From Australia’s Jewish past

Tossy, Issy, and Adolf Spivakovsky – an amazing musical family

Last week’s story was about Jascha. This week’s story is about three distinguished musical brothers.

Nathan, known as “Tossy”, was born on 23 December 1906 in Odessa.  He became a violin virtuoso and was considered one of the greatest violinists of the twentieth century.  He studied violin in Berlin with Willy Hess at the Hochschule für Musik.  A violin prodigy, he gave his first recital at age ten. Together with his elder brother, Jascha, Tossy made his first European concert tour aged thirteen, performing as a soloist with orchestras in Holland, England, Norway, and Sweden.  Jascha and Tossy established the highly acclaimed Spivakovsky-Kurtz Trio together with cellist Edmund Kirtz.  In Denmark, in 1919, the Trio played for the Danish royalty.  In 1926, aged eighteen, he was talent-spotted by Wilhelm Furtwangler and went on to become the youngest concertmaster hired by the Berlin Philharmonic.  He resigned from this post the following year.  The trio was on a tour of Australia in 1933 when the Nazi Party took power in Germany, temporarily ending their European careers.

Tossy remained in Melbourne and later married, a marriage that lasted sixty-three years.   All three members of the Spivakovsky Trio remained in Melbourne.  Tossy was appointed to the teaching staff of the University of Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.  Two years later, he left to pursue a solo career in Europe and then migrated in 1939 with his wife and baby daughter to the USA.  They boarded a ship, the S.S. Monterey, that was about to make its last Pacific voyage to the U.S. before all civilian traffic was stopped by WWII.  After arriving in California, they settled in New York, and in 1940, Tossy made his New York debut at Town Hall.  He became the concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1942 and often performed as a soloist. In 1943, he was invited to present the premiere United States performance of Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in Cleveland, Ohio, followed by New York and San Francisco.  Bartók himself described Tossy’s New York performance of his violin concerto as “first rate”. Tossy’s rendition of this concerto, which elicited extraordinary critical acclaim, launched his U.S. career as a soloist. According to the critic Alfred Frankenstein of the San Francisco Chronicle, Spivakovsky’s was “The finest violin playing of a generation!” The critic Virgil Thomson of the New York Herlad Tribune wrote “Such unfailing nobility of tone, such evenness of coloration through the scale and, most extraordinary of all, such impeccable pitch…left one a little gasping.”

Following World War II, he appeared as a soloist, playing his 1721 Stradivarius violin, with major American orchestras.  He held teaching positions at Fairfield University in Connecticut and The Juilliard School in New York.   He was handsome, intense, elegant, and graceful in his movements; he had an idiosyncratic bowing technique and a striking stage presence.  His repertoire included numerous twentieth-century works in addition to the classics. Critics considered his interpretations of Tchaikovsky and Sibelius concertos to be his finest.

Next came Tossy’s New York performance of the violin concerto by Gian Carlo Menotti, an Italian-American composer and playwright who is primarily known for his output of 25 operas.  A review appearing in the May 3, 1954, edition of Time stated: “As always, his tone was luxuriant, his pitch impeccable, and he brought the music to full-blooded life.” The same article referred to Tossy “as one of the most brilliant violinists alive.”

Accompanied by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, he gave the New York premieres of violin concertos.  He composed his own cadenzas for the Beethoven violin concerto, which were published in 1964 in Wiesbaden. He also composed cadenzas for all five Mozart violin concertos, which were published in 1967 in Frankfurt am Main. For more than four decades, he travelled extensively throughout the U.S., Canada, South America, Israel, and Europe, giving solo performances. He also found time to teach violin and chamber music at the Juilliard School in New York City from 1974 to 1989.

To draw from his violin the richest, most brilliant tone possible, Tossy developed an innovative method of bowing that was described in detail in a book entitled “The Spivakovsky Way of Bowing,” by Gaylord Yost.  In a lifelong effort to perform his repertoire just as the composers wished their music to be performed, he sought and researched their original sheet music. When he made the discovery that Bach wanted certain chords in his solo violin works, he wrote an article entitled “Problem of Arpeggiation in Bach’s Music for Solo Violin” that was published in the February 1954 issue of Musical America. A later article by him, entitled “Polyphony in Bach’s Works for Solo Violin,” published in 1967 in The Music Review, Vol. 28, No. 4, provides the evidence for Bach’s preference. Upon hearing, in 1957, a recording by Emil Telmányi, a famous Hungarian violist, of Bach’s works for solo violin played with a curved bow, Tossy purchased a VEGA BACH-Bow from Knud Vestergaard of Denmark for himself.  Using this curved bow for Bach enabled him to execute the whole four-string chords of the Bach sonatas and partitas (a single or a collection of instrumental pieces) with greater ease and the quality of having a deep, pleasant sound.

Tossy passed away on 20 July 1998.  During his life, he achieved honorary doctorates from Fairfield, Connecticut, in April 1970 and the Cleveland Institute of Music, Cleveland, Ohio, in June 1975.  He also produced LP recordings.  His violin, the Macmillan Stradivari of 1721, was sold in 1972.  He passed away on 29 July 1998.  A photographic portrait using gelatin silver photograph on paper of Tossy taken in 1936 by Max Dupain OBE hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.

Another brother, Adolf, born in 1891, was a bass-baritone. His stage career was cut short by a stress-related ulcer while he was still in his twenties, and he devoted the remainder of his life to teaching. He migrated to Melbourne in 1934 and taught at the University of Melbourne Conservatorium, where his students included the sopranos Glenda Raymond, Kathleen Goodall, and Sylvia Fisher.  Adolf passed away on 19 August 1958.  In 1973, Adolf’s widow Paula established the Adolf Spivakovsky Memorial Prize, awarded to young composers of the Commonwealth countries. Since 2007, the prize has been awarded by the University of Melbourne.

Brother Isaac (‘Issy’) was born in 1902, also studied violin as Tossy did under Willy Hess, and cello with Hugo Becker and Gregor Piatigorsky.  Issy possessed the traditional family genius for music, but suffered from polio as a child and did not pursue a career as a performer. He taught violin at the Royal Conservatorium of Music, Leipzig, before migrating to Australia in 1934.  From 1937 to 1965, he taught violin, viola and cello at Scotch College, Melbourne, contributing much to the development of music at the school. Charming and sensitive by nature, he was warmly regarded by his students despite the rigorous demands he placed on them. Ruby Claudia Davy, an Australian pianist, composer and educator, was the first woman in Australia to receive a DMus degree. Together with Issy, they established the Davy Conservatorium of Music in Melbourne.   Issy passed away on 8 August 1977.

The Spivakovskys were a family of nine; at least seven of the children contributed to the music and cultural environment.   Simeon, the eldest brother, was a photographer and sculptor.  Albert was also a distinguished pianist and cellist and conducted orchestras in Germany and Denmark.  There were three sisters, Claire, Esfira and Betty.  Claire and Betty were said to have had fine singing voices.

The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:

Australian Dictionary of Biography – Catherine J Stevens, Wikipedia, The Strad, National Portrait Gallery; The Violin Channel, Classics Today

 

The Australian Jewish Historical Society is the keeper of archives from the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 to the present day. Whether you are searching for an academic resource, an event, a picture or an article, AJHS can help you find that piece of historical material. The AJHS welcomes your contributions to the archives. If you are a descendant of someone of interest with a story to share, or you have memorabilia that may be of significance to our archives, please contact us via www.ajhs.com.au or [email protected].