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''"Szigeti" redirects here. For other uses see Szigeti (disambiguation).''
'Joseph Szigeti' (''Hungarian: Szigeti József'') (September 5, 1892—February 20, 1973) was a Hungarian violinist. He was one of the preeminent European violinists in the first half of the twentieth century, an enthusiastic promoter of modern music and an inspiration for many composers of the time. He was frequently praised by both critics and his fellow musicians for his combination of excellent instrumental technique, sincere musicality, and strong intellect.^[1]

Contents

Biography

Early life

Broadening horizons

Setback and new beginnings

American debut

Maturity

Later years

References

External links

Biography

Early life

He was born Joseph "Jóska" Singer^[2] in Budapest in 1892. His mother died when he was three years old, and soon thereafter he was sent to live with his grandparents in the little Carpathian town of Máramaros-Sziget (hence the name Szigeti). He grew up surrounded by music, as the town band was comprised almost entirely of his uncles. After a few informal lessons on the cimbalom from his aunt,^[3] he received his first lessons on the fiddle from his Uncle Bernat at the age of six.^[4]
He quickly showed a talent for the violin. Several years later, his father took him back to Budapest so that he might receive proper training at the conservatory. After a brief stint with a kindly but inadequate teacher at a second-string music school, he auditioned at the Academy of Music and was admitted directly into the class of Jenő Hubay, without the usual delays and formalities.^[5]
Hubay, who had himself been a student of Joseph Joachim in Berlin, had by that time established himself as one of the most prominent teachers in Europe and the fountainhead of the Hungarian tradition of violin playing.^[6] Szigeti joined such violinists as Franz von Vecsey, Emil Telmanyi, Jelly d'Arányi and Stefi Geyer in Hubay’s studio.
In those days, sparked by the phenomenal success of the young Czech virtuoso Jan Kubelik and urged by rigorous teachers and enthusiastic parents, a veritable horde of child prodigies swept through the concert halls of Europe. The Hubay studio was no exception: Szigeti and his fellow Wunderkinder performed extensively in special recitals and salon concerts during their study at the Academy.
In 1905, at the age of thirteen, Szigeti made his Berlin debut playing Bach's Chaconne, Ernst's F sharp minor concerto and Paganini's "Witches Dance". Despite the formidable program, the only mention of the event was a photograph in the Sunday supplement of the Berliner Tageblatt captioned: "A Musical Prodigy: Josef Szigeti."^[7]
Following that rather anticlimactic debut, Szigeti spent the next few months with a summer theatre company in a small Hungarian resort town, playing mini-recitals in between acts of folk operetta. In that same vein, the next year saw an engagement to play at a circus in Frankfurt, where he appeared under the pseudonym "Jóska Szulagi."^[8]
Also in 1906, Hubay took Szigeti to play for Joseph Joachim in Berlin. Joachim was impressed, and suggested that Szigeti should finish his studies there with him. But Szigeti declined the offer, both out loyalty to Hubay and a perceived aloofness and lack of rapport between Joachim and his students.^[9]

Broadening horizons

Soon after the meeting with Joachim, Szigeti embarked on a major concert tour of England. Midway through the tour, in Surrey, he met a music-loving couple who effectively adopted him, extending an invitation to stay with them for an indefinite length of time.^[10]

In England, he gave many successful concerts all around the country, including the premiere of the first work dedicated to him: the violin concerto by Hamilton Harty. Also during this time, Szigeti toured with an all-star ensemble including legendary singer Dame Nellie Melba, pianists Ferruccio Busoni and Wilhelm Bachaus. Philippe Gaubert, a famous French flutist of the day, as well as a young John McCormack, were also present on these tours.^[11]
By far the most significant of these new contacts was Ferruccio Busoni. The great pianist and composer became Szigeti’s mentor during these formative years, and the two would remain lifelong friends. By Szigeti’s own admission, before meeting Busoni his life was characterized by a certain laziness and indifference brought on by the then-typical life of a young prodigy violinist.^[12] He had grown accustomed to playing crowd-pleasing salon miniatures and dazzling virtuosic encores without ever thinking much about it, and he knew little of the works of the great masters—he could play them, but not fully understand them. As Szigeti put it, these contacts with Busoni (especially a careful study of Bach's Chaconne) "shook me once and for all out of my adolescent complacency."^[13]

Setback and new beginnings

In 1913, Szigeti was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was sent to a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland to recover. His concert career was necessarily put on indefinite hold.
During his stay at the sanatorium, he was re-acquainted with composer Béla Bartók, who was there recovering from pneumonia. The two had known each other only in passing during their conservatory days, but now they struck up a friendship that would last until Bartók’s death in 1945.
In 1917, having by then made a full recovery, Szigeti was appointed Professor of Violin at the Geneva Conservatory of Music. Szigeti has admitted that this job, although generally satisfying, was often frustrating due to the mediocre quality of many of his students.^[14] Nevertheless, the years teaching in Geneva provided an opportunity for Szigeti to further his own studies of music as an art and to become better-acquainted with things like chamber music, orchestral playing, theory and composition.^[15]
Also during that time, Szigeti met and fell in love with Wanda Ostrowska, a young woman of Russian parentage who had been sent along with her sister to a finishing school in Geneva, where she had been left stranded after the Russian Revolution of 1917. After a good deal of bureaucratic entanglements the couple managed to receive the necessary papers and permissions, and they were married in 1919. Their daughter, Irene, was born soon thereafter.

