Caroline Shapero and Don Shapero

Recorded October 24, 2009 Archived October 24, 2009 36:04 minutes
0:00 / 0:00
Id: MBX005969

Description

Caroline Shapero (72) tells her son Don Shapero (47) about her mother’s career as a renowned cellist, and about the life of her cello.

Subject Log / Time Code

This will be a story about Caroline’s mother, who had a career as a successful cellist, and her cello. Her name was Louise Essex, later Louise Strauss.
The cello once belonged to the Duke of Edinburgh, who received it as a wedding gift from the commonwealth of Australia.
Caroline remembers her parents musical evenings, when she would get sick and need her mother’s attention. She attributes this to feeling like music was always taking her parents away.
She’s been discussing the cello with Anthony Elliott, who now owns the cello. He is music faculty at Ann Arbor.
It all cam full circle when Caroline and her cousins went to see the cello in concert in 2009, 20 years after her mother’s death.

Participants

  • Caroline Shapero
  • Don Shapero

Transcript

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00:03 Today's date is October 24th 2009. My name is Don Shapiro. I'm 47 and I'm speaking with my mother from outside of her home at Norfolk, Virginia.

00:15 I am Carolyn Shapiro dance mother and I'm 72 years old.

00:21 So back in April of this year you were minding your own business at home.

00:27 Watering your bougainvilleas when all of a sudden what happened actually I came home and there was a message on my machine from my cousin who lives in Mississippi actually a very small area in Mississippi and I never speak to her or I should say I rarely speak to her. I hardly know her last time. I saw her she was probably 5 and that she's now at least 60 and where were you when you last saw her at her home in her on her Farm her family had a farm. This is my her mother was my mother's youngest sister Francis. And this was in Ripley New York my mother and I went to visit.

01:16 Francis has started her younger sisters. I said family and where did you live with the time? I lived in Indianapolis and I had all I've been born there and I lived there until I got married. Anyway, France Denny. The cousin said that her niece had been Googling my mother's name and an article came up.

01:45 Saying that she was the previous owner of a cello in her name because I guess people in the family have spoken of my mother. She he was sort of a legend because she had had quite had had a career as a cellist. She had graduated from high school in Indianapolis and

02:12 It was given a scholarship to study first in Boston then in Europe and with it with some very very fine teachers.

02:23 Her three teachers in Europe were quite famous, especially one which was Pablo casals. She also studied with a man by the name of Julius klengel and someone with the last name of aleksanyan who were probably the finest cello teachers in the world at that time. What time was it? This was in the twenties? My mother was probably about 20 when she went to Europe. She graduated for our maybe even 19. So she went over there. She did tell if she didn't share very much with me about her experiences. I don't know whether it was because I didn't ask and didn't seem interested which of course is a child. I wasn't interested. I thought my mother's life began with me.

03:11 So she did say though that she left home was very concerned that you would never see her grandmother. Again. Her mother had died when she was 15 and the grandmother had come to stay with the five children to raise them because they needed her so badly. So my mother knowing that it was going to be such a long time that you would be away. She was afraid her grandmother would die before she got home. So that worried her also, she was extremely homesick for her family and I think once she went to Boston, she never returned. It wasn't like today where people could travel so much they hurt her family did not have the money and they just didn't waste it in any way. So she went from Boston then her teacher there saw promise in her so that she got another scholarship to go to Europe where she studied with those teachers that I had.

04:11 And that she took many master classes. She was in at the cheat in the Leipzig conservatory and in Paris. She concert eyes throughout Europe in fact and some of her memorabilia. I found that she was the only student in her class to debut with the Leipzig Symphony Orchestra at that time. She gave concerts as I said, she attended concert show you some of the programs that she has from the concert. She attended were from very renowned musician. So she heard the best. I saw a program of Fritz kreisler and she had written probably at the age of 21 or so the best concert I ever attended. She also attended a very famous cello concert Emanuel feuermann. He's very well known even though of course

05:11 Either one is living today.

