wimpel69
04-05-2014, 12:42 PM
Sharing on these albums has ended. No more requests and no re-ups, please!
Louis Kaufman (1905-1994) was the greatest violinist in Hollywood, concertmaster
in many MGM and other studio recordings. He was also a distinguished soloist who championed
20th century American violin works - and it was he who re-discovered(!) Antonio Vivaldi's
The Four Seasons after centuries of neglect. This post is in his honor.
This collection includes the following recordings by Mr. Kaufman:
Samuel Barber, Violin Concerto
Walter Piston, Violin Concerto No.1
Robert Russell Bennett, Violin Concerto "in the popular style"
Robert Russell Bennett, Hexapoda
Lars-Erik Larsson, Violin Concerto
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Concerto Accademico
Aaron Copland, Violin Sonata + other violin works
Please keep in mind that all of these are historic recordings made in the 1950s.
Also included on the CDs are the following miscellaneous works:
Roy Harris, West Point Symphony for Band
Roy Harris, Prelude and Fugue for String Orchestra
Roy Harris, Chorale for String Orchestra
Louis Kaufman
violin
The London Symphony Orchestra
conducted by
Bernard Herrmann
etc.
"Louis Kaufman was the walking definition of a Renaissance man. A violinist of prodigious
skill, he could have made his way quite well in the classical music world, and, in fact, did so for
many years; but Kaufman also kept active in the fields of popular music and jazz, as well as
film music, working with such diverse figures as Duke Ellington, Nancy Wilson, Randy Newman,
and Quincy Jones, as well as performing on many hundreds of film scores, all of this in addition
to his work with the likes of Pablo Casals, Mischa Elman, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, and
Gregor Piatigorsky. He was born in Portland, OR, in 1905 and later studied the violin at the
Institute of Musical Art in New York, where his principal teacher was Franz Kneisl. At 21, he
became a founding member of the Musical Art Quintet, and at 23 he received the Naumberg
Award and made his recital debut at New York's Town Hall later that same year. It was his
acceptance of an engagement to play the solos for an Ernst Lubitsch film version of The
Merry Widow (1934) that brought him to the attention of Hollywood. The movie was a
smashing success, and Kaufman's contribution was sufficiently visible to get him offers
from every music department in the film mecca. The list of movies whose scores he
subsequently played on reads like a best of Hollywood, including Gone with the Wind,
Wuthering Heights, and The Grapes of Wrath, and that was just for 1939 and only a very
partial list from that year. Kaufman's recording career was somewhat limited, owing
to the fact that he'd started well before the LP era and that by the time classical releases
were freed by the invention of the long-playing record, he was competing with a generation
of younger musicians for recording time. In 1948, however, he did accept a commission
to make a recording of a group of instrumental works by the then relatively obscure
Baroque-era composer Antonio Vivaldi. That release ended up being the first complete,
integral recording of the complete Four Seasons, which has since gone on to become
one of the most popular classical works in the world, with hundreds of recordings over
the ensuing decades. For that alone, he deserves recognition as one of the relatively
few classical musicians ever to exert a major influence on popular culture. Kaufman
remained busy well into the 1960s and 1970s, and his film work led to his being hired
to work on recordings by Randy Newman, Nancy Wilson, and Quincy Jones, among
others. He may not have been well known to the public, but he was almost an institution
within the music industry. Late in his life, he began work on his autobiography, A Fiddler's
Tale, in collaboration with his wife, Annette, which was later published by the University
of Wisconsin Press. In 2004, a decade after Kaufman's death, those 1940s recordings
of Vivaldi's Four Seasons were re-released on compact disc by Naxos Records to great
critical acclaim, in the process putting Kaufman back into the pages of The New York
Times and other publications of record."
All Music
Sharing on these albums has ended. No more requests and no re-ups, please!
Enjoy! Don't share! Buy the originals! :)
Louis Kaufman (1905-1994) was the greatest violinist in Hollywood, concertmaster
in many MGM and other studio recordings. He was also a distinguished soloist who championed
20th century American violin works - and it was he who re-discovered(!) Antonio Vivaldi's
The Four Seasons after centuries of neglect. This post is in his honor.
This collection includes the following recordings by Mr. Kaufman:
Samuel Barber, Violin Concerto
Walter Piston, Violin Concerto No.1
Robert Russell Bennett, Violin Concerto "in the popular style"
Robert Russell Bennett, Hexapoda
Lars-Erik Larsson, Violin Concerto
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Concerto Accademico
Aaron Copland, Violin Sonata + other violin works
Please keep in mind that all of these are historic recordings made in the 1950s.
Also included on the CDs are the following miscellaneous works:
Roy Harris, West Point Symphony for Band
Roy Harris, Prelude and Fugue for String Orchestra
Roy Harris, Chorale for String Orchestra
Louis Kaufman
violin
The London Symphony Orchestra
conducted by
Bernard Herrmann
etc.
"Louis Kaufman was the walking definition of a Renaissance man. A violinist of prodigious
skill, he could have made his way quite well in the classical music world, and, in fact, did so for
many years; but Kaufman also kept active in the fields of popular music and jazz, as well as
film music, working with such diverse figures as Duke Ellington, Nancy Wilson, Randy Newman,
and Quincy Jones, as well as performing on many hundreds of film scores, all of this in addition
to his work with the likes of Pablo Casals, Mischa Elman, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, and
Gregor Piatigorsky. He was born in Portland, OR, in 1905 and later studied the violin at the
Institute of Musical Art in New York, where his principal teacher was Franz Kneisl. At 21, he
became a founding member of the Musical Art Quintet, and at 23 he received the Naumberg
Award and made his recital debut at New York's Town Hall later that same year. It was his
acceptance of an engagement to play the solos for an Ernst Lubitsch film version of The
Merry Widow (1934) that brought him to the attention of Hollywood. The movie was a
smashing success, and Kaufman's contribution was sufficiently visible to get him offers
from every music department in the film mecca. The list of movies whose scores he
subsequently played on reads like a best of Hollywood, including Gone with the Wind,
Wuthering Heights, and The Grapes of Wrath, and that was just for 1939 and only a very
partial list from that year. Kaufman's recording career was somewhat limited, owing
to the fact that he'd started well before the LP era and that by the time classical releases
were freed by the invention of the long-playing record, he was competing with a generation
of younger musicians for recording time. In 1948, however, he did accept a commission
to make a recording of a group of instrumental works by the then relatively obscure
Baroque-era composer Antonio Vivaldi. That release ended up being the first complete,
integral recording of the complete Four Seasons, which has since gone on to become
one of the most popular classical works in the world, with hundreds of recordings over
the ensuing decades. For that alone, he deserves recognition as one of the relatively
few classical musicians ever to exert a major influence on popular culture. Kaufman
remained busy well into the 1960s and 1970s, and his film work led to his being hired
to work on recordings by Randy Newman, Nancy Wilson, and Quincy Jones, among
others. He may not have been well known to the public, but he was almost an institution
within the music industry. Late in his life, he began work on his autobiography, A Fiddler's
Tale, in collaboration with his wife, Annette, which was later published by the University
of Wisconsin Press. In 2004, a decade after Kaufman's death, those 1940s recordings
of Vivaldi's Four Seasons were re-released on compact disc by Naxos Records to great
critical acclaim, in the process putting Kaufman back into the pages of The New York
Times and other publications of record."
All Music
Sharing on these albums has ended. No more requests and no re-ups, please!
Enjoy! Don't share! Buy the originals! :)