Arnold Eidus
Encyclopedia
Arnold Eidus is a world renowned concert violinist
and recording artist.
Eidus's parents were Russian
immigrants; his father (Harry Eidus, 1897-1984) was a violinist and his mother (Sadie "Sonia" Birkenfeld, 1901-1983) played piano. A child prodigy
, Eidus made his debut at Carnegie Hall
at the age of 11. He studied at the Juilliard School
under Louis Persinger
(who also taught Yehudi Menuhin
, Isaac Stern
, and Ruggiero Ricci
).
, Coleman Hawkins
, Lena Horne
, Marian McPartland
, Ruth Brown
, Paul Desmond
, Freddie Hubbard
, Raymond Scott
, Wes Montgomery
, Patti Austin
, Perez Prado
, Frank Sinatra
, Doris Day
, Edgar Winter
, Cal Tjader
, Carmen McRae
, and countless others over the past six decades. In 1945, as part of the American Broadcasting Corporation's orchestra, he was a featured soloist in a New York recording of Paul Whiteman
's re-orchestration of George Gershwin
's Rhapsody in Blue
.
His classical repertoire has been recorded for the RCA Victor, HMV
, Phillips
, and Stradivari record labels.
Award in Paris
. In the 1950s, he emerged as one of the most sought-after commercial violinists in New York, working in TV, radio, and films, on the concert stage, and in recording sessions. His classical repertoire included works by Kodály, Beethoven, Elgar, Copland
, de Falla, Wieniawski, Sibelius, Brahms, and others.
In reviewing a February 7, 1950 recital at Carnegie Hall, the New York Times wrote, "Mr. Eidus is a brilliant virtuoso with a flair for the dramatic—perhaps one might say the theatrical—and his recital was never dull for a moment." This concert featured the debut and only public performance of jazz/pop composer Raymond Scott
's Suite for Violin and Piano (which reportedly was composed as a showcase for Eidus) during the composer's lifetime.
In the United States, Eidus performed as soloist with the New York Philharmonic
under Leonard Bernstein
, the Chicago Symphony under Izler Solomon
, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic
under Antal Dorati
(at the Hollywood Bowl
). In Europe Eidus performed as soloist with the London Symphony
(at Royal Albert Hall
), the Vienna Philharmonic, the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, the Budapest Radio Orchestra, and at other prestigious venues.
Eidus served as Concertmaster
for the American Broadcasting Company
, performing on and directing a weekly chamber music series.
in which they perform. Eidus and Ricci also handle all technical work themselves, including recording on tape and mastering." Besides Eidus and Ricci, the label's artist roster included pianist Leopold Mittman, conductor Alfred Vittori, violinist Emanuel Green, conductor Henri Rosco, flutist Guido Novello, and violinist Reno Fantuzzi.
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
and recording artist.
Eidus's parents were Russian
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
immigrants; his father (Harry Eidus, 1897-1984) was a violinist and his mother (Sadie "Sonia" Birkenfeld, 1901-1983) played piano. A child prodigy
Child prodigy
A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
, Eidus made his debut at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
at the age of 11. He studied at the Juilliard School
Juilliard School
The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...
under Louis Persinger
Louis Persinger
Louis Persinger was an American violinist and pianist.Louis Persinger trained at the Leipzig Conservatory, before finishing with Eugène Ysaÿe in Brussels. He became leader of the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra and the Royal Opera Orchestra in Brussels. In 1915 he was appointed leader and assistant...
(who also taught Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE was a Russian Jewish American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Russian Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985...
, Isaac Stern
Isaac Stern
Isaac Stern was a Ukrainian-born violinist. He was renowned for his recordings and for discovering new musical talent.-Biography:Isaac Stern was born into a Jewish family in Kremenets, Ukraine. He was fourteen months old when his family moved to San Francisco...