05:14 So that was

05:16 Her beginning in Europe. I would say very homesick. Where was she from? She was from Indianapolis. She had grown up in Indianapolis. She's been born in Louisville, Kentucky, but her family moved to Indianapolis when her father took a job with the New York Central Railroad her mother, her mother was a piano teacher and what my mother told me about her was that she spent a lot of time in a dark room with a cloth over her eyes because she had very serious migraine headaches.

05:55 So you're back in a New York visit does the last time you seen your cousin in?

06:02 And what was it like speaking with her out? It was fairly normal. We because we didn't have that kind any kind of a relationship. But when she said I have called the present. I know I have to back up when she said this article was written if it was written on the occasion of the Dukes 300th birthday. Now the Duke was the name that the present owner of my mother's very fine cello, which she didn't get in till 1933. So when she was studying in Europe, she had just a normal everyday kind of cello, but the one she bought in 1933 was a very fine instrument and

06:52 The one she's the man she's sold this cello to buy the name of Anthony Elliot. He was at the present time on the faculty of the music school at University of Michigan and he decided to give a birthday party for feduke the nickname he gave his cello and the reason it was called The Duke was because it had once belonged to the Duke of Edinborough Edinburg. And this was Alfred Queen Victoria's Second Son.

07:28 He had been given the cello as a wedding present by the Commonwealth of Australia in 1874. Now what I know about the cello or what documents are about the cello before that as to the owners, there are none as far as I know but it is definitely document that the cello was made in.

07:56 1703 by David Tickler in Rome. He was a German who was working in Rome. So this cello does have quite a history and I understand there is something distinctive about cellos back then that they could actually be worn instead of what we say today at people sitting down and playing well somewhere along the line. Someone had made a hole in the back of the cello, or maybe it was originally made that way. I don't know and a strap fit fitted into that hole and could be worn around a person so that he could be walking in a parade and playing the cello and it would be suspended by that strap and if you look at the back of the cello, you can see where that hole was plugged. I'm sure there's a better word than plugged, but that's

08:56 Yeah, I can explain it and you know whether that has any impact or I guess it must on the quality of sound probably but it has a beautiful sound so whether maybe it's improved it, who knows but what did Pablo casals say about the instrument? He said when he saw it in Lewisville when he passed through for the to see the present of a the previous owner to my mother he was in The Man by the name of Joseph Barnes who was CEO of the Louisville Railway. He was he was an amateur cellist I believe anyway, he said it is a fine instrument meant something from someone of that stature. Those words were maybe common place today actually had some significant significance and I can go back to also my mother as his student the fact that she he

09:56 Take her as his student meant an unbelievable amount and I do want to say this about my mother not for herself, but just the fact that she was a woman at that time in our history and encouraged to play.

10:16 Professionally a musical instrument is very rare was very rare and women cellist were not encouraged to become anything. Also, it was probably more the piano or voice at that time. So she had to have a great deal of talent that people hurt her to her teachers recognized and one thing she did say to me.

10:44 That

10:46 There were many times she would have quit but they her teachers pushed her and made her keep going and I think that is probably a very important quality that a teacher must have when he or she sees this characteristic in a student that they must Inspire them to keep them going because the person involved can't do this for themselves. I don't think you have to have a mentor encouragement or from somebody encouragement might be too too loose a word possibly possibly. All right, but if you have encouragement fight by the right people like Pablo casals and he's very famous teachers. I think that narrows it.

11:39 Oh, this is interesting to what she first took piano at the age of five from her mother. Then she heard a recording now this she never told me I saw this in some programs that she had from her concert sizing days because that question had been asked her at that time. Anyway, she said she heard a recording when she was about 9 years old of no less than Pablo casals and she said that is the instrument. I'm as play. So

12:14 I can't begin to imagine what it must have meant to her to study with him because she had heard he is the one that inspired her from the beginning apparently and that he had made that comment about the cello whether she knew at the time that you bought that cello that he had said that course. I don't know that could have come out later.

12:38 Did you attend any of her concerts? I never attended travel with her never never because I was a very young she her concert sizing days were from the time. She got home from Europe.

12:52 Play in 1928 until.

12:57 I was born and I was born in 1937 and it was during that period actually in 1935 that she wanted to.

