records.
Early years
Henri Temianka was born in Scotland of Polish-Jewish parents. He studied violinViolin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
with Carel Blitz in Rotterdam
Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...
from 1915 to 1923, with Willy Hess
Willy Hess (violinist)
Willy Hess was a German violin virtuoso and violin teacher.-Biography:Will Hess was born in Mannheim in 1859. He was a student of Joseph Joachim and he also studied with his father, who was a pupil of Louis Spohr....
at the National Conservatory in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
from 1923 to 1924, and with Jules Boucherit
Jules Boucherit
Jules Boucherit was a French violinist and renowned violin pedagogue.Jules Boucherit was born in Morlaix. He attended the Paris Conservatoire studying under Jules Garcin...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
from 1924 to 1926. He then enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music
Curtis Institute of Music
The Curtis Institute of Music is a conservatory in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that offers courses of study leading to a performance Diploma, Bachelor of Music, Master of Music in Opera, and Professional Studies Certificate in Opera. According to statistics compiled by U.S...
in Philadelphia, where he studied violin with Carl Flesch
Carl Flesch
Carl Flesch was a violinist and teacher.Carl Flesch was born in Moson in Hungary in 1873. He began playing the violin at seven years of age. At 10, he was taken to Vienna, and began to study with Jakob Grün. At 17, he left for Paris, and joined the Paris Conservatoire...
, who reported of him in 1927, “Was brought over by me. First class technical talent, somewhat sleepy personality, has still to awake.” In 1928, Flesch said, “His violinistic personality is for the moment still above his human one. Life shall be his best teacher in this regard.” Later he stated, "...he has made an intensive study of my method of teaching, of which I consider him the best exponent in England." In his memoirs he said, "...there was above all Henry [sic] Temianka, who did great credit to the Institute: both musically and technically, he possessed a model collection of talents." Temianka's playing was further influenced by Eugène Ysaÿe
Eugène Ysaÿe
Eugène Ysaÿe was a Belgian violinist, composer and conductor born in Liège. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tzar"...
, Jacques Thibaud
Jacques Thibaud
Jacques Thibaud was a French violinist.Thibaud was born in Bordeaux and studied the violin with his father before entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of thirteen. In 1896 he jointly won the conservatory's violin prize with Pierre Monteux...
and Bronisław Huberman. He also studied conducting with Artur Rodziński
Artur Rodzinski
Artur Rodziński was a Polish conductor of opera and symphonic music. He is especially noted for his tenures as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic in the 1930s and 1940s.-Biography:...
at Curtis, and became its first graduate in 1930.
Career
After a brilliant New YorkNew York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
debut in 1928, described by Olin Downes in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
as “one of the finest accomplishments in years,” Temianka returned to Europe and rapidly established himself as one of the era’s foremost concert violinists. He made extensive concert tours through almost every country in Europe and appeared with major orchestras both in Europe and the U.S. under conductors including Pierre Monteux
Pierre Monteux
Pierre Monteux was an orchestra conductor. Born in Paris, France, Monteux later became an American citizen.-Life and career:Monteux was born in Paris in 1875. His family was descended from Sephardi Jews who came to France in the wake of the Spanish Inquisition. He studied violin from an early age,...
(who gave him his first Paris appearance), Sir John Barbirolli
John Barbirolli
Sir John Barbirolli, CH was an English conductor and cellist. Born in London, of Italian and French parentage, he grew up in a family of professional musicians. His father and grandfather were violinists...
, Sir Adrian Boult
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...
, Fritz Reiner
Fritz Reiner
Frederick Martin “Fritz” Reiner was a prominent conductor of opera and symphonic music in the twentieth century.-Biography:...
, Sir Henry J. Wood, George Szell
George Szell
George Szell , originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell, was a Hungarian-born American conductor and composer...
, Otto Klemperer
Otto Klemperer
Otto Klemperer was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the leading conductors of the 20th century.-Biography:Otto Klemperer was born in Breslau, Silesia Province, then in Germany...
, Dimitri Mitropoulos, and William Steinberg
William Steinberg
William Steinberg was a German-American conductor.- Biography :Steinberg was born Hans Wilhelm Steinberg in Cologne, Germany. He displayed early talent as a violinist, pianist, and composer, conducting his own choral/ orchestral composition at age 13...
