629

Leopold Stokowski

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:1,000.00 - 1,500.00 USD
Leopold Stokowski

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Auction Date:2014 Mar 12 @ 18:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Archive of 18 TLSs to his close friends, musicians Juri and Vera Jelagin, nearly all signed “Leopold,” each approximately one page, 8.5 x 5.5, personal letterhead, dated between 1958 and 1961. Letters cover a wide array of topics, from personal life to music in general. One of the most interesting, in part: "As soon as the orchestra pit is enlarged so as to take the whole orchestra with full strings, I would like to conduct Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame. Do you know a good English translation. I [sic] the mean time I would like to conduct in concert some parts for orchestra alone. For example, there is the introduction to the first act and later there is a wonderful theme in E Flat Minor in the second scene. It begins this way," after which he pens a three-bar AMQS. A second comments on his time in the USSR, in part: "I enjoyed so much my musical life in the Soviet Union that I wish to return there to make music with those splendid orchestras, and for the unspeakably fine and sensitive public"; and another offers related travel advice, in part: "I think it is perfectly safe for you to write your mother if you are cautious and say nothing that might harm her, particularly as there is an anti-American expression in Moskva." A more cryptic letter, in part: "If I cable or write you the words 'my mother is alive and well' you will understand. I hope I shall not have to write 'my mother is dead' and give the date." The Jelagins were musicians at the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow before their immigration to the United States, upon which Juri joined the Houston Symphony as a violinist. He also authored the 1951 book The Taming of the Arts, a commentary on the treatment of the arts in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. A remarkable series of previously unrecorded correspondence, rife with fascinating content.