13:08 Amazing wonderful prizes one was given by the national Federation of music and that was $1,000. I believe they would give as many as maybe seven a year to different musicians and voice people who were singers as well. I think the year that she won they would have could have awarded seven or eight prizes man when they awarded 5 and the same with the Shubert Memorial which she also one that gave a debut in

13:48 Witten with a major Symphony Orchestra in New York, and she one that I think she was like two or three of a possible.

13:59 5 it could have been given.

14:02 And so while I'm on the subject of her playing in New York the symphony that she concert sized with was the Philadelphia Symphony with Jose iturbi conducting

14:16 And it was the concert was in no less Carnegie Hall.

14:24 And then the following this was an April of 1935. Then the following October. She was on the radio for the it was call the NBC Music Radio Guild and I have a recording of that which I have had put on CD along with a few of her others home recordings and that I know was done on the cello the Duke which I got the phone call about.

15:00 So you didn't see her very often when she concert sized. You didn't travel with her what I know because don't forget she concert eyes before I was born then after that she joined the Indianapolis Symphony incidentally, my father had been a founder of the symphony in 1930 and I imagine that is how they met. They were married in 1931. And as I say after I was born she joined the Indianapolis Symphony, she would not take the first chair because that

15:32 Was too involved with having to mark up the music was directions of Boeing and she just didn't want to do that. So she took the second outside chair and she was in that until she quit and when the first World War developed and could no longer she could no longer get help for me to take care of me. So she had to stay home and learn to be a housewife which she had never ever been so she had to start cooking and do various things cuz we could not get help at home at all. So when I was growing up,

16:12 And really little I had a lot of child care because she was busy. I would go to the concerts the symphony concerts. I can remember my father taking me to the symphony. We always sat in the balcony so I could see and I was maybe four or five years old from then on and I would call out and wave to Mommy and I am sure it must have been there a service it cost the audience the laugh a lot. I'm sure you'll having a career mom is very unusual back then and I didn't know the difference. So I'm sure I missed out on a lot and

16:52 One interesting aside is my parents always entertained at home with musical evenings. And in other words, they would invite people four quartets to play quartets. They might have several people and they would switch off with each other and I would be upstairs with a babysitter. Now, this is what I was really really young like Age 3 and Anna I would often get sick at my stomach and then my mother would come up even though I had a sitter to see if I was all right, and I wonder at this time of psychologists and so forth if it ever occurred to them when their Psychology was not that probably the subject the subject was just not talked about really if that I wonder if they realized that it was the music that was taking them.

17:52 Away from me and that might getting sick was the way I was protesting. I realize that now course I didn't then.

18:01 Did you ever get encouraged to take up an instrument that I took piano and cello but having a famous and very accomplished mother?

18:14 Really made me defeated before I was started and I'm not so sure I was very musically inclined. I really didn't like music in my early years and I think that was probably because it took my parents away from me. My father was a violinist.

18:32 My mother be played at when she concert I she played under the name of Louise Essex. But of course when she was married she became Louise Strauss and in the symphony, she went the Indianapolis Symphony. She went by the name Louise Strauss. My father was Leonard Strauss.

18:53 And so as you're talking and I'm I find myself really wondering what they look like. Can you just a looked like

19:04 Paint a picture with words. Well, my mother was fairly tall and thin at that time in her life. She put on a little a few pounds when

19:19 As she got older in her early years. She was very striking. I never thought my mother was very striking, but when I look back

19:30 Through all her memorabilia, which I have done recently. I thought what a very attractive young lady she was and I don't know that any child thinks they're most particularly attractive and but when I saw her pictures from the 1920s, I saw she truly was a beautiful young woman my father whom of course, I didn't know until I was before was also a rather nice-looking man, very you look gentle and kind and he was and when I look back at his pictures and in the later years, he really hadn't changed too much. I think it's you were glasses.

20:19 Round glasses and you know, he was just my father and she was just my mother so they didn't look like anything to me, but they were who they were just my parents, but it was a very unusual family that I grew up in.

20:44 And it was interesting when I spoke with happened through the years I've spoken with these cousins the the one that I initiated the phone call with me her sister and then there is another cousin a man. Who is the son of another sister.

21:04 The way we talked about our mothers.