, and Ruggiero Ricci
Ruggiero Ricci
Ruggiero Ricci is an Italian-American violinist known for performances and recordings of the works of Paganini. He was born in San Bruno, California. Ricci's brother was cellist and his sister Emma played violin with the New York Metropolitan Opera.He is the son of Italian immigrants. His...
).
Recording career
Eidus is a versatile session accompanist who has recorded and performed in the classical, jazz, pop, rhythm & blues, and Latin genres. He has recorded with Perry ComoPerry Como
Pierino Ronald "Perry" Como was an American singer and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with them in 1943. "Mr...
, Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Randolph Hawkins was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Hawkins was one of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument. As Joachim E. Berendt explained, "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn"...
, Lena Horne
Lena Horne
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...
, Marian McPartland
Marian McPartland
Margaret Marian McPartland, OBE is an English-born jazz pianist, composer, writer, and the host of Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on National Public Radio, NPR.-Early life:...
, Ruth Brown
Ruth Brown
Ruth Brown was an American pop and R&B singer-songwriter, record producer, composer and actress, noted for bringing a pop music style to R&B music in a series of hit songs for Atlantic Records in the 1950s, such as "So Long", "Teardrops from My Eyes" and " He Treats Your Daughter Mean".For these...
, Paul Desmond
Paul Desmond
Paul Desmond , born Paul Emil Breitenfeld, was a jazz alto saxophonist and composer born in San Francisco, best known for the work he did in the Dave Brubeck Quartet and for penning that group's greatest hit, "Take Five"...
, Freddie Hubbard
Freddie Hubbard
Frederick Dewayne "Freddie" Hubbard was an American jazz trumpeter. He was known primarily for playing in the bebop, hard bop and post bop styles from the early 1960s and on...
, Raymond Scott
Raymond Scott
Raymond Scott was an American composer, band leader, pianist, engineer, recording studio maverick, and electronic instrument inventor....
, Wes Montgomery
Wes Montgomery
John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery was an American jazz guitarist. He is widely considered one of the major jazz guitarists, emerging after such seminal figures as Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian and influencing countless others, including Pat Martino, George Benson, Russell Malone, Emily...
, Patti Austin
Patti Austin
-Life and career:Austin was born in Harlem, New York. She made her debut at the Apollo Theater at age four and had a contract with RCA Records when she was only five. Quincy Jones and Dinah Washington have proclaimed themselves as her godparents....
, Perez Prado
Perez Prado
Dámaso Pérez Prado was a Cuban bandleader, musician , and composer. He is often referred to as the 'King of the Mambo'.His orchestra was the most popular in mambo...
, Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, Doris Day
Doris Day
Doris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...
, Edgar Winter
Edgar Winter's White Trash (album)
Edgar Winter's White Trash is the second studio album by Edgar Winter, and his first with his group White Trash. The album reached 111 on the Billboard charts, and produced the single "Keep Playin' That Rock and Roll" that went to No.70 on Billboard's Top 100.-Track listing:#"Give It Everything You...
, Cal Tjader
Cal Tjader
Callen Radcliffe Tjader, Jr. a.k.a. Cal Tjader was a Latin jazz musician, though he also explored various other jazz idioms. Unlike other American jazz musicians who experimented with the music from Cuba, the Caribbean, and Latin America, he never abandoned it, performing it until his...
, Carmen McRae
Carmen McRae
Carmen Mercedes McRae was an American jazz singer, composer, pianist, and actress. Considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century, it was her behind-the-beat phrasing and her ironic interpretations of song lyrics that made her memorable...
, and countless others over the past six decades. In 1945, as part of the American Broadcasting Corporation's orchestra, he was a featured soloist in a New York recording of Paul Whiteman
Paul Whiteman
Paul Samuel Whiteman was an American bandleader and orchestral director.Leader of the most popular dance bands in the United States during the 1920s, Whiteman's recordings were immensely successful, and press notices often referred to him as the "King of Jazz"...
