1957 Cellist GREGOR PIATIGORSKY Hand SIGNED AUTOGRAPH + PHOTO + MAT Russian

Description: DESCRIPTION : Up for auction is a HAND SIGNED AUTOGRAPH SENTIMENT- signature ( With a black fountain pen ) , Dated 1957 of the much beloved and admired Jewish Soviet-Russian cellist GREGOR PIATIGORSKY which is beautifuly and professionaly matted beneath a reproduction ACTION ARTISTIC PHOTO of PIATIGORSKY emotionly playing his CELLO . The original hand signed AUTOGRAPH - AUTOGRAMME sentiment and the reproduction ACTION PHOTO are nicely matted together , Suitable for immediate framing or display . ( An image of a suggested framing is presented - The frame is not a part of this sale - An excellent framing - Buyer's choice is possible for extra $ 80 ). The size of the decorative mat is around 7.5 x 12.5 " . The size of the reproduction action photo is around 7 x 5 " . The size of the hand signed autograph is around 4.0 x 2.0 " . Very good condition of the reproduction action photo , The decorative mat and the hand signed autograph ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images ) Authenticity guaranteed. Will be sent inside a protective rigid packaging . PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal & All credit cards. SHIPPMENT : SHIPP worldwide via registered airmail is $ 29 . Will be sent inside a protective packaging. Handling around 5-10 days after payment. Gregor Piatigorsky (Russian: Григо́рий Па́влович Пятиго́рский, Grigoriy Pavlovich Pyatigorskiy; April 17 [O.S. April 4] 1903 – August 6, 1976) was a Russian-born American cellist. Contents 1Biography 1.1Early life 1.2United States 2Appraisal 3Works 4Partial discography 5Chess 6References 7Further reading 8External links Biography[edit] Early life[edit] Gregor Piatigorsky was born in Ekaterinoslav (now Dnipro in Ukraine) into a Jewish family. As a child, he was taught violin and piano by his father. After seeing and hearing the cello, he was determined to become a cellist and was given his first cello when he was seven. He won a scholarship to the Moscow Conservatory, studying with Alfred von Glehn, Anatoliy Brandukov, and a certain Gubariov. At the same time he was earning money for his family by playing in local cafés. He was 13 when the Russian Revolution took place. Shortly afterwards he started playing in the Lenin Quartet. At 15, he was hired as the principal cellist for the Bolshoi Theater. The Soviet authorities, specifically Anatoly Lunacharsky, would not allow him to travel abroad to further his studies, so he smuggled himself and his cello into Poland on a cattle train with a group of artists. One of the women was a heavy-set soprano who, when the border guards started shooting at them, grabbed Piatigorsky and his cello. The cello did not survive intact, but it was the only casualty. Now 18, he studied briefly in Berlin and Leipzig, with Hugo Becker and Julius Klengel, playing in a trio in a Russian café to earn money for food. Among the patrons of the café were Emanuel Feuermann and Wilhelm Furtwängler. Furtwängler heard him and hired him as the principal cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic. United States[edit] In 1929, he first visited the United States, playing with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski and the New York Philharmonic under Willem Mengelberg. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, in January 1937 he married Jacqueline de Rothschild, daughter of Édouard Alphonse James de Rothschild of the wealthy Rothschild banking family of France. That fall, after returning to France, they had their first child, Jephta. Following the Nazi occupation in World War II, the family fled the country back to the States and settled in Elizabethtown in the Adirondack Mountains, New York. Their son, Joram, was born in Elizabethtown in 1940. From 1941 to 1949, he was head of the cello department at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and he also taught at Tanglewood, Boston University, and the University of Southern California, where he remained until his death. The USC established the Piatigorsky Chair of Violoncello in 1974 to honor Piatigorsky. Piatigorsky participated in a chamber group with Arthur Rubinstein (piano), William Primrose (viola) and Jascha Heifetz (violin). Referred to in some circles as the "Million Dollar Trio", Rubinstein, Heifetz, and Piatigorsky made several recordings for RCA Victor.[1][2] He played chamber music privately with Heifetz, Vladimir Horowitz, Leonard Pennario, and Nathan Milstein.[1][3] Piatigorsky also performed at Carnegie Hall with Horowitz and Milstein in the 1930s.