| Roman Totenberg, who has died aged a hundred and one, was a Polish-born violinist who made music with Yehudi Menuhin, ate with Eleanor Roosevelt and built sandcastles with Igor Stravinsky. After his last British recital, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1971, he was affectionately described as an "Old Master". Totenberg joined Boston University, Massachusetts, in 1961. He returned to Moscow in 1998 as a juror in the Tchaikovsky Violin Competition, visiting the home by the Kremlin where his mother had once fed him horse meat. Milhaud was in the audience and would eventually write a concerto for him. Returning to Warsaw in 1921, Totenberg studied with Mieczyslaw Michalowicz and was soon appearing with the Warsaw Philharmonic. By the age of 11 he was teaching his first pupil. Soon Paris also felt unsafe and, in 1938, Totenberg settled in New York, forming the Alma Trio with the pianist Adolph Baller and the cellist Gabor Rejto. On a visit to Warsaw he spent a month teaching the young Ida Haendel. Roman Totenberg married, in 1941, Melanie Shroder, who died in 1996. During the Russian Revolution, "Comrade Totenberg" was soon giving recitals to communist chiefs in exchange for crumbs of food ("White bread!"). His London concert in November 1952, with the clarinettist Gervase de Peyer and the pianist Theo van der Pas, was billed as the "reappearance of the celebrated violinist". Roman Totenberg was born in Lódz on New Year's Day 1911 ("Easy to think back to, 1-1-11"), the son of an architect. A neighbour was concertmaster at the Bolshoi and gave young Roman his first violin lessons. And still he carried on teaching; hours before he died he was coaching a student in the Brahms Violin Concerto. "Slow down," he told her. Later that year Totenberg was heard in London and America . He toured South America with Arthur Rubinstein in 1937, turned pages for Fritz Kreisler in Paris, and was ordered to walk backwards offstage after performing for King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy. |
Thursday, 10 May 2012
Roman Totenberg
