Szymon Goldberg

Szymon Goldberg (1 June 1909 – 19 July 1993) was a Polish-born classical violinist and conductor, latterly an American.

Born in Włocławek, Congress Poland, Goldberg played the violin as a child growing up in Warsaw. His first teacher was Henryk Czaplinski, a pupil of the great Czech violinist Otakar Ševčík; his second was Mieczysław Michałowicz, a pupil of Leopold Auer. In 1917, at age eight, Goldberg moved to Berlin to study the violin with the legendary pedagogue Carl Flesch. He was also a student of Josef Wolfsthal.

After a recital in Warsaw in 1921, and a debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1924 in which he played three concertos, he was engaged as concert-master of the Dresden Philharmonic from 1925 to 1929. In 1929 he was offered the position of concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic by its Principal Conductor, Wilhelm Furtwängler. He accepted the position, serving from 1930 to 1934. During these years, he also performed in a string trio with Paul Hindemith on viola and Emanuel Feuermann on cello, and also led a string quartet of Berlin Philharmonic members.

The rise of the Third Reich forced Goldberg to leave the orchestra in 1934, despite Furtwängler's attempts to safeguard the Jewish members of the orchestra. Thereafter, he toured Europe with the pianist Lili Kraus. He made his American debut in New York in 1938 at Carnegie Hall. While Goldberg and Kraus were on a tour of Asia, they and their families were interned in Java by the Japanese from 1942 to 1945.

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