. In Leningrad he was engaged for a single performance, but his virtuosity was so impressive that he was retained for five performances with five complete programs within a week.
In 1935 he won third prize in the first Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition
Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition
The international Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition is a competition for violinists up to age 30 that takes place every five years in Poznań, Poland, in honor of the virtuoso and composer Henryk Wieniawski. The first competition took place in 1935 in Warsaw, 100 years after the birth of its...
in Warsaw, Poland; Ginette Neveu
Ginette Neveu
Ginette Neveu was a French violinist.-Biography:Born in Paris into a musical family, Ginette Neveu became a violinist and her brother Jean-Paul Neveu a classical pianist. She was also the grandniece of composer Charles-Marie Widor...
took first prize, and David Oistrakh
David Oistrakh
David Fyodorovich Oistrakh , , David Fiodorović Ojstrakh, ; – October 24, 1974, was a Soviet violinist....
second. In that year he also premiered a suite that the then-unknown Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
had written for him and pianist Betty Humby, and performed music by Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
, with the composer at the piano in Moscow; and Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
conducted his violin concerto for him in London. In 1936 he founded the Temianka Chamber Orchestra in London. He was the concertmaster of the Scottish Orchestra from 1937 to 1938. He gave his first concert in Los Angeles, a violin recital, at the Wilshire Ebell in 1940. From 1941 to 1942 he was the concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony under Fritz Reiner
Fritz Reiner
Frederick Martin “Fritz” Reiner was a prominent conductor of opera and symphonic music in the twentieth century.-Biography:...
, performing as soloist in concertos including the Beethoven
Violin Concerto (Beethoven)
Ludwig van Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, was written in 1806.The work was premiered on 23 December 1806 in the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. Beethoven wrote the concerto for his colleague Franz Clement, a leading violinist of the day, who had earlier given him helpful advice on...
and Mozart A major
Violin Concerto No. 5 (Mozart)
The Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K. 219, was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1775, premiering during the holiday season that year in Salzburg. It follows the typical fast-slow-fast musical structure.- Background :...
.
His appearances as violin soloist and guest conductor in Europe and both North and South America were interrupted by World War II, during which he became a senior editor in the U.S. Office of War Information. Because of his fluency in four languages (English, French, German and Dutch), he translated and edited sensitive documents. Through a combination of his bureaucratic connections there and contacts from his international performing career, and with assistance from HIAS
HIAS
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was founded in 1881. The constant flow of Jewish immigrants from Russia gave birth to the society. HIAS assists Jews and other groups of people whose lives and freedom are at risk, through rescue, relocation, family reunification, and resettlement. Since its inception...
, he was able to secure the release of his parents from the Nazi concentration camp in Gurs, France, in 1941. However, upon arriving in Spain, they were thrown in jail by Franco's police. Temianka recalled that a concert he had given in Madrid in 1935 had been attended by a powerful Spanish aristocrat and president of the Bilbao Philharmonic Society, Ignacio de Gortazar y Manso de Velasco, the 19th Count of Superunda (see also José Manso de Velasco, 1st Count of Superunda). The Count personally escorted Temianka’s parents from jail to his mansion, and then arranged for their passage by ship to Cuba and the United States, where they became citizens. Temianka described these remarkable events in his second book Chance Encounters (not yet published).
In 1945 he performed at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
. In 1946 he performed all the Beethoven violin sonatas with pianist Leonard Shure
Leonard Shure
Leonard Shure was an American concert pianist, and heir to the tradition of the great Artur Schnabel, began his career as a performer at the age of 5 and as a teenager studied privately with Schnabel in Germany.-Life:Shure graduated from the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin in 1927, at which time he...
at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Over the next 45 years he made appearances in more than 3,000 concerts in 30 countries, with some 500 concerts in the Los Angeles metropolitan area alone, appearing as violin soloist, conductor of the California Chamber Symphony
California Chamber Symphony
-Origins and History:In 1958 the noted violinist and conductor Henri Temianka founded the Beverly Hills Concerts for Youth. Works such as ‘’Peter and the Wolf’’ and Saint-Saëns’ ‘’Carnival of the Animals’’ were performed, with celebrity participants including Ray Bradbury, Victor Borge, Hans...
