Word: eisenberg
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Indeed, he delights in remembering how atypical his early career was. "In my day, everyone was a child prodigy. They all had great teachers, and made debuts at the age of six." Eisenberg, on the other hand, although he was born into a musical family--his father was a cantor--did not start music lessons until he was nine. Even then it was the violin that he began to study. The reasons he recalls for changing to the 'cello are a mixture of pragmatism and romanticism: "There was only one violin, and I had to share it with my brother...
...three years after the young musician won a scholarship to the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, the Philadelphia Orchestra dismissed all of its German players, among them a 'cellist. Leopold Stokowski happened to hear Eisenberg play, and engaged him. He was just fifteen, easily the youngest person ever to play in an American orchestra. "I had to lie about my age to get a union card," muses Eisenberg. "I said I was seventeen...
...Europe but to the New York Philharmonic, again an exception to the rule. ("I had never thought of Europe. It was Casals who made me go.") Casals first heard the young man in New York and invited him to become his only pupil in Spain. Eisenberg finally made his debut in Paris at the comparatively advanced...
...seems as if the gods were on his side every step of the way, from the first 'cello in the corner. Perhaps this explains the fact that Eisenberg is a thoroughgoing optimist. When discussing the restrictions the USSR places on her artists, for example, he concludes, "But freedom as an ideal will seep through. They won't keep it out." American composers, he feels, are not expressive enough, for they still confine their ideas by imitating techniques. "But they will learn. Artists should be sent as ambassadors to enemy countries in order to break through barriers with music, an irresistible...
This is not to say that Eisenberg glosses over problems, but rather that as an activist, he thinks of them always with projected solutions. As a consequence of his emphasis on music as personal expression, he is especially disturbed by any role which presumes to mediate between performer and audience. Thus he feels that critics often know nothing about the music which they pretend to analyze after one hearing, and would rather have musicians give their own critical appraisals...