Violinist

NEW YORK - Zvi Zeitlin, an internationally renowned violinist known for interpreting the work of contemporary composers, died on Wednesday in Rochester, N.Y. He was 90. His death was announced by the Eastman School of Music. At his death, Mr. Zeitlin was distinguished professor of violin at the school, which is part of the University of Rochester. Mr. Zeitlin, who had announced his intention to retire from Eastman this summer, had taught there since 1967. Simultaneously maintaining an active concert schedule, he was for decades part of a triumvirate of sought-after violin...

Violinist Roman Totenberg, one of the last living bridges to a storied prewar world of European string playing and a revered teacher who was for decades a pillar of Boston's musical community, died Tuesday in his Newton home. The cause was renal failure, according to his daughter Amy. He was 101. Beginning Sunday morning and continuing until only hours before Mr. Totenberg's death, former students from around the country, many of them now well-established performers, journeyed to Newton to pay their respects.

Roman Totenberg, the distinguished violinist who was for decades a pillar of Boston's music community, died Tuesday morning at age 101. Born in Poland, he made his professional debut with the Warsaw Philharmonic at age 11. As a student of Carl Flesch and Georges Enesco, he represented one of the last living bridges to older European styles. In its prime, his playing possessed a virtuosity mixed with a rare elegance and spontaneity of phrasing, a sense of music's lyrical imperatives far beyond the printed score.

NEW YORK - Zvi Zeitlin, an internationally renowned violinist known for interpreting the work of contemporary composers, died on Wednesday in Rochester, N.Y. He was 90. His death was announced by the Eastman School of Music. At his death, Mr. Zeitlin was distinguished professor of violin at the school, which is part of the University of Rochester. Mr. Zeitlin, who had announced his intention to retire from Eastman this summer, had taught there since 1967. Simultaneously maintaining an active concert schedule, he was for decades part of a triumvirate of sought-after violin...

LONDON - Siegmund Nissel, a violinist who fled his native Germany as a child to escape Nazi persecution of Jews and later helped found the Amadeus String Quartet, has died. He was 86. Mr. Nissel died Wednesday at his home in London, his daughter, Claire, said. Mr. Nissel, violinist Norbert Brainin, and violist Peter Schidlof escaped from the Nazis and formed a deep, enduring friendship when they were in an internment camp on the Isle of Man in Britain during World War II. The fourth was British cellist Martin Lovett.

Watch how this violinist handles himself when a cell phone disrupts his performance. 

PETERBOROUGH, N.H.—The Peterborough Town House’s clean vault might seem an architectural rebuke to Parisian decadence, but the Monadnock Music Festival bridged the gap on Sunday with a program of French-born refinement. The theme, “Paris of the Senses,’’ emphasized composers’ almost tactile use of instrumental color. It could also have referred to a sense of history, focusing on two periods — the 1890s and the 1920s — when Paris’s culture and historical circumstances particularly intertwined.

BOSTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL Trio Settecento and Solamente Naturali At: Jordan Hall, Emmanuel Church, Friday afternoon and night Friday night was fiddle night at the Boston Early Music Festival, as two programs placed the violin in the spotlight, not only by virtue of the music chosen but also through broader stories these concerts tried to tell. Trio Settecento’s afternoon concert in Jordan Hall was intriguingly titled “The Alchemical Violin,’’ and it sought out Baroque string music that reflected the idea of...

WESTON — None of the music the Radius Ensemble presented at its weekend concert was terribly shy. But alongside a varied straightforwardness was a certain coyness: Did the music have meaning on its own or only through extra-musical reference? Tiptoeing around that venerable formalist question, references of time and place invited listeners to fill in a story, even when there might not have been a story to fill in. Take, for instance, Alan Hovhaness’s 1947 “Divertimento’’ for wind quintet.

CAMBRIDGE - On Friday, the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard presented conductor Jeffrey Milarsky's crack new-music ensemble, the Manhattan Sinfonietta - once the Columbia Sinfonietta, the now-independent group remains Columbia University's contemporary ensemble-in-residence. The concert, the first of two collectively called "The New Soloist," showed that, while the vocabulary may change (here, a profusely detailed non-tonal modernism), the new soloist is a lot like the old - speed, dexterity, and dramatic flair are still the touchstones of individual...

As a child, Leonidas Kavakos's favorite thing was to position himself in front of a music stand and conduct an imaginary orchestra. The Athens-born Kavakos comes from a musical family - both his father and grandfather were violinists. So it felt quite natural when he was given a violin as a present and began to learn its secrets. At 44, he is now one of the most admired violinists before the public, his technical skills equaled by the imagination and insight of his performances. Yet he never lost the hunger to lead an orchestra, which is why, for over a decade, Kavakos has been making...

Watch how this violinist handles himself when a cell phone disrupts his performance. 

This past summer, violinist Gidon Kremer created a stir in the classical music world when he withdrew from participation in the Verbier Festival, a major music gala in Switzerland. His reasons for doing so - laid out in a remarkable letter to the festival's director - amount to a cri de coeur about classical music's infatuation with and exploitation of its own celebrity culture. Kremer, who will play four performances of the Schumann violin concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra beginning next Thursday, has forged a career that unites...

BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Anne-Sophie Mutter, conductor and violinist Mozart Violin Concertos At: Symphony Hall tonight (concertos nos. 3 and 5) and tomorrow night (nos. 1, 2, and 4) An orchestra's season-opening concert is an intensely ceremonial affair, and leading it is the clear prerogative of its music director. So when the Boston Symphony Orchestra announced James Levine's resignation from the post in March, it faced the delicate question of how to open its first season of the post-Levine era. The BSO had faced a similar dilemma between the...

WASHINGTON - Louise Behrend, a concert violinist who trained a generation of American teachers in the Suzuki method and whose standing as a musician helped the Japanese movement establish itself in the United States, died Aug. 3 at Montgomery Hospice's Casey House in suburban Rockville, Md. She was 94. She had complications from dementia, her family said. Ms. Behrend, a native Washingtonian, grew up in a musical family that included an uncle whose inventions led to the development of the phonograph.

BOSTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL Trio Settecento and Solamente Naturali At: Jordan Hall, Emmanuel Church, Friday afternoon and night Friday night was fiddle night at the Boston Early Music Festival, as two programs placed the violin in the spotlight, not only by virtue of the music chosen but also through broader stories these concerts tried to tell. Trio Settecento’s afternoon concert in Jordan Hall was intriguingly titled “The Alchemical Violin,’’ and it sought out Baroque string music that reflected the idea of transformation.

BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Anne-Sophie Mutter, conductor and violinist Mozart Violin Concertos At: Symphony Hall tonight (concertos nos. 3 and 5) and tomorrow night (nos. 1, 2, and 4) An orchestra's season-opening concert is an intensely ceremonial affair, and leading it is the clear prerogative of its music director. So when the Boston Symphony Orchestra announced James Levine's resignation from the post in March, it faced the delicate question of how to open its first season of the post-Levine era. The BSO had faced a similar dilemma between the Seiji Ozawa and Levine eras.

As a child, Leonidas Kavakos's favorite thing was to position himself in front of a music stand and conduct an imaginary orchestra. The Athens-born Kavakos comes from a musical family - both his father and grandfather were violinists. So it felt quite natural when he was given a violin as a present and began to learn its secrets. At 44, he is now one of the most admired violinists before the public, his technical skills equaled by the imagination and insight of his performances. Yet he never lost the hunger to lead an orchestra, which is why, for over...