Intermission in Java

The name of Szymon Goldberg is not yet familiar to most U.S. concertgoers, but fanciers of fiddling have known it for years. They have willingly paid high prices for his imported records, though they could get U.S. recordings of better-known violinists for less. From Violinist Goldberg, who was concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic at 20, they heard none of the showy virtuosity that often gets between a composer and his audience. The secret of Szymon Goldberg's art is not its showmanship but its selflessness.

Last week, for the third time in ten years, a Carnegie Hall audience saw, heard, and applauded Violinist Goldberg. When he walked quickly onstage to take a stiff stance before the New York Philharmonic-Symphony, the audience saw a small, smooth-haired and handsome man in his late 30s. Holding his fiddle high, he gave his listeners a powerful performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto, with clear round tones and steel-fingered doublestops, that brought the audience to its feet when it was over.

Mozart with Hindemith. Those in the audience who had seen Szymon Goldberg ten years before might reasonably have been surprised that he had not changed more. In Java on a concert tour, he and his wife had been interned by the Japanese in 1943 as Polish nationals. In 2 1/2 years he had been in 14 prison camps, separated from his wife for all but five months (she managed to keep his Stradivarius for him).

The Japanese discovered who he was by stumbling on to a recording of a Mozart duo he had made years ago with his good friend, Violist-Composer Paul Hindemith. When the Japanese demanded that he play it for them, he begged off: "The other man is not here." When he told them that Hindemith was in New York, the Japanese replied: "Ah, we will get him then when we capture New York."

Beethoven with Guitar Strings. In one camp, Goldberg assembled 14 violinists and a flutist, a piano with 19 keys missing, and a harmonium. Salvaging and pasting together scraps of toilet paper and margins from book leaves, and writing with only a tip of lead from a pencil, Goldberg scored from memory the entire Beethoven Violin Concerto for his little orchestra. He gave the woodwind and bass parts to the harmonium, and gave the piano "all the noise of an orchestra."

There weren't enough bows for the fiddles, so some played pizzicato (plucking) all the time. To get hair to make more bows for the fiddles, the prisoners surreptitiously plucked strands from the tail of the horse that pulled their food cart at mealtimes. How did his orchestra sound? "Well, not like the New York Philharmonic." How was the violin he played himself? "Fine," said Violinist Goldberg, "except it had guitar strings."

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