[4] In 1965 his popular autobiography Cellist was published. Gregor Piatigorsky died of lung cancer at his home in Los Angeles, California, in 1976. He was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Instrument He owned two Stradivarius cellos, the "Batta" and the "Baudiot". From 1939 to 1951 Piatigorsky also owned the famous 1739 Domenico Montagnana cello known as the "Sleeping Beauty." Appraisal[edit] External audio You may hear Gregor Piatigorsky performing Antonin Dvorak's Concerto For Cello and Orchestra in B minor Op. 104 with Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1946 Here on archive.org It has been reported that the great violin pedagogue Ivan Galamian once described Piatigorsky as the greatest string player of all time. He was an extraordinarily dramatic player. His orientation as a performer was to convey the maximum expression embodied in a piece. He brought a great authenticity to his understanding of this expression. He was able to communicate this authenticity because he had had extensive personal and professional contact with many of the great composers of the day. Many of those composers wrote pieces for him, including Sergei Prokofiev (Cello Concerto[5]), Paul Hindemith (Cello Concerto), Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (Cello Concerto[6]), William Walton (Cello Concerto), Vernon Duke (Cello Concerto), and Igor Stravinsky (Piatigorsky and Stravinsky collaborated on the arrangement of Stravinsky's "Suite Italienne", which was extracted from Pulcinella, for cello and piano; Stravinsky demonstrated an extraordinary method of calculating fifty-fifty royalties[7]). At a rehearsal of Richard Strauss's Don Quixote, which Piatigorsky performed with the composer conducting, after the dramatic slow variation in D minor, Strauss announced to the orchestra, "Now I've heard my Don Quixote as I imagined him." Piatigorsky had a magnificent sound[weasel words] characterized by a distinctive fast and intense vibrato and he was able to execute with consummate articulation all manner of extremely difficult bowings, including a downbow staccato of which other string players could not help but be in awe. He often attributed his penchant for drama to his student days when he accepted an engagement playing during the intermissions in recitals by the great Russian basso, Feodor Chaliapin. Chaliapin, when portraying his dramatic roles, such as the title role in Boris Godunov, would not only sing, but declaim, almost shouting. On encountering him one day, the young Piatigorsky told him, "You talk too much and don't sing enough." Chaliapin responded, "You sing too much and don't talk enough." Piatigorsky thought about this and from that point on, tried to incorporate the kind of drama and expression he heard in Chaliapin's singing into his own artistic expression. Works[edit] Piatigorsky was also a composer. His Variations on a Paganini Theme (based on Caprice No. 24) was composed in 1946 for cello and orchestra and was orchestrated by his longtime accompanist Ralph Berkowitz; it was later transcribed for cello and piano.[8] Each of the fifteen variations whimsically portrays one of Piatigorsky's musician colleagues. Denis Brott, a student of Piatigorsky, identified them as: Casals, Hindemith, Garbousova, Morini, Salmond, Szigeti, Menuhin, Milstein, Kreisler, a self-portrait of Piatigorsky himself, Cassadó, Elman, Bolognini, Heifetz, and Horowitz.[9] Partial discography[edit] Heifetz, Primrose & Piatigorsky (RCA Victor LP LSC-2563) RCA Victor Red Seal 1961 Heifetz & Piatigorsky (Stereo LP LSC-3009) RCA Victor Red Seal 1968 The Heifetz Piatigorsky Concerts (21-CD boxed set, original album collection) Sony-RCA 88725451452, 2013 Chess[edit] Piatigorsky also enjoyed playing chess. His wife, Jacqueline Piatigorsky, was a strong player who played in several US women's championships and represented the United States in the women's Chess Olympiad. In 1963, the Piatigorskys organized and financed a strong international tournament in Los Angeles, won by Paul Keres and Tigran Petrosian. A second Piatigorsky Cup was held in Santa Monica in 1966, and was won by Boris Spassky.**** Gregor Piatigorsky Now, in the 21st century, the great Russian patriarch of cellists is Mstislav Rostropovich. However, 25 years ago, it was Piatigorsky who held that honored position. Piatigorsky was born in Ekaterinoslav (Dnetropetrovosk) Russia on April 17, 1903. He studied violin and piano as a young child with his father, until he saw and heard the cello at an orchestra concert, and became determined to be a cellist. He constructed a "play cello" of two sticks, a long stick for the cello, and a short stick for the bow, and enjoyed pretending to perform. When he was seven years old he was finally given a real cello, and began his remarkable life as a cellist. A student of Klengel told him he had no talent whatsoever, and to stay clear of the cello. Piatigorsky