Elias Breeskin - First Years

First Years

Elias was the youngest of three brothers. His older twin brothers were about ten years older than he, and were identified as potential classical musicians. The story has it that Boris and Daniel, at the age of 19, went off to the Caucasus Mountains to play a violin gig. Boris ran outside in the frigid air without his overcoat, caught pneumonia, and died. Elias was profoundly affected by the death of his brother. Olga, Elias' mother, realized that he had musical talent as well, and bent her strong will to providing him with the best musical education that could be obtained in Russia at the time.

Elias’ references to his mother were always curious in nature. He referred to her with a mixture of emotions, among them being strong love, fear, admiration, and wonder, all present in his face. Elias' father was a quiet, dear man who had learned, appropriately, not to cross his indomitable wife, who was approximately 200 pounds in weight, and quite muscular.

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