IVRY GITLIS
AN INDIVIDUAL VOICE
When Ivry Gitlis died on Christmas Eve last year at the age of 98 there was an outpouring of love and affection from the musical community.Tully Potter pays tribute to the great violinist’s life and career
Ivry Gitlis in 2013: an individual voice
OPPOSITE PAGE VITA ZWEIG.
Surely the most individual violinist to come out of Israel, Ivry Gitlis died in Paris on 24 December aged 98. The last link with the pre-war classes of Carl Flesch, George Enescu and Jacques Thibaud, he was never a household name but attracted a cult following.
It was an article of faith with Gitlis that he would aim for the ultimate in conviction and spontaneity: rather than motor along at a safe 80 per cent, he always tried for the 90s. ‘Music is something that you must feel everywhere,’ he said. ‘You don’t play just with fingers.’ This approach, inevitably entailing a certain amount of crashing and burning, did not endear him to Heifetz-fed American critics but went down better in Europe.
Yits’hak-Meir Gitlis was born in Haifa on 25 August 1922, the son of Ukrainian immigrants to Palestine. There was music in the family but nothing to indicate his life’s path. ‘I wanted a violin,’ he recalled. Family and friends clubbed together to get him one for his fifth birthday, but owing to an illness which almost cost him his sight he could not make a proper start until he was getting on for six.