ignored the unwanted advice, and won a scholarship to the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied with Gubariov, von Glehn (who had studied with Davidov) and Brandoukov. While studying at the conservatory he earned money for his family by playing in local cafes. The October Russian Revolution occured with he was only 13 years old, and he began playing in a string quartet shortly thereafter, appropriately named the "Lenin Quartet." At the age of 15 he was engaged to be the principal cellist of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. Despite his success as a cellist, or maybe because of it, the Russian authorities would not allow him to travel abroad to further his studies, or to perform. He therefore defected into Poland by taking a cattle train to the frontier, and then fleeing across the border with his cello. Unfortunately his cello didn't make the crossing intact. Border guards were shooting at him and his companions, one of which happend to be a large lady opera singer. When the shots rang out, she grabbed Piatigorsky, crushing his cello. Neither Piatigorsky or the soprano were injured, as he helped her across the border. Piatigorsky, now 18 years old, traveled from Poland to Germany, and studied for a short time in Berlin and in Leipzig with Becker and Klengel, neither of which were much appreciated by him. He found employment playing in a trio in a Russian cafe in Berlin, frequented by the likes of Feuermann and Furtwangler, who heard him play and hired him as principal cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic. He kept that post until 1929 (now 26 years old), when he decided to persue a career as a traveling concert artist. When Richard Strauss heard him perform Don Quixote with the Berlin Philharmonic, he said, "I have finally heard my Don Quixote as I thought him to be." That same year he made his debuts with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Stowkowski, and the New York Philharmonic, with Mengelberg. (He loved the United States, and became a citizen in 1942.) He formed a chamber group with pianist Artur Rubinstein, violist William Primrose and violinist Jascha Heifetz. The group became very famous and recorded at least 30 long playing records. Privately he enjoyed playing chamber music with Horowitz and Milstein. Both the concert going crowds, and composers loved him, and many works were written especially for him, even as we now see in the case of Rostropovich. Both Piatigorsky and Rostropovich have a relationship with Prokofiev's Symphony Concerto Opus 125. Prokofiev had written a Ballade in 1938, for Piatigorsky, which he premiered with the Boston Symphony under the baton of Koussevitsky. Prokofiev later reworked his material into the Symphony Concerto, which he dedicated to Rostropovich. Piatigorsky collaborated with Stravinsky on a transcription of the Pulchinella Suite, which became known as the "Suite Italienne" for cello and piano. He became an influential teacher. From 1941 to 1949 Piatigorsky was head of the cello department at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, and taught chamber music at Tanglewood. The years 1957 to 1962 saw Piatigorsky heading up the cello department at Boston University, and then in 1962 continuing his teaching at the University of Southern California, where he remained until his death in 1976. In 1962 and also in 1966 he was a member of the jury of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. It was also in 1962 that the Cello Society of New York honored him by beginning the "Piatigorsky Prize," awarded every other year to a deserving young artist. Piatigorsky owned two Stradivarius cellos: the "Batta" dated 1714, and the "Baudiot" dated 1725. He died August 6, 1976 from cancer, and was buried in Brentwood Cemetary, near Los Angeles. ***** Essential Historical Recordings: Gregor Piatigorsky SEPTEMBER 25, 2020 By Sasha Margolis Cellist Gregor Piatigorsky was larger than life, a giant of a man whose personality was gigantic, too. A warm, deeply expressive musician, Piatigorsky was possessed of a glorious low-register sound, great rhythmic gusto, and a musical imagination that led him to explore the subtlest shades of articulation. Tall enough that he made his instrument look like a toy (he could even pick it up and play it like a violin), Piatigorsky followed Emanuel Feuermann’s lead in taking cello technique to dazzling new heights. In addition to extraordinary general facility, his technical attributes included a violinistic ability to play octaves, and crackling up-bow and down-bow staccati. He was also an urbane and charismatic man who married a Rothschild, kept paintings by Picasso and Matisse in his studio, and could be as convincing with words as with