21:08 They didn't have the connection with their children that today we seem to Crave and and have are they didn't have the interchange. I don't know why that was it was almost it wasn't that we didn't know that we were loved to put the showing of affection was not like it is today. And so that's been an interesting thing for us the cousins to talk about cuz just alone the fact that we weren't close had really didn't didn't know each other our mothers wrote to one another frequently.

21:50 But they didn't visit that often.

21:56 So that was just the way it was in those days. I don't know what the other families were that way but that's the way mine was.

22:03 What time what does this conversation with your cousin lead to it led to eventually my speaking with Anthony Elliot. We had a very long conversation in July.

22:18 He was most interested in my mother's career. And when I told him I had the recordings he was most interested in hearing them. Even though they were done in the thirties and would be no stereophonic anything just very different kind of sound with lots of scratches and static probably and so we all the cousins eye and now Anthony Elliot and I were on a first-name basis Tony and I was Carolyn to him. We were all going to meet at a concert that he was going to give at the School of Music in Ann Arbor in the middle of September.

23:06 And I promised him that before I saw him. I would have these records of my mother's put on a CD so that he could compare the sound on this cello today then in the thirties to his now and also that I would go through all her memorabilia and so I could tell him some something about her life. And of course he was mainly interested in her life from the time. She had the cello and how it affected her and how it was it came in a case. She had this case it sat in our living room. It was made of wood Greenwood and on the front was the plaque of a brass plaque.

23:57 Which said Duke of Edinburgh then set the date 1703 and he has that case to this day. I did not see it when I went to meet him in Ann Arbor because it was in his office and we did not get to his office.

24:16 But it it was just the meeting him was just the most wonderful experience and the cousins meeting them was a wonderful experience. As I said, I had never seen one Janice the one that lived outside of Detroit. I had seen 15 years ago when I had gone to Chicago to

24:39 A wedding and then I had gone up to visit her. But as I say we had never had any contact.

24:45 Through The Years outside of those times. I've mentioned so Dale from San Francisco with his wife and Jan from the Detroit area and Denny from Mississippi and I from Norfolk all arrived in Detroit on a very auspicious day in US history, September 11th, 2009 and the concert was going to be the 12th that next evening when we would meet Professor Elliot.

25:19 On Saturday

25:21 We were to talk about family things. I had in amongst my mother's memorabilia of her career. Also were lots of family pictures of her parents or grandparents all of that. And so I had taken those up and I gone I also had a family bible. I had that I had an autograph book which had belonged to my grandmother my mother's mother and that is the grandmother of these cousins that was written in the most beautiful penmanship very very light now it is faded but Dale said that he thought he could do no make make it look much better as so that we can actually read it and I just got an email from him yesterday saying they were almost finished with it and he would be sending that and if he felt all but one came out beautifully and we figured our grandmother must have been about 15 when she got that.

26:21 Autograph book so it's just amazing what this cello?

26:27 The birthday of the Duke has has brought forth for my family.

26:34 It's it's amazing Danny died. Annie's I call her she died in 1989. That's when you acquired a lot of this this memory Billy I think and yes, and when was the last time you looked through all that? I had never looked at it never and I'm sorry that she never showed it to me, but I never expressed any interest which I'm sorry about now, and I have a feeling that had she gone back through it. It would have cost her so much Nostalgia. And I don't think she was one to do that sort of thing. I don't think she wanted her wanted to put herself through it through it emotionally, but what about yourself? You took you 20 years to get to it? Exactly. The reason I didn't is because I had other things to do. I wasn't that interested, I guess even then I would even then I wasn't when I knew it was there I wasn't that interested because it was there that it was something I could always do.

27:34 So what did it mean to be emotionally going through all this material that is built up over her entire lifetime and which have been your possession for a full twenty years. It was sad to me in this respect. I wished I talked to her about it the fact that I had never looked at it before.