, first violinist of the Paganini Quartet
Paganini Quartet
The Paganini Quartet was a virtuoso string quartet founded by its first violinist, Henri Temianka, in 1946. The quartet drew its name from the fact that all four of its instruments, made by Antonio Stradivari , had once been owned by the great Italian violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini...
, and in remarkable chamber music recitals such as the Beethoven sonata cycles with pianists Lili Kraus
Lili Kraus
Lili Kraus was a Hungarian-born British pianist.-Biography:Lili Kraus was born in Budapest in 1903. Her father was from Czech Lands, and her mother from an assimilated Jewish Hungarian family....
, Leonard Pennario
Leonard Pennario
Leonard Pennario was an American classical pianist and composer.He was born in Buffalo, New York, and grew up in Los Angeles, attending Los Angeles High School remaining in L.A. for his entire career. He first came to notice when he performed Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto at age 12, with the...
, Rudolf Firkušný
Rudolf Firkusny
- Life :Born in Moravian Napajedla, Firkušný started his musical studies with the composers Leoš Janáček and Josef Suk, and the pianist Vilém Kurz. Later he studied with Alfred Cortot and Artur Schnabel. He began performing on the continent of Europe in the 1920s, and made his debuts in London in...
and George Szell
George Szell
George Szell , originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell, was a Hungarian-born American conductor and composer...
, and the Bach violin sonatas with Anthony Newman. He performed the Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
Double Violin Concerto
Double Violin Concerto (Bach)
The Concerto for 2 Violins, Strings and Continuo in D Minor, BWV 1043, also known as the Double Violin Concerto or "Bach Double", is perhaps one of the most famous works by J. S. Bach and considered among the best examples of the work of the late Baroque period. Bach wrote it between 1730 and 1731...
with David Oistrakh
David Oistrakh
David Fyodorovich Oistrakh , , David Fiodorović Ojstrakh, ; – October 24, 1974, was a Soviet violinist....
, Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE was a Russian Jewish American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Russian Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985...
, Henryk Szeryng
Henryk Szeryng
Henryk Szeryng was a Polish violinist.-Early years:He was born in Żelazowa Wola, Poland on 22 September 1918 into a wealthy family....
and Jack Benny
Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
. His chamber groups performed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Los Angeles Music Center and the Mark Taper Forum. In the 1980s his California Chamber Virtuosi gave concerts at Pepperdine University
Pepperdine University
Pepperdine University is an independent, private, medium-sized university affiliated with the Churches of Christ. The university's campus overlooking the Pacific Ocean in unincorporated Los Angeles County, California, United States, near Malibu, is the location for Seaver College, the School of...
and at the J. Paul Getty Museum
J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum, a program of the J. Paul Getty Trust, is an art museum. It has two locations, one at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, and one at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California...
in Malibu, California.
As an avid chamber music player, Temianka hosted frequent private musical evenings in his Los Angeles home, playing with the likes of Yehudi Menuhin, Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz was a violinist, born in Vilnius, then Russian Empire, now Lithuania. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time.- Early life :...
, Isaac Stern
Isaac Stern
Isaac Stern was a Ukrainian-born violinist. He was renowned for his recordings and for discovering new musical talent.-Biography:Isaac Stern was born into a Jewish family in Kremenets, Ukraine. He was fourteen months old when his family moved to San Francisco...
, Joseph Szigeti
Joseph Szigeti
Joseph Szigeti was a Hungarian violinist.Born into a musical family, he spent his early childhood in a small town in Transylvania. He quickly proved himself to be a child prodigy on the violin, and moved to Budapest with his father to study with the renowned pedagogue Jenő Hubay...
, David Oistrakh
David Oistrakh
David Fyodorovich Oistrakh , , David Fiodorović Ojstrakh, ; – October 24, 1974, was a Soviet violinist....
, Henryk Szeryng, Leonard Pennario
Leonard Pennario
Leonard Pennario was an American classical pianist and composer.He was born in Buffalo, New York, and grew up in Los Angeles, attending Los Angeles High School remaining in L.A. for his entire career. He first came to notice when he performed Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto at age 12, with the...
, William Primrose
William Primrose
William Primrose CBE was a Scottish violist and teacher.-Biography:Primrose was born in Glasgow and studied violin initially. In 1919 he moved to study at the then Guildhall School of Music in London. On the urging of the accompanist Ivor Newton, Primrose moved to Belgium to study under Eugène...
