A Fiddler's Tale

This memoir, written by one of the greatest American violinists of the 20th century, recounts an extraordinary life in music. Louis Kaufman was born in 1905 in Portland, Oregon. He studied violin with Franz Kneisl at New York's Institute of Musical Art. He was the original violinist of the Musical Art Quartet (1926-1933) and won the Naumburg Award in 1928, the year of his American solo recital debut in New York's Town Hall. During these early years, he played chamber music with Pablo Casals, Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, Gregor Piatigorsky and Efrem Zimbalist, among others. After performing the violin solos for Ernst Lubitsch's 1934 film ""The Merry Widow"", Kaufman became the most sought after violin soloist in Hollywood, playing in some 500 films, including ""Casablanca"", ""Gone With The Wind"", ""The Diary of Anne Frank"", ""Wuthering Heights"", ""The Grapes of Wrath"" and ""Spartacus"". He worked closely with Robert Russell Bennett, Bernard Herrmann, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, Miklos Rozsa, Max Steiner, Franz Waxman and Victor Young.