Joseph Szigeti

Joseph Szigeti (Hungarian: Szigeti József) (September 5, 1892 – February 19, 1973) was a Hungarian virtuoso violinist. He spent his early childhood in a small town in Transylvania.

Following a bout of tuberculosis which required a stay in a sanatorium in Switzerland, Szigeti settled in Geneva, where he became Professor of Violin at the local conservatory in 1917. It was in Geneva that he met his future wife, Wanda Ostrowska, and at roughly the same time he became friends with the composer Béla Bartók. Both relationships were to be lifelong.

He also distinguished himself as a strong advocate of new music, and was the dedicatee of many new works by contemporary composers. Among the more notable pieces written for him are Ernest Bloch's Violin Concerto, Bartók's Rhapsody No. 1, and Eugène Ysaÿe's Solo Sonata No. 1.

Szigeti auditioned at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music and was admitted directly into the class of Jenő Hubay, without the usual delays and formalities.
Hubay, who had been a student of Joseph Joachim in Berlin, had by that time established himself as one of the preeminent teachers in Europe and a fountainhead of the Hungarian violin tradition.

Illness and new beginnings

In 1913, Szigeti was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was sent to a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland to recover, interrupting his concert career. During his stay at the sanatorium, he became re-acquainted with the composer Béla Bartók, who was recovering from pneumonia. The two had known each other only in passing during their conservatory days, but now they began a friendship that would last until Bartók’s death in 1945.

American debut

In 1925, Szigeti met Leopold Stokowski and played the Bach Chaconne in D minor for him. Less than two weeks later, Szigeti received a telegram from Stokowski’s manager in Philadelphia inviting him to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra later that year: it was to be his American debut.

In 1939, to escape the war and Nazi persecution of the Jews, Szigeti emigrated with his wife to the United States, where they settled in California. (A year later, Bartók also fled to America, and just two days after his arrival, he and Szigeti played a sonata recital at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.).

In Naples, Italy, in November 1956, just after the Soviets crushed the Hungarian revolution, as soon as he walked onto the stage the audience burst into wild applause and shouts of Viva l’Ungheria! (Italian for "Long live Hungary!"), delaying the concert for nearly fifteen minutes.

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin comments at length about Szigeti in his own memoirs, remarking as many others did on Szigeti's intellectual approach to music, but in a somewhat more critical fashion:
Apart from Enesco, he was the most cultivated violinist I have ever known but while Enesco was a force of nature, Szigeti, slender, small, anxious, was a beautifully fashioned piece of porcelain, a priceless Sèvres vase. Curiously for a Hungarian, from whom one expects wild, energetic, spontaneous qualities, Szigeti travelled even farther up a one-way road of deliberate intellectualism..."
Nevertheless, Menuhin too referred to Szigeti as "a violinist whom I much admired and a man of whom I was very fond".

Szigeti also offers a lengthy and detailed explanation of his approach to violin technique. Some topics prominently discussed include the violin works of Béla Bartók, and most notably, the vital importance of J.S. Bach's Six Sonatas and Partitas for any violinist's technical and artistic development.

New music

Szigeti was an avid champion of new music, and frequently planned his recitals to include new or little-known works alongside the classics. Many composers wrote new works for him, notably Béla Bartók, Ernest Bloch, and Eugène Ysaÿe.

Szigeti was also the dedicatee of the first of Eugène Ysaÿe's Six Sonatas for Solo Violin; in fact, Ysaÿe's inspiration to compose the sonatas came from hearing Szigeti's performances of J.S. Bach's Six Sonatas and Partitas, to which they are intended as a modern counterpart.

Perhaps Szigeti's most fruitful musical partnership was with his friend Béla Bartók. The first piece Bartók dedicated to him was the First Rhapsody for violin and orchestra (or piano) of 1928; the rhapsody, based on both Romanian and Hungarian folk tunes, was one of a pair of violin rhapsodies written in 1928 (the other being dedicated to Zoltán Székely.) In 1938, Szigeti and clarinetist Benny Goodman teamed up to commission a trio from Bartók: originally intended to be a short work just long enough to fill both sides of a 78 rpm record, the piece soon expanded beyond its modest intent and became the three-movement Contrasts for Piano, Violin and Clarinet. In 1944, by which time Szigeti and Bartók had both fled to the United States to escape the war in Europe, Bartók's health was failing and he had sunk into depression. He was in dire need of money, but felt no inspiration to compose and was convinced that his works would never sell to an American audience. Szigeti came to his friend's aid by securing donations from the American Society of Composers and Publishers to pay for Bartók's medical treatment, and then, together with conductor and compatriot Fritz Reiner, persuaded Serge Koussevitzky to commission from Bartók what eventually became his much-beloved Concerto for Orchestra. The work's success brought Bartók some measure of financial security and provided him with a much-needed emotional boost.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Szigeti


Nota:
Quería publicar esto antes de este 15 de marzo (hoy) y luego (también antes del 15 de marzo) publicar sobre el día nacional celebrando la revolución de 1848, pero dado el tiempo, publicaré esto así en inglés, luego publicaré lo otro y luego traduciré esto, mientras tanto aquí esta lo que dice su artículo de wikipedia en español.

Joseph Szigeti (húngaro: Szigeti József) (5 de septiembre de 1892 – 19 de febrero de 1973) fue un virtuoso del violín.

Nacido en una familia musical, pasó su primera infancia en un pequeño pueblo de Transilvania. Sin embargo, desde muy joven demostró ser un niño prodigio en el violín, y se trasladó a Budapest con su padre para estudiar con el famoso pedagogo Jenő Hubay. Después de completar sus estudios con Hubay, todavía en su temprana adolescencia, Szigeti comenzó su carrera internacional de conciertos. En ese momento se limita principalmente a conciertos de salón y al repertorio más abiertamente virtuosista. Sin embargo, después de conocer al pianista Ferruccio Busoni, comenzó a desarrollar una forma mucho más reflexiva e intelectual de enfocar la música, que con el tiempo le valió el apodo "el virtuoso académico".

A raíz de una ataque de tuberculosis, que le obligó a permanecer e un sanatorio en Suiza, Szigeti se estableció en Ginebra, donde se convirtió en profesor de violín en el conservatorio local en 1917. Fue en Ginebra donde conoció a su esposa, Wanda Ostrowska, y aproximadamente al mismo tiempo se convirtió en amigo del gran compositor Béla Bartók. Ambas relaciones duraron para toda la vida.

Desde el decenio de 1920 hasta 1960, Szigeti actuó y grabó regularmente en todo el mundo. También se distinguió como un firme defensor de la música nueva, y fue el dedicatario de muchas de las nuevas obras de compositores contemporáneos. Entre las más notables piezas escritas para él están el Concierto para violín de Ernest Bloch, la Rapsodia nº 1 de Bartok y la Sonata para violín solo nº 1 de Eugène Ysaÿe. Se retiró de los escenarios en 1960 y se dedicó a la enseñanza y la escritura hasta su muerte en 1973, a los 80 años.

Artículo:
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Szigeti

Este artículo fue destacado el pasado viernes 11 de marzo en la wikipedia en inglés.

hay otras tres personas con el nombre de Joseph Szigeti que se mencionan en la wikipedia en húngaro, la cual solo tiene artículos para dos de ellos, se pueden ver aquí:

http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szigeti_József_(egyértelműsítő_lap)