, Gregor Piatigorsky
Gregor Piatigorsky
Gregor Piatigorsky was a Russian-born American cellist.-Early life:...
, Jean-Pierre Rampal
Jean-Pierre Rampal
Jean-Pierre Louis Rampal was a French flautist. He has been personally "credited with returning to the flute the popularity as a solo classical instrument it had not held since the 18th century."-Early years:...
and other luminaries. Temianka was equally adept on the viola as the violin, and sometimes played it during these evenings, as well as in concert in 1962 with Isaac Stern in a performance of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante (which he also performed on violin with William Primrose on viola).
In 1980 the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians said of Temianka that he was "...known for his flawless mastery of his instrument, a pure and expressive tone, and forceful yet elegant interpretations."
The Paganini Quartet
Temianka founded the Paganini QuartetPaganini Quartet
The Paganini Quartet was a virtuoso string quartet founded by its first violinist, Henri Temianka, in 1946. The quartet drew its name from the fact that all four of its instruments, made by Antonio Stradivari , had once been owned by the great Italian violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini...
in 1946. The quartet drew its name from the fact that all four of its instruments, made by Antonio Stradivari
Antonio Stradivari
Antonio Stradivari was an Italian luthier and a crafter of string instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars, violas, and harps. Stradivari is generally considered the most significant artisan in this field. The Latinized form of his surname, Stradivarius, as well as the colloquial, "Strad", is...
(1644–1737), had once been owned by the Italian virtuoso violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini
Niccolò Paganini
Niccolò Paganini was an Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer. He was one of the most celebrated violin virtuosi of his time, and left his mark as one of the pillars of modern violin technique...
(1782–1840). The other original members were Gustave Rosseels, second violin; Robert Courte, viola; and Robert Maas, cello. Subsequent members included Charles Libove, Stefan Krayk and Harris Goldman, violin; Charles Foidart, David Schwartz and Albert Gillis, viola; and Adolphe Frezin and Lucien Laporte, cello.
The quartet made its world debut at the University of California at Berkeley. Critic Alfred Frankenstein wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle on 11 November 1946, "Perhaps never before has one heard a string quartet with so rich, mellow and superbly polished a tone."
During its 20-year international career, the Paganini Quartet concertized continuously in large cities and small towns throughout the United States, as well as in famous concert halls around the world. In 1946-47 they played all the Beethoven string quartets in concert at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
. At Mills College in 1949, the Paganini and Budapest Quartets presented the world premiere of Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...
's 14th and 15th string quartets, followed by the two groups' performance of both works simultaneously as an octet.
In subsequent years they made joint appearances with Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein KBE was a Polish-American pianist. He received international acclaim for his performances of the music of a variety of composers...
, Andrés Segovia
Andrés Segovia
Andrés Torres Segovia, 1st Marquis of Salobreña , known as Andrés Segovia, was a virtuoso Spanish classical guitarist from Linares, Jaén, Andalucia, Spain...
, Claudio Arrau
Claudio Arrau
Claudio Arrau León was a Chilean pianist known for his interpretations of a vast repertoire spanning from the baroque to 20th-century composers, especially Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms and Debussy...
and Gary Graffman
Gary Graffman
Gary Graffman is an American classical pianist, teacher of piano and music administrator.Graffman was born in New York City to Russian-Jewish parents. Having started piano at age 3, Graffman entered the Curtis Institute of Music at age 7 in 1936 as a piano student of Isabelle Vengerova...
. The quartet recorded many of the Beethoven quartets as well as those of Gabriel Fauré
Gabriel Fauré
Gabriel Urbain Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th century composers...
, Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
, Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, Maurice Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
and others. They also played the world premieres of works by Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...
, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was an Italian composer. He was known as one of the foremost guitar composers in the twentieth century with almost one hundred compositions for that instrument. In 1939 he migrated to the United States and became a film composer for some 200 Hollywood movies for the next...
and Benjamin Lees
Benjamin Lees
Benjamin Lees was a contemporary U.S. composer of Art music, born in Harbin, China, raised in San Francisco and lived in Palm Springs, California.-Early life:...
.
