OBITUARIES

IGOR OISTRAKH

Russian violinist Igor Oistrakh has died at the age of 90. He was born in 1931 in Odessa, Ukraine, the son of Tamara Rotareva and acclaimed violinist David Oistrakh.

After initial musical studies with his father, Oistrakh trained at the Central Music School in Moscow, followed by tuition at the Moscow Conservatory. He won the Budapest International Violin Competition in 1949, and the Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in Poland in 1952.

As well as having had an international solo career, Oistrakh was a dedicated teacher, joining the faculty of the Moscow Conservatory in 1958. From 1996 onwards he was a violin professor at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels. He received a wealth of awards and appointments throughout his career, including being named Fellow of the Royal College of Music in London, and honorary member of both the Beethoven Society in Bonn and the Jascha Heifetz Society. He served as president of the Russian section of the European String Teachers Association, and had the unique honour of having an asteroid named after him and his father – the 42516 Oistrach.

With his wife, the pianist Natalia Zertsalova, he recorded many staples of violin repertoire, including the complete Mozart and Beethoven violin sonatas, as well as works by Bach, Paganini and Prokofiev. Their son Valery continues the family line of violin playing and, like his father, is a violin professor at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels.

PETER IND

UK-based jazz double bass player Peter Ind has died at the age of 9 3. Born in Middlesex in 1928, Ind began his musical studies on the violin at the age of eight, switching to the piano in his teens after hearing radio broadcasts of American big bands during the Second World War. Following the war, he studed at Trinity College of Music and switched his attention to the double bass. At the time, he studied with Tim Bell who, according to Ind, ‘introduced me to what was then a revolutionary method of bass fingering, in which all four fingers of the left hand are used – playing semitone intervals’.

His career began with regular gigs on the Queen Mary cruise ship, stopping off in New York every two weeks, allowing Ind to become exposed to the city’s contemporary jazz scene. Relocating to New York in 1951, he became a prominent figure in local jazz venues, collaborating with artists such as Lee Konitz, Roy Eldridge, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Buddy Rich, Stan Getz and Miles Davis; he featured as a session musician on Davis’s Birth of the Cool album. As well as performing, he was also a record producer, establishing the Wave record label.

Ind was the owner of two jazz clubs in Hoxton, east London, named The Bass Clef and The Tenor Clef, the former of which was frequented by high-profile musicians such as Branford Marsalis and Leonard Bernstein.

VLADIMIR MENDELSSOHN

Violist Vladimir Mendelssohn has died aged 71. He was a renowned international soloist, chamber musician, teacher and festival director.

Born in 1949, Mendelssohn studied viola and composition in Bucharest. His international engagments took him to most countries in Europe, Russia, Africa, Asia, South America and the US. He recorded an extensive amount of chamber music as a member of the Enesco Quartet and was professor of chamber music at the Paris Conservatoire. He also taught at the Royal Conservatory at The Hague and Folkwang Hochschule in Essen.

A prolific composer, he produced works for solo instruments, mixed choir, chamber music, symphony and chamber orchestra. He also composed music for ballet, stage and screen. Since the 1980s he had made appearances at the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival in Finland, and in 2005 was appointed the festival’s artistic director.

PHILLIP MAGNUSON

US violist Phillip Magnuson has died at the age of 7 2. He was a wellknown figure in the music community of Dayton, OH, US, not only as a violist, but also as a composer, conductor and educator.

Born in Columbus and raised in Toledo, Magnuson studied at Duke University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and completed a doctorate at University of Wisconsin–Madison, as well as overseas studies at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

As an educator, he worked in musical outreach programmes in the local Dayton community, and was professor of viola, music theory and composition for over 35 years at the University of Dayton. He conducted the university’s orchestra as well as the Springfield Symphony Youth Orchestra.

A prolific composer of published and commissioned solo, chamber, operatic and orchestral works, he won composition awards from Duke University, Broadcast Music Inc, the National Federation of Music Clubs and the Cornish Institute, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Young Composers Competition. His compositions were frequently based on literary passages that provided inspiration for his work.

GUSTAVO MENEZES

Brazilian violinist Gustavo Menezes has died suddenly of a heart attack aged 48.

Menezes was a violinist in the Orquestra Petrobras Sinfônica and Orquestra Sinfônica do Theatro Municipal (OSTM). A statement from OSTM said he was ‘a sweet, helpful, calm-speaking friend. Music to him was truly a passion.’

The youngest of five brothers in a musical family, Menezes began his studies with his father. His eldest brother is international cellist Antonio Meneses, while his other three brothers Edward, Ricardo and João are members of OSTM.