Early Life
Ursula Bagdasarjanz was born in Winterthur, Switzerland, to a mother who was herself a violinist. The seeds of Ursula's musical talent were sown in the cradle, or, as she herself believes, were bestowed as a gift to accompany her through life. Her father, Samuel Bagdasarjanz was born in Romania, whence his family emigrated to Switzerland. Through her mother, Margrit Weiss, born in Switzerland, Ursula learnt at an early age to express herself on her instrument. In 1944, at the age of ten, Ursula Bagdasarjanz gave her first concert (Beethoven Romance in F major). Her teachers were Aida Stucki in Winterthur, Switzerland (1944–1953), Marcel Reynal at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, France (1953–1956), where she was awarded the "Premier Prix de Violon" in 1956, and Sándor Végh in Basel, Switzerland (1957 and 1958). She took masterclasses with Joseph Calvet in Paris and Max Rostal in Bern. At the time Ursula Bagdasarjanz was taking violin lessons from Aida Stucki, the latter was herself a student of Carl Flesch, one of the most famous violin educators ever. This was a stroke of luck: as a child, Ursula Bagdasarjanz had already had the chance of familiarising herself with a unique method of work for violinists, the Carl Flesch scale system.
In 2000, another Aida Stucki student, the virtuoso violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, wrote the introduction to Eric Rosenblith's new edition (published in English) to Carl Flesch's book on "The Art of Violin Playing".
Another violinist having done extensive work on the Carl Flesch's works was Max Rostal. He published a new, revised and broader edition of the scale system in 1987 and passed his in-depth knowledge of the standard works of Carl Flesch on to students attending his masterclasses.
As both soloist and a chamber musician, Ursula Bagdasarjanz pursued an active concert career. She did much for the composer Othmar Schoeck. She performed a full range of his violin works, including recordings of all his violin sonatas, accompanied by Gisela Schoeck, the composer's daughter.
Read more about this topic: Ursula Bagdasarjanz
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)