Biography / Autobiography / Art / Film & Theater / Media Studies - Film
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A
Fiddler's Tale Now available as a book and as a spoken word CD, this fascinating memoir, written by one of the greatest American violinists of the twentieth century, recounts an extraordinary life in music. Once called by the New York Times "a violinist's violinist and a musician's musician," Louis Kaufman was born in 1905 in Portland, Oregon. He studied violin with Franz Kneisel at New York's Institute of Musical Art. He was the original violist of the Musical Art Quartet (1926–1933) and won the Naumburg Award in 1928, the year of his American solo recital debut in New York's Town Hall. During these early years, he played chamber music with Pablo Casals, Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, Gregor Piatigorsky, and Efrem Zimbalist, among others. After performing the violin solos for Ernst Lubitsch's 1934 film The Merry Widow, Kaufman became the most sought after violin soloist in Hollywood, playing in some 500 films, including Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, The Diary of Anne Frank, Wuthering Heights, The Grapes of Wrath, and Spartacus. He worked closely with Robert Russell Bennett, Bernard Herrmann, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, Miklós Rózsa, Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, and Victor Young. Extraordinary as it seems today, Kaufman was largely responsible for bringing the once-forgotten music of Antonio Vivaldi to its current popularity worldwide among both classical musicians and the general population of music lovers. "Louis
Kaufman was a fine musician, whose warm, sweet tone was instantly
recognizable, and who always had a great respect for the composers
whose works he played. He and his wife Annette were responsible
for discovering forgotten manuscripts of Vivaldi, with whose
work he was closely associated, but he also supported the work
of many modern composers. A dear friend for fifty years, I remember
his modesty and integrity, his generosity towards other players,
his sense of fun and his wonderful fund of anecdotes about the
famous musicians whom he had met in the course of his career."—Sheila
Hodges, author of Lorenzo Da Ponte: The Life and Times of
Mozart's Librettist Click here
to see sample illustrations from the book.
For more information contact our publicity manager, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu A press kit for A Fiddler's Tale is also available by following these links: Reviews | Author's photo | Author's bio | Cover image | Images from the book |
September
2003 Click on add this book to cart to order. Now
also available in a spoken word CD set Never
ordered from us before? |
Louis Kaufman (1905–1994) was
probably the most-recorded violinist in history, with recordings
of more than one hundred major concert works and hundreds of
film soundtracks to his credit. 
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