Joseph Szigeti

约瑟夫·西盖蒂 (Joseph Szigeti)，美籍匈牙利小提琴家。1892年9月5日生于布达佩斯；1973年2月19日卒于瑞士卢塞恩。布达佩斯音乐学院胡鲍伊的得意门生。13岁即作广阔的旅行演奏。1917~1924年，继马尔托任日内瓦音 乐院教授。l925年，应著名指挥家斯托科夫斯基 (Léopold Stokowski) 之邀，到美国费城和纽约演奏贝多芬小提琴协奏曲，同年又应邀赴伦敦演奏普罗科菲耶夫小提琴协奏曲，均获巨大成功。1930~1933年间，在世界各地巡回演出，誉满全球。他的演奏精雕细刻，富于灵感，风格严谨，以善于阐释西欧古典音乐和热心宣扬现代音乐而享盛名。现代作曲家巴托克的《第一狂想曲》、普罗科菲耶夫的《旋律》和《D大调小提琴奏鸣曲》、瑞士作曲家马丁(F. Martin) 的《小提琴协奏曲》、爱尔兰作曲家哈蒂(H. Harty)的《d小调小提琴协奏曲》，意大利作曲家卡塞拉 ( A. Casella) 的《 a 小调小提琴协奏曲》等都是题献给他，并由他作首次演出的。1937年被聘为&伊萨伊国际小提琴竟赛会& 的首席评判员，苏联小提琴家奥依斯特拉赫在该次竞赛中获首奖，是经他评定的，留下的著作有:《小提琴家的摘记》(1946年在伦敦出版)、《喜爱琴弦》 (With Strings Attached, 1947年在纽约出版)、《西盖特在演奏小提琴》(Szigeti on the Violin, 1969年在伦敦出版)等。
 
——资料自“外国著名音乐表演艺术家辞典”上海音乐出版社1999年12月版
 
 
by All Music Guide
 
Violinist Joseph Szigeti's father and his uncle were both professional musicians and gave him music lessons. Szigeti advanced so quickly that he was soon assigned as a pupil of Jenö Hubay, later entering the celebrated virtuoso's advanced class. Szigeti began to play in public at age ten and made his formal debut in Berlin in 1905 at the age of 13. Joseph Joachim offered to teach him, but Szigeti chose to remain with Hubay.
 
After making his London debut was when he was 15, Szigeti remained in Britain until 1913, giving frequent concerts and becoming a favorite. Szigeti's partners in recitals included such illustrious musicians as Myra Hess and Ferruccio Busoni. Busoni, a pianist-composer and also a deep-thinking philosopher on the nature and future of music, became a formative influence on Szigeti. As with others in his line of work, Szigeti's concert career was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. Settling in Switzerland in 1913, Szigeti accepted a position as a violin professor at the Geneva Conservatory, where he gave master classes from 1917 to 1924.
 
Upon returning to the concert scene in the early 1920s, Szigeti rapidly became a famous international name in classical music. He was noted for his quick understanding and advocacy of new music, and took up the cause of Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Minor Op. 19, which he played it at the I.S.C.M. Festival in 1924. Later that same year Szigeti performed this work on his Russian tour, giving the Concerto its Leningrad premiere. Szigeti made his American debut in 1925, playing the Beethoven Violin Concerto in D Major Op. 61 with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski in Carnegie Hall. During the 1930s Szigeti also toured in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South America, and South Africa.
 
In 1938 Szigeti premiered Ernest Bloch's Violin Concerto in Cleveland. Among other first performances given by, or works dedicated to, Szigeti were Bartók's Rhapsody No. 1, Alan Rawsthorne's Sonata, Bloch's Le nuit exotique, and the violin concertos of Casella and Frank Martin. Szigeti's interest in new music led him to become a persuasive advocate of many great violin works that had been premiered by others, including music by Ravel, Roussel, Milhaud, Stravinsky, and Alban Berg. With the outbreak of World War II, Szigeti settled in the United States.
 
Upon his arrival in America in 1940, Hungarian composer Bela Bartók renewed an earlier friendship with Szigeti, and they played some concerts together, including a famous one at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Szigeti also took up Bartók's new Violin Concerto (No. 2), playing it widely. Through Szigeti's influence, Bartók was commissioned to write a new classical work for clarinetist Benny Goodman. Bartók responded with Contrasts, scored for the uniquely non-blending ensemble of piano, violin, and clarinet, thereby including Szigeti in the work's premiere. Szigeti played frequently in America during the war years, and afterward resumed his international career. He took part in the 1950 Prades Festival organized by cellist Pablo Casals. Szigeti was naturalized as an American citizen in 1951.
 
By 1960 Szigeti had scaled down the number of his personal appearences, and in that year he settled in Switzerland. Szigeti subsequently withdrew from the concert stage, and taught only a limited number of students. Szigeti wrote scholarly studies on great works of the violin repertory, the history of the violin and its playing styles, and made changes to his already published autobiography. Szigeti was also a welcome member of the juries on several international violin competitions, where his discerning ear and wise judgment were highly influential.