His memory is always with me; the example always there—his power, his spirit, awesome talent, humility, rejection of political correctness and of the norm. He was happier talking to the tradesperson than any musical psuedo-intellectual with excessive college degrees. He disdained all but what was true and honest and never minced words. He was never a household name and he was proud of that fact. When he said, "Good," that was the benchmark. "Fabulous," was reserved for the true gods.
There's a bit of history about my great father born in Philadelphia in 1917 to Russian parents. His father and mother escaped Russia with their lives—barely—and smuggled his older siblings out of Russia during a period when pogrom perpetrators slaughtered with ease, so it might be safe to say his extremely intelligent mother learned her lessons from life's realities.
His father was a superb cabinetmaker (and a beautiful Klesmir fiddler) from the area near Odessa. And my father was somehow able to escape this past and retain an innocence for the beauty surrounding him.
A child prodigy of the most spectacular sort, at age 7 he was the youngest soloist ever to play with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Conductor Leopold Stokowsky thought he was "one of the most sensational geniuses he ever heard in his lifetime." I have recordings of the 11-year-old to prove his astounding artistry, equal to any violinist ever recorded. His numerous and huge discography is legendary and serve individually as models and testament to the great composers.
My father was open to many other facets of life in addition to his love for playing the violin. He was a great photographer as well and it provided a contrast to his public life. In the darkroom no people clawed at him, criticized his last concert, or compared his artistry to the latest wunderkind. Why wasn't he more famous? Why did he not play 200 concerts a year?
What I Have Learned
I learned that the concert experience can be meaningful, but it is far from a natural state. It is not getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth.
I learned to strip away all that is unessential. I learned that if you really want to pick the daisies, let their fragrance melt your heart—that when younger, we like the sweet tastes, the brilliant passagework, and the shock factor. After all, it is a tactile thrill to play the violin and that has its place, too.
But later, I learned that it is the essential that remains and although its parameters have lessened, the borders formed are true, the boundaries defined, dignified, and replete with the composer's vivid power.
For my father playing the violin was no entertainment and he hated that term. Nor was it a business—he hated that term, too. Not these, but its purpose was to enlighten, to make easier the burden through revealing, illuminating the contradiction, for there is a contradiction in the burden of life.
As my mother's favorite poet Walt Whitman said, " Life is a contradiction," and I mean this in the most positive spirit, since it's easy to be negative and easy to be superficially positive, but to feel and to decipher what is meaningful—that is the true essence of the great musicians: of Bach, of Mendelssohn, of Handel, Rachmaninoff, Tschaikowsky—and by no means is this easy.
It is the contradiction that I am always learning about, whether it's the medicine to digest, your true reflection with no place to hide, or whether the bittersweet beauty of the phrase, the feel of a tingling vibrato and gut-wrenching pathos—the anger, the sweetness, the human rage—that bears a tear or evokes goose bumps
The violin is amazing. It can take you to all of this, and you know just where you stand. Really no need for smiling faces and star search TV.
Eric Shumsky, world-class violist, has taught, appeared as a soloist or with orchestras throughout the world. He plans to hold an exhibition of his father's black and white photography in the near future. For more information visit: www.shumskymusic.com
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