his cello. For several decades in the mid-twentieth century, he was the cello’s greatest international star. Born in Ukraine in 1903, Piatigorsky began studies in Moscow a few years before the Revolution. At a precocious fifteen, a year after the Revolution, he was appointed principal cellist of the Bolshoi Opera and member of the First State String Quartet. After being forbidden exit from Russia to study abroad, he escaped into Poland, then landed in Germany, where at twenty-one he was appointed principal of the Berlin Philharmonic under Furtwängler. Four years later, he opted to concentrate on a solo career, and in 1939 moved to the U.S., where he would give countless concerts in all manner of venues, grand and humble, including playing the first cello recital at the White House. Along the way, Piatigorsky performed in piano trios with first Carl Flesch and Artur Schnabel, then Nathan Milstein and Vladimir Horowitz, and finally Jascha Heifetz and Artur Rubinstein. He played an indispensable role in the legendary Heifetz-Piatigorsky chamber-music concerts in Los Angeles and New York. In the area of new music, he commissioned the Walton Concerto, premiered the Sonata and Concerto of Hindemith, and made the first recording of the Shostakovich Sonata. Piatigorsky was also a devoted teacher, with positions at Curtis, UCLA, Tanglewood, Boston University, and USC. In his own playing, he was to a large extent self-taught, claiming as his greatest influence the great Russian bass, Feodor Chaliapin. An ever-searching musician, Piatigorsky believed that “the better you become . . . the music moves higher, so it becomes unreachable.” Advertisement Piatigorsky was a brilliant raconteur, with plenty of real-life stories to use as raw material for his imaginative powers. There was the time when, at fifteen, he objected to a proposed renaming of the First State String Quartet after Lenin (he preferred the name Beethoven) and soon found himself locked in an intense discussion of the subject with Lenin himself. Then, there was the daring escape into Poland, across a river, under Soviet gunfire, during the course of which he had to run through the water, cello held aloft, with a substantial soprano fellow escapee clinging to his back. Piatigorsky even wrote a novel, in English, long neglected and published only this year: Mr. Blok, about which his son Yoram has written: “I recognize Blok as a tormented fantasy of Papa, an original anti-hero bursting with ambition, flipping back and forth between exuberant inspiration and waves of sadness verging on despair . . .” Piatigorsky died of lung cancer in 1976. But his musical imagination and wide emotional range can still be heard today in his many wonderful recordings. Perhaps greatest among his concerti was the Walton. A performance with Münch and the Boston Symphony is tonally enthralling throughout, ranging from full-throated eloquence to a kind of gentle musical caressing. Another highlight is Strauss’ Don Quixote, also recorded with Munch and Boston: When Strauss heard Piatigorsky play it in Berlin, he exclaimed, “I have finally heard my Don Quixote as I thought him to be.” Piatigorsky’s rich tone and ability to express over a wide emotional gamut are also perfectly suited to Bloch’s Schelomo (again with Münch and Boston). The historic Shostakovich Sonata recording, with Valentin Pavlovsky at the piano, boasts some of Piatigorsky’s most compelling playing, alternately songful and sharply etched, hauntingly shaped in the Largo, and marvelously characterful in the Finale. The Brahms E minor Sonata with Rubinstein demonstrates his gorgeous low-register sound and ruminative patience, and in the Scherzo, more of his characterful rhythmic playing. Recordings from the Heifetz-Piatigorsky concerts boast myriad great cello moments. Among the most beautiful is the Andante of the Brahms C minor Piano Quartet, played with William Primrose and Jacob Lateiner. Piatigorsky’s stupendous technique is shown off in his own twenty-fourth caprice-inspired “Variations on a Paganini theme,” recorded live with the NBC Symphony under Voorhees. Other recordings of shorter works include wonderfully subtle and sensitive Schumann Fantasiestücke, played with pianist Ralph Berkowitz, a bewitching and impassioned Granados “Orientale,” and a vibrantly soulful Sostenuto ed espressivo from Busoni’s Kleine Suite. **** GREGOR PIATIGORSKY (1903 - 1976) Gregor Piatigorsky was one of the most important US-based cellists of the mid-twentieth century and the most prominent Russian exponent of the cello before Rostropovich. As a stylist he was recognisably modern: even his earliest records use portamento quite sparingly and there is a clarity and precision in his tone that integrates well with a relatively