27:56 That didn't bother me so much. It was the sadness. I felt that I had missed out on her life before me and

28:05 I just can't imagine the the people she met during that time of the experiences. She had all of that is lost and I'm just so sorry, but I'm grateful that I have what I have because I did I do see that she had quite a career. I had no idea it was that expensive. What were some of the other things you found in the in the treasure chest as well. As I said, I found many photographs of my mother's family. I found pictures that you had of me pictures that she had of you and your sister just pictures that have been taken of her through the years. I found some ABS as I mentioned earlier, I think some absolutely beautiful pictures of her. She had to have all kinds of pictures taken to go on programs.

29:00 For her concerts and when she would send out a material to places like the super cheap concert eyes in universities and in the concert halls around Indiana and throughout the country. He would have to send all this material ahead of time. So she had had these pictures taken, but she had never shown me and

29:25 I just find that.

29:27 Interesting that I never asked and she never thought it important enough to tell me and show me and my father either I knew about her prizes as I said, I knew she had studied with casals and these other teachers in our home we had in our hallway or wall of unbelievable an unbelievable number of photographs of musicians and people that she had

30:01 And my father to had met through the years and anyway, it was I was exposed to all this music and didn't like it now. I love it and it has come full circle in this respect from my dislike of music to my loving the music and I think it is because I have seen what my mother has become. I have seen the pedestal that my father put her on because he admired her music unbelievably and Andy a claim that she got from other people. It was she have been told that she should write her memoirs, but of course she never did. I think she was a very modest person thinking nobody would be interested and

30:54 But it has this cello has just done this I said and I've realized that it has had a life of its own know. Where is this memorabilia now the back of the case, it's back in the box in my closet and some of it is has been put in folders and one of my cousins Danny the one who who made the phone call is very into scrapbooks and she has told me how I should make a scrapbook of my mother's

31:27 Life and I told her that on our next visit because the cousins decided we would have a yearly reunions.

31:37 And I invited them to come to my place next year in 2010. And I told her when she comes it. She will will show me how to make the Scrapbook and she said she would so I'm counting on her to help me do this and I'm so it will no longer all the things will no longer be in the Box.

32:00 But getting back to the cello in those professional pictures there now and I have two pictures hanging in my living room are they were such lovely photograph kind of sepia RCP. I'm not sure how the pronunciation of that is, and they're they're really very beautiful and

32:24 If I had seen them earlier, I would frame them and put them up before but I hadn't until I'm just glad to have them now. I don't think you I can't believe they are pictures of my mother. She was probably 21 or 22 in those photograph.

32:40 So

32:43 So that's about all I can think about at the moment concerning her and the concert you went to the concert in Michigan. What was that experience like beautiful experience and it was a gradual introduction for me to see the cello in this respect. I sat behind not purposely but I sat behind somebody that I couldn't see around too. Well, so I really didn't get a good look of the chiller ride off which is probably just as well. It might have been quite emotional for me and the program was chamber music, but it was all contemporary.

33:20 Music which probably had not even been written during my mother's lifetime. So that was music that she never played. So I got a gradual introduction then at the intermission the cousins and I met Tony and his wife Paula and because he was finished with his part of the program. We went to his home where he was most hospitable and his wife was too they gave us drinks cake and fruit and it was just lovely he and I spent a great deal of time going over my mother's memorabilia and he played on

34:03 The Duke

34:05 Something from a box Suite which my mother had played she played all the bach Suites and he too. In fact, he is in the process of editing his recordings of the box and he also played in a dude and it was beautiful. It was I can't say I remember the sound of a cello but it was beautiful and it is known to have a magnificent sound and it certainly

34:33 Was an unbelievable experience he said to me when he met me because I had sent his the recordings to him. He said your mother played beautifully and then when when I left he said I would have liked your mother and I said she would have liked you to

34:59 So I now have a poem written by my daughter-in-law and which encompasses this.

35:08 It's called her mother's cello. She knows the cello. It had a life of its own long before her long before her mother, but it's low buttery tones were familiar to her when emotional residence was foreign. She's found her mother's cello. It's been alive all this time in the Great Lakes State. The cello has gone on like the vibrations inside her remembering when members of the quartet would visit and she gets sick listening to them from upstairs the fish still still swim in her stomach long after the cellist has clasped her hand over the strings are moved the bow across the body and then her elbow extended her arm attempted to let the notes float away, but the music continued it was everything between them.