American debut

In 1925, Szigeti met Leopold Stokowski and played the Bach Chaconne for him. Less than two weeks later, Szigeti received a telegram from Stokowski’s manager in Philadelphia inviting him to perform in his American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra later that year.^[16]
The trip to America was a new experience on many levels: not only had Szigeti never played with an American orchestra before, he had never even heard one—a situation which led to some significant stage fright on his part. In addition, he was thoroughly taken aback by the American concert scene, specifically the publicity- and popularity-driven agents and managers who determined much of what was heard in American concert halls in those days. To Szigeti’s dismay, most of these impresarios were not interested in concertos and sonatas by the great masters, but preferred the popular light salon pieces which Szigeti had left behind in his prodigy days.^[17]
(To the end of his days, Szigeti loved to quote one memorable, cigar-chewing impresario who told him, with regard to Beethoven's "Kreutzer Sonata", “Well, let me tell you, Mister Dzigedy—and I know what I’m talking about—your Krewtzer Sonata bores the pants off my audiences!")^[18]

Maturity

By 1930, Szigeti had firmly established himself as a major international concert violinist. He performed all over Europe, the United States and Asia, and made the acquaintance of many of the era’s leading instrumentalists, conductors and composers.

In 1939, to escape the war, 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 legendary sonata recital at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.)
In 1950, Szigeti was detained at Ellis Island upon returning from a European concert tour and was held for several days, officially "temporarily excluded" from the country.^[19] The reasons for his detention remain unclear. The following year, in 1951, he received American citizenship.

Later years

During the 1950s Szigeti began to develop arthritis in his hands and his playing took a downturn.^[20] Despite his weakened technical mastery his intellect and musical expression were still strong, and he still drew large audiences at his concerts. (On one memorable occasion in Naples, in November 1956, just after the crushing of the Hungarian uprising, as soon as he walked onstage the audience burst into wild applause and shouts of "Viva l’Ungheria!", delaying the beginning of the concert for nearly fifteen minutes.)^[21]
In 1960 Szigeti officially retired from performing, and returned to Switzerland with his wife. There he devoted himself primarily to teaching, and top-class students would come from all over Europe and America to study with him. One of these students was Arnold Steinhardt, who spent the summer of 1962 with Szigeti. He came to the conclusion that "Joseph Szigeti was a template for the musician I would like to become: inquisitive, innovative, sensitive, feeling, informed."^[22] Another student who came to him was Kyung-Wha Chung, who credited Szigeti with expanding her artistic horizons and helping her to understand music on a deeper level.
Towards the end of his life Szigeti suffered from frail health. He was put on strict diets and had several stays in hospital, but his friends assert that this did nothing to dampen his characteristic cheerfulness.^[23]
He died on February 20, 1973, at the age of eighty. The New York Times ran a front-page obituary that ended with this 1966 quote from violinist Yehudi Menuhin:

"We must be humbly grateful that the breed of cultured and chivalrous violin virtuosos, aristocrats as human beings and as musicians, has survived into our hostile age in the person of Joseph Szigeti."^[24]

References

1. Campbell, Margaret: ''The Great Violinists''. Doubleday and Company, New York, 1981, page 165
2. Campbell, Margaret: ''The Great Violinists''. Doubleday and Company, New York, 1981, page 159
3. Szigeti, Joseph: ''With Strings Attached: Reminiscenses and Reflections.'' Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1947, page 36
4. ''With Strings Attached'', pages 3-4
5. "With Strings Attached", pages 12-13
6. ''The Great Violinists'', page 104
7. ''With Strings Attached'', pages 41-42
8. ''The Great Violinists'', page 161
9. ''With Strings Attached''
10. ''With Strings Attached'', page 62
11. ''With Strings Attached'', page 70
12. ''With Strings Attached'', page 75
13. ''With Strings Attached'', page 84
14. ''With Strings Attached'', page 206
15. ''With Strings Attached'', page 208
16. ''With Strings Attached'', page 243
17. ''With Strings Attached'', pages 248-250
18. ''The Great Violinists''.
19. "Szigeti Being Held on Ellis Island", ''New York Times'', November 18, 1950.
20. Steinhardt, Arnold: "Violin Dreams", Houghton Mifflin, 2006, pages 137-138.
21. Hughes, Spike: introduction to ''Szigeti on the Violin'', by Joseph Szigeti. Dover Publications, 1979, page xiv.
22. ''Violin Dreams", page 142.
23. ''Szigeti on the Violin'', page xvi.
24. Whitman, Alden: "Joseph Szigeti, Violinist, Dead; Exponent of Classical Tradition", ''New York Times'', February 21, 1973

External links

★ Profile of Szigeti

★ Analysis of a Szigeti recording