narrow vibrato. His playing is characterised overall by an appealing, immaculate quality, with an especially vibrant A-string tone, an ‘easy’ delivery and a very flexible bow wrist. Arguably, this kind of precision may have taken precedence over risk-taking and he was perhaps not the most insightful of interpreters—Casals’s playing, for example, evoking a profounder musicianship—but his approach has an almost inevitable technical security to it, inviting comparison with Heifetz, his near contemporary. His first lessons (as with so many other pre-war European players) were with his father, a violist, who started him on piano and violin. Hearing Viktor Kubatsky (for whom Shostakovich wrote his Cello Sonata) with the Imperial Orchestra in 1910, however, left Piatigorsky yearning for a cello and it is said that he would play for hours with two sticks representing the instrument and bow. Eventually he was given a cello and subsequently won a scholarship to the Moscow Conservatory to study with Alfred von Glehn, a pupil of Davidov. Whilst still in training he was gaining experience playing beside his father for cinemas and clubs, and in the rank-and-file of the Zimin Opera Orchestra. Having been refused permission to travel outside Russia, Piatigorsky made his way covertly to Poland in 1921 and thence to Berlin where he took some (unsuccessful) lessons from Becker before meeting Schnabel for the first time (Schnabel described him as ‘absolutely unknown […] living in an unheated attic in the cold winter […] undernourished’) and performing with him in Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire to great acclaim. Thus his international career began and by the end of the 1920s he had made prestigious appearances in Germany with the Dvořák and Haydn concertos and Brahms’s Double Concerto with Flesch. Highlights of Piatigorsky’s glittering career include a performance of Strauss’s Don Quixote under the composer’s baton, the first performance of Walton’s Cello Concerto, the US première of Prokofiev’s Cello Concerto with Koussevitzky, and chamber-music collaborations with Heifetz, Rubinstein and William Primrose. In his discography Piatigorsky mainly favoured the standard Romantic repertory, although he made fewer concerto recordings than some of his contemporaries. His own arrangement of a Haydn baryton trio (recorded 1940) is performed neatly if perhaps a little heavily, with a spurious understanding of eighteenth-century phrase shapes but a purity and clarity that reveals Haydn’s elegant melodic lines admirably. Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 2 (1934)—probably the only recorded example of celebrated Beethovenian Schnabel’s chamber collaborations with Piatigorsky—is played cleanly, the opening adagio being thoughtful and carefully sculptured, underpinned by Schnabel’s insightful pianism; whilst the final rondo is given with a pleasing lightness that sounds much more modern than its recording date suggests. The 1950 Tchaikovsky Piano Trio recording selected here is testament to the ‘Million-Dollar Trio’: these three musicians, each at the pinnacle of their prowess, interact with each other with an ease rarely achieved, Piatigorsky being heard to flourish in some unexpectedly flamboyant gestures. In concerto repertoire a tidy Saint-Saëns conducted by Reiner (1950) is complemented by a fine Brahms Double with Milstein (1951). Although the outer movements of the Brahms are moderate in tempo, they avoid the unrelenting heaviness that can too frequently mar this densely argued work. In the opening movement the soloists are well-matched, Milstein’s uncluttered approach fitting well with Piatigorsky’s equally pure tone, carefully marked phrasing and few (quite light) portamenti. In Schumann’s music Piatigorsky excelled equally; his Schumann Concerto with Barbirolli was his first complete concerto recording (1934), unfolding with a precise sound and some delicacy before expanding into a thrilling finale. The three Fantasiestücke are performed beautifully with Ivor Newton in 1940, this being one of the most idiomatic and characterful recordings of the selection. Piatigorsky acquired some skill in composition and arranging through his early experiences as a cinema musician; he later assisted Stravinsky in preparing the Suite Italienne (based on Pulcinella) and made numerous transcriptions for the cello, significantly increasing its repertoire. Two miniatures for solo cello, Preludio and Stroll (or Promenade), recorded in 1947, demonstrate an adventurous and dramatic side to Piatigorsky’s personality—something perhaps reflected further in his reputation for telling ‘tall’ stories! EBAY5365

Price: 345 USD

Location: TEL AVIV

End Time: 2024-12-16T10:53:58.000Z

Shipping Cost: 29 USD