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Mischa Mischakoff: Journeys of a Concertmaster.

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Mischa Mischakoff: Journeys of a Concertmaster. By Anne Mischakoff Heiles. (Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music, no. 46.) Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2006. [xxi, 316 p. ISBN 0-89990-131-X. $65.] Illustrations, appendices, index, compact disc.

What do the St. Petersburg Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the New York Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the NBC Symphony Orchestra, the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra all have in common? They were all led by concertmaster Mischa Mischakoff at one point during his seventy-year career. As indicated by its title, Mischa Mischakoff: Journeys of a Concertmaster illustrates Mischakoff's journey from his home in Russia, where he was a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory to the United States, where he served as the concertmaster of the orchestras listed above.

Written by Mischakoff's daughter, Anne Mischakoff Heiles, this sole biography of Mischakoff reads like a "who's who" of twentieth-century musical life in Russia and the United States. In his role as student, teacher, soloist, concertmaster, and chamber musician he worked with many conductors and instrumentalists, many of whom are even better known than Mischakoff today. This is due in large part to the fact that even though he also had an extensive career as soloist and chamber musician, "Mischakoff personified the concertmaster as specialist ... and was the first prominent US concertmaster to do so" (p. xx). His colleagues who chose careers primarily as...

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