Jewish Violinists

THIS WEBPAGE IS PART OF THE JINFO.ORG WEBSITE.

SHORT LIST
Leopold Auer Joshua Bell ² Mischa Elman Jascha Heifetz Joseph Joachim Fritz Kreisler ⁴ Lord Yehudi Menuhin Nathan Milstein	David Oistrakh Itzhak Perlman Gil Shaham Isaac Stern Henryk Szeryng Joseph Szigeti Henryk (Henri) Wieniawski Pinchas Zukerman
LONG LIST
Joseph Achron Licco Amar Leopold Auer Yuri Bashmet ¹ Joshua Bell ² Adolf Brodsky Ferdinand David Mischa Elman Aldo Ferraresi ³ Carl Flesch Pamela Frank Miriam Fried Joseph Fuchs Felix Galimir Ivry Gitlis Vadim Gluzman Szymon Goldberg Jakab Grün Ida Haendel Emil Hauser Jascha Heifetz Gustav Hollaender Bronislaw Huberman Joseph Joachim Oleg Kagan Ilya Kaler Leonid Kogan Rudolf Kolisch Miriam Kramer Fritz Kreisler ⁴ Gidon Kremer ⁵ Albert Markov Alexander Markov	Lord Yehudi Menuhin Anne Akiko Meyers ⁶ Nathan Milstein Shlomo Mintz Mischa Mischakoff Erica Morini ⁷ Tivadar Nachez David Oistrakh Igor Oistrakh ⁸ György Pauk Itzhak Perlman Mark Peskanov Michael Rabin Aaron Rosand Arnold Rosé Alexander Schneider Gil Shaham Hagai Shaham Oscar Shumsky Joseph Silverstein Vladimir Spivakov Tossy Spivakovsky Arnold Steinhardt Isaac Stern Henryk Szeryng Joseph Szigeti Henri Temianka Lionel Tertis Maxim Vengerov Henryk (Henri) Wieniawski Efrem Zimbalist Nikolaj Znaider Pinchas Zukerman Paul Zukofsky
NOTES 1. See http://www.jewishgen.org/Belarus/rje_b.htm. 2. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father. See article in New York Magazine by Charles Michner, 16 July 1990. 3. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father. See http://www.cremona.u-net.com/aldo.htm. 4. Amy Biancolli's recent biography Fritz Kreisler: Love's Sorrow, Love's Joy (Amadeus Press, Portland Oregon, 1998) contains an extensive discussion of Kreisler's Jewish background, which he never acknowledged and which his wife adamantly denied (see Chapter 8: "Kreisler the Catholic, Kreisler the Jew"). Biancolli cites a 1992 interview by David Sackson of Franz Rupp, Fritz Kreisler's piano accompanist in the 1930s. Rupp states that he once asked Kreisler's brother, the cellist Hugo Kreisler, about their Jewish background, to which Hugo responded simply, "I'm a Jew, but my brother, I don't know." According to Biancolli, Kreisler's father, Salomon Severin Kreisler (also called Samuel Severin Kreisler), a physician and amateur violinist from Krakow, was almost certainly Jewish. Fritz's mother, Anna, was a Roman Catholic, and probably an "Aryan." According to Louis Lochner's 1950 biography Fritz Kreisler, Kreisler was reared as a Roman Catholic. However, according to unpublished parts of the manuscript uncovered by Biancolli in the Library of Congress, he was baptized only at the age of twelve. The bottom line seems to be that Kreisler was at least half-Jewish and his reticence on the subject primarily an attempt to placate his highly anti-Semitic wife Harriet. ("Fritz hasn't a drop of Jewish blood in his veins!" she is said to have vehemently responded to an inquiry from Leopold Godowsky. Godowsky retorted: "He must be very anemic.") 5. Jewish father; see http://www.jewishgen.org/Belarus/rje_k.htm. *6. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother. In an April 5, 2002 interview with Derek Paiva in TheHonolulu Advertiser, Meyers is described as being "of Jewish and Japanese ancestry."* 7. See paragraph 13 of http://www.arbiterrecords.com/morini.html. Also Who's Who in World Jewry: A Biographical Dictionary of Outstanding Jews, edited by Harry Schneiderman and I.J. Carmin Karpman (McKay, New York, 1965, p. 680). 8. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.