American Violinist Louis Kaufman Died in 1994 

The soloist behind over 400 Hollywood films, Kaufman was also the first to record Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons”

Louis Kaufman was born in 1905 in Portland, Oregon, to Romanian immigrants. At age 13, he began pursuing professional violin studies at what is now The Juilliard School with Franz Kneisel, who was a close friend of Johannes Brahms. Kaufman graduated in 1927 with the highest honors. 

Following his studies, Kaufman made his Town Hall debut in New York City, and spent a brief time as the violist of the Musical Art Quartet, after which he relocated to the West Coast. 

His career in Hollywood began when famous movie director Ernst Lubitsch heard Kaufman playing a 15-minute recital on the radio, which he did every week. Unsatisfied with the playing of all the violinists at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM), Lubitsch offered Kaufman a double salary to play the violin solos for The Merry Widow (1934) starring Maurice Chevalier. 

Over the next few decades, Kaufman’s solo playing featured in Gone With the Wind (1939), Casablanca (1943), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Rebecca (1940), Now, Voyager (1942), Laura (1944), Cinderella (1950), and The Sound of Music (1965), among hundreds of other films of that period. 

In 1947, CBS asked him to record The Four Seasons, making Kaufman a pivotal figure in reintroducing Vivaldi’s music to modern audiences of the time. 

Following this, he also made the first complete domestic recording of the other eight concertos of Vivaldi’s Op. 8 collection, Il Cimento dell′ Armonia e dell′ Inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention). As written in The Juilliard Journal, Kaufman found it incredible that “Vivaldi’s immense output should have practically vanished, nearly forgotten for 200 years.” 

Along with his pianist wife and fellow Juilliard alumni Annette Leibole Kaufman, he co-authored his autobiography, A Fiddler’s Tale: How Hollywood and Vivaldi Discovered Me, which was posthumously published in 2003. He was also the inventor of the Kaufman chinrest. 

Additionally, he wrote about chamber music evenings, which featured George Gershwin and the violinist Fritz Kreisler. Kaufman also played with violinist Jascha Heifetz, who often hosted chamber music parties. 

An interview with Kaufman from 1985 held in the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art can be accessed here.

Kaufman died on February 9, 1994, aged 88. 

LOUIS KAUFMAN | BEETHOVEN | ROMANCE FOR VIOLIN & ORCHESTRA IN F MAJOR | MANUEL ROSENTHAL & SEATTLE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA