Efrem Zimbalist was born on April 9, 1889,[1][2][3] O.S., equivalent to April 21, 1889, in the Gregorian calendar, as reported in many newspaper obituaries, in the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, the son of Jewish parents Maria (née Litvinoff) and Aron Zimbalist (Цимбалист, Russian pronunciation [tsɪmbaˈlʲist]), who was a conductor.[5] By the age of nine, Efrem Zimbalist was first violin in his father's orchestra. At age 12 he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and studied under Leopold Auer. He graduated from the Conservatory in 1907 after winning a gold medal and the Rubinstein Prize, and by age 21 was considered one of the world's greatest violinists.[6]
Career
After graduation he debuted in Berlin (playing the Brahms Concerto) and London in 1907 and in the United States in 1911, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra,[7] when he gave the first American performance of the Glazunov Violin Concerto.[8]
In 1912, he played the Glazunov Concerto in a concert marking Leopold Stokowski's first appearance with the London Symphony Orchestra. He then settled in the United States. He did much to popularize the performance of classical music in his adopted country. In 1917, he was elected as an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the national fraternity for men in music, by the fraternity's Alpha Chapter at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He retired as a violinist in 1949, but returned in 1952 to give the first performance of the Violin Concerto by Gian Carlo Menotti. He retired again in 1955. He served as a juror of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1962 and 1966.
Early in his career Zimbalist owned the "Titian" Stradivarius violin. He purchased the violin while on a trip with friend and world renowned violinist Jascha Heifetz for $33,000. At the time, around August 1923, the Titan was 208 years old, being created by Antonio Stradivari in 1715. It was ranked among the four finest violins in the world by European experts.[9] The violin was later purchased by Felix M. Warburg as a quartet purchase that included "Viola Mac Donald" (1701), the "La Belle Blondine", and a recently restored (at the time) "Red" Stradivari, for $200,000. Mr. Warburg loaned all four to Sascha Jacobsen, Bernard Ocko, and Louis Kaufman, whose teacher was Franz Kneisel, as well as Marie Roemaet-Rosanov, a pupil of the great Pablo Casals, to play at Manhattan's Aeolian Hall.[10]
Pablo Casals writes in his biography, Joys and Sorrows, that Zimbalist was a member of the Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy, chaired by Casals and founded by him in 1936.[15]
Although he continued to consider himself ethnically Jewish, he found himself attracted, along with his wife Alma, to Anglican Christianity, and they regularly attended the Episcopal Church in New Hartford. Efrem Jr. and Maria were both christened there, and the couple placed Efrem in an Episcopal boarding school in New Hampshire. Efrem Jr. later became active in evangelical circles and was one of the founders of Trinity Broadcasting Network.[17]
He died in 1985, at the age of 95. His and Alma's son, Efrem Jr., and their granddaughter, Stephanie Zimbalist, both became popular actors, primarily in television.[18] Efrem Jr. portrayed Dandy Jim Buckley in Maverick opposite James Garner, and the lead characters in the television series 77 Sunset Strip and The FBI. Granddaughter Stephanie played the female lead in Remington Steele opposite Pierce Brosnan.
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