50 Facts About Joseph Szigeti

Joseph Szigeti quickly proved himself to be a child prodigy on the violin, and moved to Budapest with his father to study with the renowned pedagogue Jeno Hubay.

Joseph Szigeti distinguished himself as a strong advocate of new music, and was the dedicatee of many new works by contemporary composers.

Joseph Szigeti's mother died when he was three years old, and soon thereafter the boy was sent to live with his grandparents in the little Carpathian town of Maramaros-Sziget.

Joseph Szigeti grew up surrounded by music, as the town band was composed almost entirely of his uncles.

Joseph Szigeti joined such violinists as Franz von Vecsey, Emil Telmanyi, Jelly d'Aranyi and Stefi Geyer in Hubay's studio.

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Joseph Szigeti went to study at the Conservateur in Budapest for 2 years before his debut.

In 1905, at the age of thirteen, Joseph Szigeti made his Berlin debut playing Bach's Chaconne in D minor, Ernst's Concerto in F-sharp minor, and Paganini's Witches Dance.

Joseph Szigeti spent the next few months with a summer theater company in a small Hungarian resort town, playing mini-recitals in between acts of folk operetta.

Joseph Szigeti declined the offer, both out of loyalty to Hubay and a perceived aloofness and lack of rapport between Joachim and his students.

Also during this time, Joseph Szigeti toured with an all-star ensemble including legendary singer Dame Nellie Melba and pianists Ferruccio Busoni and Wilhelm Backhaus.

Joseph Szigeti had grown accustomed to playing crowd-pleasing salon miniatures and dazzling virtuosic encores without much thought.

Joseph Szigeti knew little of the works of the great masters; he could play them, but not fully understand them.

In 1913, Joseph Szigeti was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was sent to a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland to recover, interrupting his concert career.

Joseph Szigeti's doctor recommended to practice the violin 25 to 30 minutes a day.

Joseph Szigeti was allowed to visit to him for the last time in 1943 in the Mount Sinai Hospital with his illness worsening, reading Turkish poems while they spread out on his hospital bed.

In 1917, having by then made a full recovery, at age 25 Joseph Szigeti was appointed Professor of Violin at the Geneva Conservatory of Music.

Joseph Szigeti said that this job, although generally satisfying, was often frustrating due to the mediocre quality of many of his students.

Also during that time, Joseph Szigeti met and fell in love with Wanda Ostrowska, a young woman of Russian parentage who had been stranded in Geneva by the Russian Revolution of 1917.

In 1925, Joseph Szigeti met Leopold Stokowski and played the Bach Chaconne in D minor for him.

Less than two weeks later, Joseph Szigeti received a telegram from Stokowski's manager in Philadelphia inviting him to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra later that year: it was his American debut.

Joseph Szigeti had never played with an American orchestra before, nor heard one, and later he wrote of suffering stage fright.

Joseph Szigeti was taken aback by the American concert scene, and the way that its publicity and popularity driven agents and managers determined much of what was heard in American concert halls.

Joseph Szigeti believed they were not interested in works by the great masters, but preferred the popular light salon pieces he had left behind in his prodigy days.

Joseph Szigeti performed extensively in 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 and Nazi persecution of the Jews, Joseph Szigeti emigrated with his wife to the United States, where they settled in California.

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In 1950, Joseph 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.

In 1960 Joseph Szigeti officially retired from performing, and returned to Switzerland with his wife.

Joseph Szigeti came to the conclusion that "Joseph Szigeti was a template for the musician I would like to become: inquisitive, innovative, sensitive, feeling, informed".

Joseph Szigeti was put on strict diets and had several stays in hospital, but his friends asserted that this did nothing to dampen his characteristic cheerfulness.

Joseph Szigeti died in Lucerne, Switzerland on February 19,1973, at the age of 80.

Joseph Szigeti was born in Russia and had been stranded by the Russian Revolution of 1917 with her sister at a finishing school in Geneva.

Joseph Szigeti recalls in his memoirs the words of Consul General Baron de Montlong at the critical moment:.

Just before the birth of their only child, daughter Irene, Joseph Szigeti found himself stuck in Berlin during the Kapp Putsch of 1920, unable to return to Geneva.

Joseph Szigeti's scheduled concert could not go on as planned, but he was forced to stay in Berlin for "interminable days" while the Putsch ran its course.

Joseph Szigeti narrowly escaped being killed in the plane crash that claimed the life of movie star Carole Lombard in January 1942.

Joseph Szigeti, who was on his way to Los Angeles for a concert, was forced to give up his seat on TWA Flight 3 at a refueling stop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to allow the plane to take on 15 soldiers who, it being wartime, had priority.

Joseph Szigeti's performing technique was not always flawless and his tone lacked sensuous beauty, although it acquired a spiritual quality in moments of inspiration.

Joseph Szigeti held the bow in an old-fashioned way, with the elbow close to the body, and produced much emphatic power, but not without extraneous sounds.

Mr Joseph Szigeti was not only inclined to dryness of tone and angularity of phrase, but there were passages of poor intonation.

Mr Joseph Szigeti has a rather small but beautiful tone, elegance, finish.

Joseph Szigeti played with a quiet sincerity which grew upon the audience, though not with the virility and sweep that other violinists find.

Joseph Szigeti was one of the giants among the violinists I had heard from childhood on, and my admiration for him is undiminished up to this day.

Starker then describes a recital he attended late in Joseph Szigeti's career, illustrating both the extent to which Joseph Szigeti was suffering from arthritis and his ability to still communicate his musical ideas effectively:.

Apart from Enesco, he was the most cultivated violinist I have ever known but while Enesco was a force of nature, Joseph Szigeti, slender, small, anxious, was a beautifully fashioned piece of porcelain, a priceless Sevres vase.

Curiously for a Hungarian, from whom one expects wild, energetic, spontaneous qualities, Joseph Szigeti travelled even farther up a one-way road of deliberate intellectualism.

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Joseph Szigeti offers a lengthy and detailed explanation of his approach to violin technique.

Joseph Szigeti believed that a violinist should be concerned primarily with musical goals, rather than simply choosing either the easiest or most impressively virtuosic way to play a certain passage.

Joseph Szigeti was an avid champion of new music, and frequently planned his recitals to include new or little-known works alongside the classics.

Joseph Szigeti 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.

Joseph Szigeti came to his friend's aid by securing donations from the American Society of Composers and Publishers to pay for Bartok's medical treatment, and then, together with conductor and compatriot Fritz Reiner, persuaded Serge Koussevitzky to commission from Bartok what eventually became his much-beloved Concerto for Orchestra.