's re-orchestration of George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
's Rhapsody in Blue
Rhapsody in Blue
Rhapsody in Blue is a musical composition by George Gershwin for solo piano and jazz band written in 1924, which combines elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects....
.
His classical repertoire has been recorded for the RCA Victor, HMV
HMV Group
HMV is a British global entertainment retail chain and is the largest of its kind in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company also operates in Hong Kong and Singapore. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE Fledgling Index...
, Phillips
Philips Records
Philips Records is a record label that was founded by Dutch electronics company Philips. It was started by "Philips Phonographische Industrie" in 1950. Recordings were made with popular artists of various nationalities and also with classical artists from Germany, France and Holland. Philips also...
, and Stradivari record labels.
Concert career
In 1946 he became the first American violinist to win the coveted Jacques ThibaudLong-Thibaud-Crespin Competition
The Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition is an international classical music competition for pianists and violinists that has operated in France since 1943. It was created by the pianist Marguerite Long and the violinist Jacques Thibaud...
Award in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. In the 1950s, he emerged as one of the most sought-after commercial violinists in New York, working in TV, radio, and films, on the concert stage, and in recording sessions. His classical repertoire included works by Kodály, Beethoven, Elgar, Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
, de Falla, Wieniawski, Sibelius, Brahms, and others.
In reviewing a February 7, 1950 recital at Carnegie Hall, the New York Times wrote, "Mr. Eidus is a brilliant virtuoso with a flair for the dramatic—perhaps one might say the theatrical—and his recital was never dull for a moment." This concert featured the debut and only public performance of jazz/pop composer Raymond Scott
Raymond Scott
Raymond Scott was an American composer, band leader, pianist, engineer, recording studio maverick, and electronic instrument inventor....
's Suite for Violin and Piano (which reportedly was composed as a showcase for Eidus) during the composer's lifetime.
In the United States, Eidus performed as soloist with the New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...
under Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
, the Chicago Symphony under Izler Solomon
Izler Solomon
Izler Solomon was an American orchestra conductor, active mostly in the Midwest....
, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Los Angeles Philharmonic
The Los Angeles Philharmonic is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California, United States. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at the Hollywood Bowl from July through September...
under Antal Dorati
Antal Doráti
Antal Doráti, KBE was a Hungarian-born conductor and composer who became a naturalized American citizen in 1947.-Biography:...
(at the Hollywood Bowl
Hollywood Bowl
The Hollywood Bowl is a modern amphitheater in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California, United States that is used primarily for music performances...
). In Europe Eidus performed as soloist with the London Symphony
London Symphony
London Symphony may refer to:*London Symphony Orchestra*Symphony No. 104 , by composer Joseph Haydn*A London Symphony, the Second Symphony by composer Ralph Vaughan Williams...
(at Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....
), the Vienna Philharmonic, the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, the Budapest Radio Orchestra, and at other prestigious venues.
Eidus served as Concertmaster
Concertmaster
The concertmaster/mistress is the spalla or leader, of the first violin section of an orchestra. In the UK, the term commonly used is leader...
for the American Broadcasting Company
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
, performing on and directing a weekly chamber music series.
Record executive
In 1950, Eidus and cellist George Ricci founded the Stradivari Records label. In its November 4, 1950 issue, Billboard magazine reported that Eidus and Ricci "are producing chamber musicChamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
in which they perform. Eidus and Ricci also handle all technical work themselves, including recording on tape and mastering." Besides Eidus and Ricci, the label's artist roster included pianist Leopold Mittman, conductor Alfred Vittori, violinist Emanuel Green, conductor Henri Rosco, flutist Guido Novello, and violinist Reno Fantuzzi.
External links
- Eidus recording credits at AllMusic Guide
- Eidus album credits at AlbumCredits.com
- Eidus partial discography at Discogs.com
- Concert review from Gramophone magazine, July 1947
- Article: "An Extraordinary Life: Arnold Eidus," Florida Sun-Sentinel, November 29, 2002