Violin

Eugene Fodor, a swashbuckling violin virtuoso who was a media darling of classical music in the 1970s but whose substance abuse fractured a fairytale career, has died. He was 60. Fodor died of liver disease Feb. 26 at his home in Arlington, Va., said his wife, Susan Davis. He had struggled with addictions to alcohol, cocaine and heroin, she said. At 24, Fodor became the first American to win top honors on violin at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1974.

Joshua Bell is such a poster boy for his generation of classical musicians that fans tend to know pretty much everything about him: His background as a violin prodigy. His youthful good looks and floppy brown hair. His penchant for boundary breaking - recording movie soundtracks and playing with jazz and even bluegrass artists. His $4-million Stradivarius. Here's one thing that might surprise them, though: The dude can eat. And not in the fueling, eat-to-live kind of way. Watching him work through a tasting menu like the one served last week at lunch at the Bazaar by José Andrés was to see someone in full thrall of the pleasure of dining.

Jose Maria Carabajal was toiling for the friars at Mission San Antonio on California's Central Coast when he first heard the exalted strains of a violin. His people — the Salinan Indians — had been making music for thousands of years, but he'd never heard anything like the sounds soaring from the priest's polished chunk of wood and gut. Intrigued, Carabajal decided to make his own. The instrument he crafted in 1798 from bay laurel and other native woods was solid enough to last more than two centuries and sweet enough to build a reputation of its own. The Carabajal, as it came to be known, was handed down through generations.

As concertmaster for the orchestra that recorded the soundtrack for the movie "Psycho," classical violinist Israel Baker helped create a piece of pop culture that is regarded as one of Hollywood's most terrifying. He led the piercing attack of the violins that accompanies the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film's chilling shower scene. He "was a renowned violinist and concertmaster in the Hollywood studio system" and was heard on dozens of movie scores, said Jon Burlingame, a film and music historian.

Carla Shapreau's story on the Alcantara Stradivarius violin was spellbinding ("Lost and Found. And Lost Again?" Feb. 12). I savored every word of her artfully written, passionate recollection of her part in returning the Stradivarius to UCLA. Sadly, at the end of Shapreau's story, the ugly head of greed showed its face in the form of UCLA's contemplated sale of the violin. To sell it would be a betrayal of the generous gift of Genevieve Vedder to UCLA. It is apparent that her gift was a gift to the future of music, a gift to students and ordinary people to be administered by a trusted institution of learning.

A Stradivari owned by the first woman to play in the strings section of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has sold for $1.2 million. Christie's auction house said Friday that the 1700s violin, known as the Penny, was purchased for $1,273,000 by a buyer who did not wish to be identified. The violin's owner, Barbara Penny, died last year. A 1729 Stradivari violin, known as the Hammer, sold at Christie's in 2006 for $3.5 million, which the auctioneer called a record for any musical instrument.

Dr. Ronald Goldman has a fantasy. During a performance by an eminent string quartet, the second violinist suddenly is stricken--nothing fatal, of course--and the usual request, "Is there a doctor in the house?" is made. Goldman rushes forward, quickly attends to the immediate needs of the stricken musician, then pulls out his own violin and completes the concert with the quartet. For Goldman, such a scene is not entirely hypothetical, for he is both physician and violinist.

The owner of a recording studio returned a 170-year-old stolen violin to its owner Sunday after buying the $10,000 instrument on the street for $40. "I could see it was a real beautiful instrument," said Bruce Thompson, who was approached outside his Chicago studio by a man trying to sell the violin. "At first I said, 'No, that thing's hot, man,' " Thompson said. "Then I looked inside the case. I could see a lot of love in that case."

The five composers represented Monday night on the New Music Group program under the Green Umbrella at the Japan America Theatre had a lot in common. All but one happened to be born in 1938, and the stubborn nonconformist turned out to be only a year younger. All are resident associates with major American orchestras, thanks to the national Meet-the-Composer project. All write music that is clever, reasonably accessible, relatively consonant.

Both discs from these Italian period-performance bands contain seven of Vivaldi's descriptive concertos, some of which overlap--or do they? For instance, each disc includes a "La Notte" Concerto with different catalog numbers, in different keys, yet they are indeed the same piece, albeit one with a recorder lead and the other for strings and harpsichord only. However, another title, "La tempesta di mare," is given to very different concertos on each disc, in content as well as instrumentation.

They're honoring the winners of the 2011 Nobel Prizes this week, but there are a number of human endeavors the Nobels don't cover. Music composition is one of them, and in the breach there is the University of Louisville's prestigious Grawemeyer Award, whose founder once mused that such a prize might mean "perhaps we could find another Mozart. " Its latest winner is Esa-Pekka Salonen, who for 17 years held the baton at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. But the Grawemeyer honors what he did with a pen -- or a computer mouse, or both: the " Violin Concerto " he composed in his last months in L.A. He's taking his concerto on tour, from Boston to Hamburg.

A recital without an encore is like a meal without dessert. Orchestral concerts usually skip dessert, unless the orchestra is on tour. (On the road, Valery Gergiev, conductor of the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra, always has five or six popular short pieces ready.) Sometimes encores are given after a concerto. Some conductors, however, think it's rude to make an orchestra (and maestro) wait while a soloist basks in extra applause. In fact, the whole art and practice of the encore is rather complicated, and subject to debate among performers.

There is no joy in Juddville, which is not surprising because country music icons Naomi and Wynonna Judd are rolling out a reality show on OWN where fun is, apparently, just one more form of denial. When Oprah Winfrey announced she was starting her own network, she pledged that it would be a mean-free zone, a shelter from the snark, self-immolation and schadenfreude she believes is ravaging the television landscape. And so far, she has delivered. That does not mean OWN is a happy place.

Eugene Fodor, a swashbuckling violin virtuoso who was a media darling of classical music in the 1970s but whose substance abuse fractured a fairytale career, has died. He was 60. Fodor died of liver disease Feb. 26 at his home in Arlington, Va., said his wife, Susan Davis. He had struggled with addictions to alcohol, cocaine and heroin, she said. At 24, Fodor became the first American to win top honors on violin at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1974.

It was the day after Christmas, and Eric Castro, a lawyer who also sings professionally, was warming up his baritone by running through trills and hums. After working hard right up to the holiday, wasn't he eager to have a day off? "To tell you the truth, it's a complete pleasure and honor to do this," said Castro as he prepared to sing arias inside a crowded living room where "jam session" took on a whole new meaning. Each Boxing Day since 1998, the Spanish Colonial Revival house at the end of a cul-de-sac off Los Feliz Boulevard has vibrated with the sounds of Handel's "Messiah," performed by as many as 125 choristers and orchestral musicians.

Jose Maria Carabajal was toiling for the friars at Mission San Antonio on California's Central Coast when he first heard the exalted strains of a violin. His people — the Salinan Indians — had been making music for thousands of years, but he'd never heard anything like the sounds soaring from the priest's polished chunk of wood and gut. Intrigued, Carabajal decided to make his own. The instrument he crafted in 1798 from bay laurel and other native woods was solid enough to last more than two centuries and sweet enough to build a reputation of its own. The Carabajal, as it came to be known, was handed down through generations.

"Things happen," Gidon Kremer said, exuding much more calm than you might expect from someone who had left a $3-million violin on a train a few hours earlier. "I can't justify myself," added the acclaimed Latvian-born violinist, after being reunited with his fiddle Wednesday at Meyerhoff Hall, where he is the guest artist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra through Saturday. "I can only explain."

In a recent interview in Harper's Magazine, Dr. Oliver Sacks, the respected Columbia University neurologist, argued that intensive musical training had a profound effect on young brains. He noted a study that showed children with a single year of violin training demonstrated striking positive change in their left hemispheres. Although it's been ages since I last had someone look at either of my hemispheres, I believe I'm a walking exception to Sacks' generalization. Music did, in fact, have a profound impact on me in my formative years, but I've spent the succeeding 50 years digging out of the impact crater.

"If you have any brains, you pick your school by your teacher," said Elizabeth Pitcairn, a violin soloist who studied with Robert Lipsett at L.A.'s Colburn School. She said she started playing at age 3 and, at 16, her grandfather bought her the legendary Red Mendelssohn Stradivarius, which was handcrafted in 1720 and then disappeared for 200 years, inspiring the film "The Red Violin." She played that violin at "Conversations With Colburn," an intimate dinner earlier this month at Jennifer and Royce Diener's historic home on Santa Monica's "Gold Coast."

In a recent interview in Harper's Magazine, Dr. Oliver Sacks, the respected Columbia University neurologist, argued that intensive musical training had a profound effect on young brains. He noted a study that showed children with a single year of violin training demonstrated striking positive change in their left hemispheres. Although it's been ages since I last had someone look at either of my hemispheres, I believe I'm a walking exception to Sacks' generalization. Music did, in fact, have a profound impact on me in my formative years, but I've spent the succeeding 50 years digging out of the impact crater.