On Jan 18, 2007, at 8:26 AM, Daniel Wolf wrote:
He [Rudolf Kolisch] was also was of the few left-handed violinists. Due to injury, he restrung his violin and switched hands. While it made orchestral playing awkward (due to bow crossings when sharing a desk), it was useful for both quartet playing and teaching. By all accounts he was an excellent teacher, and something of a counterweight to the Russian violin style which dominated US conservatory teaching after the war.
Kolisch was teaching at the University of Wisconsin when I was an undergraduate there in the mid-'60s. From what I was told, he played left-handed because his first violin was a cigar box that he fashioned into an instrument himself and, not knowing any better, played left-handed. He didn't, therefore, use a restrung violin at all, but rather wrapped his RH around the back of the neck in an amazing contortion you wouldn't think would work, but it did.
Kolisch retired from the university in 1967. In recognition of his career, a big Schoenberg festival was held; Kolisch's old friend Rene Leibowitz conducted the university orchestra (in wh. I played 3d bassoon and contra) for a full semester, and led us in a program consisting of the _Prelude to Genesis_, _A Survivor from Warsaw_, and the Violin Concerto, for wh. Kolisch played the solo. By this time Kolisch had a very bad tremor in both hands, but when he picked up the violin it vanished. Every one of those taxing harmonics was perfectly placed, and all those fiendish multiple stops absolutely in tune. And he played it all from memory--and left-handed.
It has been 40 years, but I still remember this as one of the peak musical experiences of my life.
Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
