Cultural Ambassador

Not many Polish pianists visit Mexico City, and when Artur Rubinstein played there in 1954, it was almost too much for one Pole in the audience. He rushed backstage, burst into Rubinstein's dressing room, and began hugging and kissing the startled pianist, exclaiming in Polish: "That was the greatest thing I ever heard!" When the kissing stopped, he introduced himself as Henryk Szeryng, a 32-year-old music teacher at the National University of Mexico. Intrigued at finding a countryman so far from home, Rubinstein inquired: "Do you play at all?" Yes, his compatriot admitted, "I love to play the violin." Rubinstein forthwith invited the violinist to his hotel room for an impromptu audition. Recalls Rubinstein: "He played Bach sonatas and reduced me to tears."

Why Not Me? Rubinstein was so impressed, in fact, that he asked Szeryng (pronounced Sharing) to make a record album with him, later induced Impresario Sol Hurok to book him for a 20-concert tour of the U.S. A modest man, Szeryng was hesitant to take the leap from the academic world to the concert stage, finally decided: "If this great master has this sort of confidence in me, why shouldn't I?" Since then, he has established himself as one of the world's top-ranking violinists, just as Rubinstein had said he would.

This summer, following tours of Russia, the U.S. and Japan, the short, thickset Szeryng has been cutting a wide swath on the music-festival circuit in Europe. At the end of the five-week-long Salzburg Festival, one critic declared Szeryng the "Hahn im Korb" (German equivalent for "cock of the walk") among all the soloists who had appeared.

In two concerts last week at the Edinburgh Festival, he played Sibelius' Concerto in D Minor, followed by Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D. In the Sibelius piece, even the longest and most difficult runs executed at the highest speed had the clarity and order of a complex molecular structure. And as always, he seemed to toss it all off as if it were the easiest thing in the world. There is also something refreshing about his obvious delight in playing. Not for him is the agonized look that seems to be the accepted expression for most great violinists; instead, Szeryng is apt to look enraptured, and often smiles contentedly as he plays a favorite passage.

Self-Made Mexican. Son of an iron and lumber magnate, Szeryng was raised in the Warsaw suburb of Zelazowa Wola, birthplace of Chopin. A child prodigy, he was packed off to Berlin at seven to study violin with the renowned teacher Carl Flesch, five years later entered the Sorbonne. The day after Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, Szeryng volunteered for the Polish Army. Fluent in seven languages, he was assigned to the Polish government-in-exile in Great Britain as a translator. In 1942, accompanying Polish Premier Wladyslaw Sikorski to Latin America in search of a home for 4,000 people displaced by the war, he was "stunned at the generosity of the Mexican people in receiving the refugees," and after the war returned to Mexico to teach. In 1946 he became a Mexican citizen.

Today Szeryng plays the concert circuit ten months of the year, travels on a diplomatic passport as Mexico's official cultural ambassador. Not as flashy as the school of violin virtuosos that U.S. audiences are accustomed to hearing, Szeryng enjoys his greatest popularity in Europe. "He is a musician's musician," explains Rubinstein patriotically. "In the U.S., the masses go to concerts for entertainment. But real music lovers want emotion--great moments--which Szeryng's playing gives them." Real music lovers will have a chance to judge for themselves this October, when Szeryng will play with the New York Philharmonic, premiering a violin concerto by Carlos Chavez, Mexico's foremost contemporary composer.

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