The California Chamber Symphony (CCS)
In 1960 Temianka founded and conducted a chamber orchestra based at Royce Hall, UCLA, the California Chamber SymphonyCalifornia Chamber Symphony
-Origins and History:In 1958 the noted violinist and conductor Henri Temianka founded the Beverly Hills Concerts for Youth. Works such as ‘’Peter and the Wolf’’ and Saint-Saëns’ ‘’Carnival of the Animals’’ were performed, with celebrity participants including Ray Bradbury, Victor Borge, Hans...
. The orchestra gave more than 100 concerts over the ensuing 23 years, including premieres of major works by such major composers as Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
, Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
, Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...
, Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Evaristo Ginastera was an Argentine composer of classical music. He is considered one of the most important Latin American classical composers.- Biography :...
, William Schuman
William Schuman
William Howard Schuman was an American composer and music administrator.-Life:Born in Manhattan in New York City to Samuel and Rachel Schuman, Schuman was named after the twenty-seventh U.S. president, William Howard Taft, although his family preferred to call him Bill...
, Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...
, Malcolm Arnold
Malcolm Arnold
Sir Malcolm Henry Arnold, CBE was an English composer and symphonist.Malcolm Arnold began his career playing trumpet professionally, but by age thirty his life was devoted to composition. He was ranked with Benjamin Britten as one of the most sought-after composers in Britain...
and Carlos Chávez
Carlos Chávez
Carlos Antonio de Padua Chávez y Ramírez was a Mexican composer, conductor, music theorist, educator, journalist, and founder and director of the Mexican Symphonic Orchestra. He was influenced by native Mexican cultures. Of his six Symphonies, his Symphony No...
. Soloists who performed with the CCS under Temianka's direction included David Oistrakh
David Oistrakh
David Fyodorovich Oistrakh , , David Fiodorović Ojstrakh, ; – October 24, 1974, was a Soviet violinist....
, Jean-Pierre Rampal
Jean-Pierre Rampal
Jean-Pierre Louis Rampal was a French flautist. He has been personally "credited with returning to the flute the popularity as a solo classical instrument it had not held since the 18th century."-Early years:...
and Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
.
Temianka broke tradition by speaking to his audiences from the stage about the music and composers. (For this reason the series was originally titled "Let's Talk Music".) He created a “Concerts for Youth” series and also brought music to hospitals, prisons, and schools for the handicapped. He recognized and was in many instances responsible for the first appearances of a number of rising musicians, including Christopher Parkening
Christopher Parkening
Christopher Parkening is an American classical guitarist.Parkening was born in Los Angeles, California, and pursued music in part because of his cousin Jack Marshall, a studio musician in the 1960s. Marshall first introduced Parkening to the recordings of Andrés Segovia when he was 11, and...
, Jeffrey Kahane, Nathaniel Rosen
Nathaniel Rosen
Nathaniel "Nick" Rosen is an American cellist, former gold prize winner at the International Tchaikovsky Competition, and former faculty member at the USC Thornton School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music....
, Paul Shenley, Timothy Landauer, Daniel Heifetz, and Los Romeros, a family of guitarists from Spain. He also made a number of major television appearances with the CCS, and appeared as conductor with other orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Los Angeles Philharmonic
The Los Angeles Philharmonic is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California, United States. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at the Hollywood Bowl from July through September...
and Buenos Aires Philharmonic.
Unique concerts given under the auspices of the CCS included the opera Noye's Fludde
Noye's Fludde
Noye's Fludde is an early 15th century mystery play from the Chester Mystery Cycle. It was set to music by Benjamin Britten in 1957 based on an edition by Alfred W. Pollard...
by Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
, in which hundreds of children participated; a "Monster Concert", in which 12 Steinway pianos and 36 pianists were brought on stage for pieces by Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an American composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works...
and others; Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Evaristo Ginastera was an Argentine composer of classical music. He is considered one of the most important Latin American classical composers.- Biography :...
's Cantata para America Magica, an extraordinary work based on pre-Columbian Latin American songs and scored for soprano and 53 percussion instruments; and Christus Apollo, a cantata written by Jerry Goldsmith
Jerry Goldsmith
Jerrald King Goldsmith was an American composer and conductor most known for his work in film and television scoring....
, based on a text by Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
and narrated by Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes...
.
