| Today in Music History A Daily Look at Music History For Violin Students A Look at What Happened on Today's Date Long, Long Ago . . . Or Maybe Just Last Year |
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| TODAY IS November 1 |
| Can You Guess? November 1, 1830 Chopin left his home town, Warsaw, Poland for the last. He carried something with him that he kept for the rest of his life. It was eventually buried with him. Can You Guess what was in the cup Chopin carried? Look at the Bottom of the Page for the Answer. |
| What Else Happened Today? |
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| 1672 - Heinrich Schutz, German composer, died. 1738 - Handel finished Israel in Egypt. 1748 - Birth of German composer Christoph Rheineck. 1750 - Death of Italian composer Giuseppe Sammartini, at 55. 1761 - Birth of composer Antonin Josef Alois Volanek. 1810 - Death of German composer Georg Anton Kreusser, at 64. 1817 - Death of Italian composer Giovanni Calisto Andrea Zanotti. 1844 - Death of German composer August Ferdinand Haeser, at 45. 1861 - Birth of Czech violinist, conductor and composer Vasa Suk. Conducted Imperial Opera in Moscow. 1863 - Birth of German composer Alfred Reisenauer. 1926 - Birth of American composer Louis Calabro in Brooklyn, NY. 1929 - Richard Coolidge, US composer, was born. 1929 - Wanda Wilkomirska, Polish violinist, was born 1948 - First performance of Copland's The Red Pony Suite from his filmscore. Houston Symphony, Efrem Kurtz conducting. 1957 - Lyle Lovett, Grammy-winning country singer, was born. 1962 - Birth of Swiss composer Roman Pieruzek. 1969 - Elvis Presley's Suspicious Minds hit #1 in the U.S. It was his last #1 pop single. 1982 - Death of English composer, film scores and concert pieces, Leighton Lucas, at 79. 2003 - Death of US composer Kent W. Kennan. |
| November 1, 1995 Violist Tabea Zimmermann, with cellist Hartmut Holl and alto Mitsuko Shirai, released her album Songs With Viola. Tabea Zimmermann was born in 1966 in the city of Lahr in Germany's Black Forest. She started playing viola at age three. |
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| Starting at age 5 Zimmermann also played the violin, and it wasn't until she was in her early teens that she decided to concentrate on the viola exclusively. Zimmermann moved to Freiburg and studied for six years with Ulrich Koch. She says that Koch understood her personality well, and knew that she could take the pressure of competition, so she entered competitions and began winning. First prizes in Geneva (1982), Paris (1983) and Budapest (1984) were the result. The prize for taking first place in Paris's Maurice Vieux Concours International d'Alto in 1983 was a a viola by Etienne Vatelot, and Zimmermann has played it ever since. |
| An Early Tabea Zimmermann Ensemble |
| Her first teacher was Dietmar Mantel, whom she says "knew how to get the best out of every kid." For this reason, she feels that later, she never had to "get rid of bad old habits, but could always build on what I had learned in the first ten years." |
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| Songs With Viola by Tabea Zimmermann |
| Harold in Italy by Tabea Zimmermann |
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| Did You Guess? Chopin left Warsaw carrying a cup of Polish soil. Did you see the color clues? |
1984 was spent studying with Sandor Vegh in Salzburg. She says that year was important to her because she started playing her viola less like an instrument, but as though it were her own voice. And she has maintained that ideal ever since. She says that a key to good playing is to look for the least technical way to go about things. Zimmermann has attracted the attention of such distinguished composers as Gyorgy Ligeti. After a 1990 concert Ligeti approached her and said, "Zimmermann, I am Ligeti. If you continue playing like this, I will write a piece for you." She premiered the solo sonata that he wrote for her in 1994. In September 2000 her husband of 13 years and father of her two children, conductor David Shallon, died suddenly of an asthma attack while on tour in Tokyo. Shallon had been her companion for most of her adult life, says Zimmermann courageously. "We were each other's best friends, best pair of ears, and advisors." She adds, "We struggled for a long time to find a better balance between individual careers and our shared ideas, finally finding a good solution in playing approximately ten to 14 weeks together each season, which enabled us both to play and enjoy a family life, which we both wanted so much. David's love gave me the support to continue to develop my own musicality, to go my own way, and I feel his support even now that I have to be so independent." A devoted teacher at the Frankfurt Hochschule fur Musik, Zimmermann seems to be maturing and learning about life from music and vice versa. Another new work, Menachem Wiesenberg's Monodialogue, gives her "a lot of opportunities to bring in my whole personality, many different characters, never a strict tempo, everything in motion all the time. Life is a constant change." |
| "I love this instrument, because it gives me all the possibilities to fully express myself in all the styles. It can be played strong or soft, aggressive or tender, and it will always respond to that playing in a beautiful way . . . It can sound violin-like or cello-like, depending on the context." |
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