The Nightingale's Sonata
The Musical Odyssey of Lea Luboshutz
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- £15.49
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- £15.49
Publisher Description
*Winner of the Sophie Brody Medal*
A moving and uplifting history set to music that reveals the rich life of one of the first internationally renowned female violinists.
Spanning generations, from the shores of the Black Sea to the glittering concert halls of New York, The Nightingale's Sonata is a richly woven tapestry centered around violin virtuoso Lea Luboshutz. Like many poor Jews, music offered an escape from the predjudices that dominated society in the last years of the Russian Empire. But Lea’s dramatic rise as an artist was further accentuated by her scandalous relationship with the revolutionary Onissim Goldovsky.
As the world around them descends in to chaos, between revolution and war, we follow Lea and her family from Russia to Europe and eventually, America. We cross paths with Pablo Casals, Isadora Duncan, Emile Zola and even Leo Tolstoy. The little girl from Odessa will eventually end up as one of the founding faculty of the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, but along the way she will lose her true love, her father, and watch a son die young. The Iron Curtain would rise, but through it all, she plays on.
Woven throughout this luminous odyssey is the story is Cesar Franck’s “Sonata for Violin and Piano.” As Lea was one of the first-ever internationally recognized female violinists, it is fitting that this pioneer was one of the strongest advocates for this young boundary-pushing composer and his masterwork.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this thoroughly researched biography, Wolf, a musician and arts consultant, writes of his grandmother Lea Luboshutz (1885 1965 ), one of the first internationally known female concert violinists. Detailing Luboshutz's family life, relationships, and flight from revolutionary chaos in Russia to Europe and then the U.S., Wolf tells a fascinating tale of a Jewish woman surviving and ultimately thriving in a tumultuous time. Born in Odessa, Luboshutz survived a childhood of relative poverty. Her musical talents became apparent early in life, and by age 13 she was admitted to the Moscow Conservatory. Wolf writes evenhandedly about his grandmother, tracing her career on international concert tours to her first performance at Carnegie Hall in 1907. In 1921, following the Russian Revolution, Luboshutz emigrated to Berlin with her 13-year-old son Boris ("Lea held on to her precious Amati violin at all times. Boris was in charge of the fifty American dollars"). After a short time, they came to America, where Luboshutz obtained her famed violin, a Stradivarius named the Nightingale; performed C sar Franck's "Sonata for Violin and Piano," a piece that she championed; and became a founding faculty member of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Classical music fans will delight in this astute assessment of an influential performer and academic.