Violins
In the 1930s Temianka played a Silvestre violin, with which he made his early Vintage recordings, and subsequently a Januarius Gagliano and a Carlo Bergonzi.The Stradivari he played during the years of the Paganini Quartet was the "Comte Cozio di Salabue" of 1727. It is now played by Martin Beaver, first violinist of the Tokyo String Quartet
Tokyo String Quartet
The is an international string quartet.The group formed in 1969 at the Juilliard School of Music. The founding members attended the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo, where they studied with Professor Hideo Saito. Soon after its formation the Quartet won First Prizes at the Coleman Competition,...
, which has played since 1995 on the same quartet of Stradivari instruments once owned by Paganini. These remarkable instruments—the viola had inspired Paganini to commission Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
's Harold en Italie -- were also played by the Cleveland Quartet for almost 15 years, beginning in 1982, and are presently owned by Nippon Music Foundation of Japan, after deacquisition by the Corcoran Gallery in the mid-1990s for $15 million.
When the years of the Paganini Quartet came to an end, Temianka played a Michelangelo Bergonzi of 1759. His recordings of the Handel Sonatas were made on an Andrea Guarneri
Andrea Guarneri
Andrea Guarneri was an Italian luthier and founder of the house of Guarneri violin makers.-Biography:Thought to be born in 1626 to Bartolomo Guarneri in the parish of Cremona, Italy, very little is known about Andrea Guarneri's family of origin...
of 1687.
Honors
Pepperdine Honorary Doctorate 1986.French Officier des Arts et des Lettres 1979.
American String Teachers Assoc.: Distinguished Teacher Award 1970 and Distinguished Service Award 1989.
Gramophone Award 1947 (for recordings of Beethoven "Rasumofsky" quartets).
Resolutions by the California Legislature, County of Los Angeles and City of Los
Angeles.
Franklin S. Harris Fine Arts Award at Brigham Young University 1977.
Students
Henri Temianka's students included Leo Berlin (who became concertmaster of the Stockholm Philharmonic), Nina Bodnar (who won the 1982 Thibaud International Competition in Paris), Amalia Castillo, Alison Dalton (now in the first violin section of the Chicago Symphony), Marilyn Doty, Eugene FodorEugene Fodor
Eugene Nicholas Fodor, Jr. was the first American violinist to win the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.Fodor was born in Denver, Colorado. His first ten years of study were with Harold Wippler...
, Michael Mann, Dolores Miller, Phyllis Moad, Karen Tuttle
Karen Tuttle
Karen Tuttle was an American viola teacher, famous for her "coordination" technique, which emphasizes being comfortable while playing the instrument. She was originally a violinist who chose to become a violist when she wanted to study with William Primrose, whose technique and ease in playing...
(who later became a violist) and Camilla Wicks
Camilla Wicks
Camilla Wicks is an American violinist and one of the first female violinists to establish a major international career...
.
Other activities
Temianka was a visiting professor and guest lecturer at many universities in the United States and abroad, including the Universities of California, Kansas, Illinois, Michigan, Colorado, Toronto, Southern California and the Osaka Music Academy of Japan. He held professorships at University of California, Santa Barbara (1960–64) and Long Beach State College (now California State University, Long Beach) (1964–76). He also taught master classes at various universities including Brigham Young in Utah, and produced films in music education.Quotations
“You have a choice: to create, or not to create.”“The happiest times have always been when we have chamber music at our house—veritable orgies of informal music-making, gastronomy, and story-swapping, with everybody in shirtsleeves. The warmth of musical and human empathy is unique. As we play, unrehearsed, a quartet of Beethoven or Mozart, there are extraordinary flashes of insight, thrilling moments of truth when we share the same concept of an exquisite phrase, sculpt the same melodic line, linger and savor the same ritardando or diminuendo. In those moments we spontaneously look up from our music, exchanging ecstatic smiles and glances. It is a level of spiritual communication granted few human beings.” -- from Facing the Music.
Recordings
In the 1930s Temianka made solo recordings, mostly on the Parlophone label, of works by Henryk WieniawskiHenryk Wieniawski
Henryk Wieniawski was a Polish violinist and composer.-Biography:Henryk Wieniawski was born in Lublin, Congress Poland, Russian Empire. His father, Tobiasz Pietruszka, had converted to Catholicism. His talent for playing the violin was recognized early, and in 1843 he entered the Paris...
