Obituaries - Jan. 20, 1995

Josef Gingold; Influential Teacher of Violin

Josef Gingold, 85, the violinist who counted Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman and Joshua Bell among his students, has died. “He was certainly one of the most influential teachers of violin in our time,” said Indiana University professor and music writer Peter Jacobi. “That gives him a form of immortality. The products of his teaching genius will continue to make music for a couple of generations.” Gingold, born in 1909 in Brest-Litovsk, Russia, immigrated to New York with his family at age 11. As a young man, he returned to Europe to study with famed Belgian violinist and composer Eugene Ysaye. Gingold later played for Broadway shows and in the NBC Radio Orchestra, under the direction of maestro Arturo Toscanini, and was concertmaster of the Detroit Symphony and the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. He taught at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and at the Meadowmount School of Music in New York, where his students included Perlman and Zukerman. Gingold co-founded and judged the International Violin Competition in Indianapolis and led master classes at more than 25 universities and conservatories worldwide. In 1960, he came to Indiana University, where he maintained a heavy schedule of teaching until late last year. On Jan. 11 of a heart attack in Bloomington, Ind.