She led a successful career despite coping with a horrific event that she witnessed at 18: the killing of her mother and sister at the hands of her father.
This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.
On Feb. 23, 1940, Miriam Solovieff gave a recital at Town Hall in Manhattan. She was 18 and widely known as a violin prodigy, having toured much of the United States, Canada and Europe. It was no surprise, then, that the recital, presenting work by Mozart, Vivaldi and Alexander Glazunov, would receive positive reviews.
What was surprising was the concert’s timing. Just six weeks earlier, Solovieff’s mother and younger sister — her entire family — were murdered by their estranged father.
Solovieff had kept vigil by her mother as she lay dying from gunshot wounds in a hospital bed. And she ultimately heeded her mother’s urging that she not cancel the recital (it would be postponed a mere two weeks).
The shootings became a tragedy so unspeakable that after the initial news reports, it was discussed only in hushed circles. For Solovieff, it opened a chasm between childhood promise, spent in the company of her cherished mother and sister, and an extraordinary adulthood, albeit one that bore tremendous emotional repercussions.
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Source: Music - nytimes.com