, Gaetano Pugnani
Gaetano Pugnani
Gaetano Pugnani was born in Turin. He trained on the violin under Giovanni Battista Somis and Giuseppe Tartini. In 1752, Pugnani became the first violinist of the Royal Chapel in Turin. Then he went on a large tour that granted him great fame for his extraordinary skill on the violin...
, Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
, Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
, Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
, Karol Szymanowski
Karol Szymanowski
Karol Maciej Szymanowski was a Polish composer and pianist.-Life:Szymanowski was born into a wealthy land-owning Polish gentry family in Tymoszówka, then in the Russian Empire, now in Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine. He studied music privately with his father before going to Gustav Neuhaus'...
, Pablo de Sarasate
Pablo de Sarasate
Pablo Martín Melitón de Sarasate y Navascués was a Navarrese Spanish violinist and composer of the Romantic period.-Career:Pablo Sarasate was born in Pamplona, Navarre, the son of an artillery bandmaster...
, Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
, Anton Arensky
Anton Arensky
Anton Stepanovich Arensky -Biography:Arensky was born in Novgorod, Russia. He was musically precocious and had composed a number of songs and piano pieces by the age of nine...
, Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
and Frank Bridge
Frank Bridge
Frank Bridge was an English composer and violist.-Life:Bridge was born in Brighton and studied at the Royal College of Music in London from 1899 to 1903 under Charles Villiers Stanford and others...
. In The Book of the Violin, Dominic Gill appraised Temianka’s recording of the Schubert Rondo in A, D.438, as follows: “The divine playing of this work in 1937 by Henri Temianka stands out as a pinnacle among the great violin recordings of all time.” All of these recordings were reissued on CD by Biddulph Recordings in 1992.
In the LP era, he recorded sonatas by George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
, Édouard Lalo
Édouard Lalo
Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo was a French composer.-Biography:Lalo was born in Lille , in northernmost France. He attended that city's music conservatory in his youth. Then, beginning at age 16, Lalo studied at the Paris Conservatoire under Berlioz's old enemy François Antoine Habeneck...
, Vincent d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy was a French composer and teacher.-Life:Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. He had piano lessons from an early age from his paternal grandmother, who passed him on to Antoine François Marmontel and...
, Edvard Grieg
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...
and Antonín Dvořák
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
, and the Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
Piano Trio in A minor
Piano Trio (Tchaikovsky)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50, was written in Rome between December 1881 and late January 1882. It is subtitled In memory of a great artist, in reference to Nikolai Rubinstein, his close friend and mentor, who had died on 23 March 1881...
. His live performances of the Beethoven sonatas in 1946 with pianist Leonard Shure
Leonard Shure
Leonard Shure was an American concert pianist, and heir to the tradition of the great Artur Schnabel, began his career as a performer at the age of 5 and as a teenager studied privately with Schnabel in Germany.-Life:Shure graduated from the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin in 1927, at which time he...
were restored by DOREMI and released by Allegro Music on CD's in 2011.
With the Paganini Quartet, he recorded many of the Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
string quartets, Joseph Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
's “Emperor” and Mozart’s “Dissonant” quartets, and quartets by Britten, Debussy, Ravel, Schumann, Verdi, Ginastera, Lajhta, and Benjamin Lees; the Schumann Piano Quintet and Fauré Piano Quartet No. 1 with Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein KBE was a Polish-American pianist. He received international acclaim for his performances of the music of a variety of composers...
(reissued on BMG CD in 1999); and the Brahms Piano Quintet with Ralph Votapek.
He also appeared as violin soloist in a 1941 recording of Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
’s Don Quixote
Don Quixote (Strauss)
Don Quixote, Op. 35, is a composition by Richard Strauss for cello, viola and large orchestra. Subtitled Phantastische Variationen über ein Thema ritterlichen Charakters , the work is based on the novel Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes. Strauss composed this work in Munich in 1897...
by the Pittsburgh Symphony under Fritz Reiner, featuring cellist Gregor Piatigorsky
Gregor Piatigorsky
Gregor Piatigorsky was a Russian-born American cellist.-Early life:...
. Conducting the Los Angeles Percussion Ensemble, he recorded Ginastera’s Cantata para America Magica and Carlos Chavez’s Toccata for Percussion Instruments for Columbia Records.
External links
- Henri Temianka Collection of Papers, Correspondence and Memorabilia at the UCLA Library; Collection Guide at the Online Archive of California
- Obituary in The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, November 10, 1992