ÍøÆغÚÁÏ

A revered artist in his maturity, Ruggiero Ricci survived a troublesome custody battle in his childhood to emerge a prodigy of remarkable gifts. Ricci steadily outgrew the child wonder label to go beyond technical security to a more probing brand of musicianship. Although his once suave, sensuous tone roughened somewhat once he was past his middle years, he kept his sense of inquiry, continuing to espouse the cause of new music and proving his expertise as a teacher at several American universities.

Born to parents who valued music despite their modest means, Ricci showed evidence of talent in his childhood. His father, an amateur trombonist, arranged an audition with Louis Persinger, Yehudi Menuhin's patient teacher; Persinger referred the father and son to Mary Elizabeth Lackey for beginning instruction. In November 1928, Ricci's father signed an agreement giving Lackey guardianship. That same year, the young lad made his debut in San Francisco performing Mendelssohn's violin concerto, wresting from critics extravagant words of praise. The phenomenon was repeated in New York in October of the next year in a concert where he performed the same work with the Manhattan Symphony. Samuel Chotzinoff was moved to write of "a technical mastery of the violin and a genius for interpretation which place him in a class with a handful of great living violinists." A New York recital the following month called forth yet another volley of superlatives.

In 1930, Ricci's parents sought to regain guardianship, entangling the 11-year-old in a protracted court process. The strain manifested itself in Ricci's playing, which, for a time, veered from the course of technical proficiency shown earlier. Once he was again in his parents' custody, his playing regained its former assurance and an increasing depth of musicianship was also observed. No doubt he had benefited from studies with the German violinist Georg Kulenkampff. Ricci's first European tour in 1932 included London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, and Vienna and drew attentive audiences including Gerhart Hauptmann and Albert Einstein in Berlin.

Ricci's return to concert activity in the United States came with a November 24, 1934, recital at Carnegie Hall. On the basis of that appearance, several critics pronounced Ricci as having fully recovered from his period of technical and interpretive difficulties. Further studies with Paul Stassevitch and Louis Persinger resulted in a still more penetrating approach to the music he chose to perform. By 1939, The New York Times reviewed his February 25 recital by confirming "Mr. Ricci now gives of a more healthy approach to his music."

Following his youthful days, Ricci presented concerts in many of the world's most important music centers, premiering several concertos (Ginastera and von Einem among them) and remaining an active presence on the concert stage into his seventies and beyond. In 1957, he undertook his first world tour and has also traveled on several extensive concert tours in the former Soviet Union. In addition to his concert career, Ricci's teaching activities included positions at Indiana University, the Juilliard School of Music, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; these three positions alone occupied him, in succession, from 1970 to 1988. The Salzburg Mozarteum honored him by appointing him to a guest professorship in 1989. A prolific visitor to the recording studio, Ricci assembled a lengthy discography, much of it documenting the breadth of his musical interests and including several discs devoted to works by Paganini. Ruggiero Ricci died at his home in Palm Springs, California, in August 2012 at the age of 94.

Romanian-born conductor Sergiu Celibidache spent his early life in Jasí, capital of Moldavia, and in 1936 commenced music studies at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. At age 33, after winning a conducting competition organized by Berlin Radio, he became conductor of the reconstituted postwar Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and toured with it to the British and American sectors of occupied Germany. In 1952 he shared the podium with the exiled Furtwängler, the Berlin Philharmonic's general music director, on a tour of the United States. Later that year when Furtwängler was cleared of allegations of being a Nazi sympathizer and he returned to Germany, Celibidache's appointment with the Berlin PO was terminated.

Thereafter, the larger part of his career was with the radio orchestras of Stockholm (1964-1971), Stuttgart (1971-1977), and Paris (1973-1975). From 1979 until his death, he was music director of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and general music director of the City of Munich. Between 1983 and 1984, he conducted the student orchestra at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

When a music student in Berlin, Celibidache also attended Berlin University where he studied philosophy and formed the Buddhist beliefs he retained throughout his life. He preferred the immediacy of a live performance rather than recordings and, according to his son, felt that recordings prevented the listener's spontaneous involvement with the music and gave a distorted representation of reality. Thus, though widely admired as an outstanding conductor, many of Celibidache's recordings were unauthorized, and some were of poor sound quality. It was not until after his death that, with the cooperation of his family, EMI Classics and Deutsche Grammophon released a substantial number of recordings, mainly of broadcast performances with the Stuttgart and Munich orchestras, but also with the Mannheim Philharmonic and London Philharmonic Orchestra. The repertoire is almost entirely Romantic and post-Romantic, including Beethoven, Bruckner, Brahms, Richard Strauss, Debussy, Ravel, Tchaikowsky, Respighi, and Berlioz.

It is perhaps ironic that Celibidache should have received his widest exposure through a medium he did not approve. Yet his intense, finely balanced and deeply felt interpretations made him one of the greatest names in twentieth century orchestral conducting. Above all, he was a superb technician. Celibidache could not have asked for a better memorial than the current library of recordings, especially those in The Celibidache Edition, which includes lengthy rehearsal recordings (one lasts for 45 minutes, complete with English translations). Deutsche Grammophon's selection is mainly from earlier recordings made with the Stuttgart Radio Orchestra. Proceeds from both labels are given to the Celibidache Foundation for the encouragement of young musicians and a humanitarian organization he set up to assist needy people in Tibet, Romania, and other parts of the world. His own compositions include four symphonies, a piano concerto, and an orchestral suite which he recorded for UNICEF with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra.