This article is an element of Overlookeda series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, starting in 1851, weren’t recorded in The Times.
On February 23, 1940, Miriam Solovieff gave a recital at Manhattan City Hall. She was 18 years old and widely often called a violin prodigy, touring throughout much of the United States, Canada and Europe. It is due to this fact not surprising that the recital presenting the works of Mozart, Vivaldi and Alexander Glazunov received positive reviews.
The time of the concert was a surprise. Just six weeks earlier, Soloviev’s mother and younger sister – the entire family – had been murdered by her estranged father.
Solovieff kept vigil by her mother as she died of gunshot wounds in a hospital bed. And in the end, she listened to her mother’s insistence to not cancel the recital (it might only be postponed for 2 weeks).
The tragedy was so unimaginable that after the first press reports it was only talked about in quiet circles. For Solovieff, this opened a chasm between the guarantees of childhood spent in the company of her beloved mother and sister, and a rare maturity, although one which carried with it huge emotional repercussions.
Miriam Soloveff – an “i” was later added to her surname – was born on November 4, 1921 in San Francisco, the daughter of Elizabeth (Homsky) and Aaron Soloveff, immigrants from Russia. Her father was a cantor of Orthodox origin. Miriam’s sister, Vivian Ruth, arrived in 1927 when Miriam was 5 years old. By this time, Miriam was already showing aptitude for taking part in the piano, although piano eventually became Vivian’s specialty.
When Miriam was 7 years old, she attended the concert debut of Ruggiero Ricci, one in every of several young violin prodigies emerging from San Francisco, most notably Yehudi Menuhin. Miriam was so fascinated by 10-year-old Ricci’s playing that she tried to mimic her on the piano before becoming convinced that she, too, had to start out playing the violin. Her parents agreed – provided that she would devote the same period of time to playing the piano. (This arrangement lasted a few yr.)
She first studied with Robert Pollak, who also taught Isaac Stern, Soloviev’s longtime friend. When Pollak moved to Tokyo the following yr, Miriam studied with Kathleen Parlow. She made her debut at local live shows at the age of 10. “Over the years,” wrote music critic Alexander Fried in The San Francisco Chronicle, “she would become an exceptionally accomplished violinist.”
The accolades continued to pile up. In 1933, she performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodziński, and a yr later at the Hollywood Bowl. Generous funding from wealthy San Francisco patrons enabled her to maneuver to New York, where she studied with Louis Persinger, following in the footsteps of Ricci and Menuhin. She was accompanied by her mother and sister; her father, then assistant rector of Temple Beth Israel in San Francisco, remained.
The New York Times gave a mixed review of Solovieff’s New York debut at Town Hall on January 3, 1937, but noted: “Her playing had sufficient warmth, vitality and technical character to evoke a ready and strained response from many listeners.”
Later that yr, she began touring the Netherlands, Belgium and England along with her mother and sister, who studied piano and thought of herself a toddler prodigy, but was forced to return to New York with the outbreak of World War II. . They moved right into a two-room apartment in the Master Hotel at ul 310 River Roadnear 103rd Street, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
On the afternoon of December 28, 1939, Miriam was practicing on a borrowed Stradivarius before a date with neighbor and friend J. Christopher Herold, creator and publisher, while 12-year-old Vivian lay in bed, breastfeeding in the cold. The day got off to a rocky start when an unexpected guest showed up: their father, fresh from a cross-country flight. He was determined to reconcile along with his family after a five-year separation so complete that the Solovievs’ friends thought Aaron Soloveff was dead.
He sent many threatening letters, but to no avail, and his requests that morning were also rejected. He promised to seek out a separate apartment, and so he did. However, he returned to the Master Hotel at 5:20 p.m. – this time with a .38 caliber pistol. For the next hour he continued to demand reconciliation from his wife and Miriam. They each said no again.
He then fired two shots at Miriam. Ducking, she grabbed her instrument and ran screaming from the apartment to her neighbor. He turned to Elizabeth and shot her twice in the chest, then entered Vivian’s bedroom and shot her in the chest and neck. He ran out of the apartment, rested in the corridor for a number of minutes, after which shot himself. He left farewell letters in English and Yiddish.
Vivian, who was initially expected to survive, was taken to a hospital in Harlem. Elizabeth was taken to the convent hospital, where Miriam kept vigil. Vivian died first from shock and hemorrhaging the next morning. Elizabeth died two and a half hours later. Miriam was now completely alone, and the violin was her only emotional and financial technique of coping.
Miriam Solovieff performed consistently throughout the Forties. She introduced the audience to recent works for solo violin by Aaron Copland and Vissarion Shebalin, while improving her approach to traditional dishes, including: Chaconne by Bach, Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto and the sonata “The Devil’s Trill” by Giuseppe Tartini.
In 1944, she married William Reuben, an Army infantryman during World War II, later often called a journalist investigations in the espionage cases of Rosenberg and Alger Hiss. The marriage ended after a number of years, although the couple didn’t officially divorce until 1964. Soloviev never remarried.
In the summer of 1945, family friend, singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson, invited her on the first racially integrated USO (United Service Organizations) tour, making 32 stops, including: in the liberated Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps.
Solovieff had a passion for glamor, which intensified after moving to Paris in 1949. There, she favored Hermès scarves and stylish fashion lines, visiting fashion showrooms so often that they provided her with generous lines of credit. “She looked exactly like Lauren Bacall and had the expression of Maria Callas,” Ellen Singer, a retired therapist and executor of Solovieff’s estate, said in a telephone interview.
Valentine Viannay, a San Diego artist who knew Solovieff as a toddler, still owns a hand-stitched Lanvin silk scarf that Solovieff gave her as a present. “She would be happy to see the enthusiasm and surprise in your eyes, knowing she had done something good, and laughing with joy,” Viannay wrote in a text message.
Solovieff continued to perform, mainly in Europe, although in 1968 she returned to the United States for an prolonged period, during which she gave her first recital in 20 years at Carnegie Hall. (Among those present was violinist Itzhak Perlman, a detailed friend who partially named one in every of his daughters, Navah concert pianist Miriam Perlman). New York Times music critic Donal Henahan exclaimed Solovieff’s “first-rate” technique and singled out her Brahms Sonata No. 2 as “gracefully formulated, sensitively balanced and rich with discreet feeling.”
Commercial recordings were less effective, and few of them have survived. She was a soloist in a recording of Rimsky-Korsakov’s piece conducted by Mario Rossi in 1956 “Scheherazade”, which stays in circulation to this present day, showing the wide tonal and emotional spectrum of her playing. Her interpretation of a bit by Édouard Lalo Violin Concerto in Freleased 4 years earlier, can also be a highlight.
However, plans to record the Brahms violin sonatas with the pianist Julius Katchen, a frequent partner of the duo, fell through when Solovieff suffered a breakdown during the recording session. (Two live recordings of Solovieff playing these sonatas, one with Katchen and the other with Christian Ivaldi, can be found through the independent label Meloclassics.)
It wasn’t her first breakdown and it would not be her last. Ellen Singer, who lived along with her for 4 years starting in 1968, said that Solovieff slept with the lights on but didn’t need to see a therapist or take medication, fearing it might impair her musical abilities.
In the early Seventies, her solo profession got here to an end and he or she turned to teaching.
Soloviev remained in Paris until the end of her life. She died at the age of 81 on October 3, 2003 in the local hospital after a protracted illness. As a journalist Jacqueline Müller wrote in thanks w World, “Miriam Solovieff died as she lived, quietly, humbly, inhabited by the talent that she hid deep in her heart, like a child that you carry inside you forever.”
Just 4 months after the triumphant concert at City Hall in 1940 and about six months after the family’s destruction, Solovieff reflected in an interview with The Jewish News of Northern California on how World War II didn’t stop people from craving live music. “Perhaps,” she said, “it is us musicians who can fulfill this function – with our music. Perhaps we can improve morale and, at least for a while, distract people from the terrible suffering in the world.”
