Joseph Szigeti

約瑟夫·西蓋蒂 (Joseph Szigeti)，美籍匈牙利小提琴家。1892年9月5日生于布達(dá)佩斯；1973年2月19日卒于瑞士盧塞恩。布達(dá)佩斯音樂學(xué)院胡鮑伊的得意門生。13歲即作廣闊的旅行演奏。1917~1924年，繼馬爾托任日內(nèi)瓦音 樂院教授。l925年，應(yīng)著名指揮家斯托科夫斯基 (Léopold Stokowski) 之邀，到美國費城和紐約演奏貝多芬小提琴協(xié)奏曲，同年又應(yīng)邀赴倫敦演奏普羅科菲耶夫小提琴協(xié)奏曲，均獲巨大成功。1930~1933年間，在世界各地巡回演出，譽滿全球。他的演奏精雕細(xì)刻，富于靈感，風(fēng)格嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)，以善于闡釋西歐古典音樂和熱心宣揚現(xiàn)代音樂而享盛名。現(xiàn)代作曲家巴托克的《第一狂想曲》、普羅科菲耶夫的《旋律》和《D大調(diào)小提琴奏鳴曲》、瑞士作曲家馬丁(F. Martin) 的《小提琴協(xié)奏曲》、愛爾蘭作曲家哈蒂(H. Harty)的《d小調(diào)小提琴協(xié)奏曲》，意大利作曲家卡塞拉 ( A. Casella) 的《 a 小調(diào)小提琴協(xié)奏曲》等都是題獻給他，并由他作首次演出的。1937年被聘為&伊薩伊國際小提琴竟賽會& 的首席評判員，蘇聯(lián)小提琴家奧依斯特拉赫在該次競賽中獲首獎，是經(jīng)他評定的，留下的著作有:《小提琴家的摘記》(1946年在倫敦出版)、《喜愛琴弦》 (With Strings Attached, 1947年在紐約出版)、《西蓋特在演奏小提琴》(Szigeti on the Violin, 1969年在倫敦出版)等。
 
——資料自“外國著名音樂表演藝術(shù)家辭典”上海音樂出版社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.