Prodigious Fiddler

Offstage, Jaime Laredo acted much like any other 14-year-old, friendly, natural, a little shy with strangers. But when he appeared as violin soloist in Cleveland's Severance Hall, his chubby face was transformed with the artist's intensity, and he played with enough virtuoso technique to excite his listeners. More important musically was the emotional force with which he performed everything from Mozart to Bloch. Said Cleveland's noted Violinist Giorgio Ciompi: "His outstanding quality is that he puts his mind, his emotions, his bow together and gives himself completely," Said Conductor George Szell: "I consider him one of the great hopes among young violinists."

It seems clear that Violinist Laredo is a true prodigy, and maybe more. Before he was five, he unexpectedly showed that he could follow musical notation ("It was easy; the notes went up and down, and so did the music"); when he was 6½, he tuned a violin without help, and then correctly pointed out that the family piano was flat. A few months later, his parents sold their home and possessions in Bolivia to give him U.S. training (in San Francisco). After one of his rare appearances four years ago, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "In the 1920s it was Yehudi Menuhin, in the 1930s it was Isaac Stern; and [now it is] Jaime Laredo." After that, scholarships, first with Concertmaster Josef Gingold of the Cleveland Orchestra, and then with Master Teacher Ivan Galamian at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute, with whom he still studies.

Jaime's parents, who skimp to keep him in rosin and catgut (Papa Laredo works at a desk job in a hospital), are reluctant to turn him loose as yet in the full-scale concert field. (He has played only a handful of concerts.) Too many, they realize, are the prodigies who "burn themselves out" in their adolescence and are never heard of again. As it is, the boy's life is far from normal. Now living in Philadelphia, he practices four hours a day, goes to Curtis three afternoons a week and plays chamber music two more. Three nights a week he attends accelerated high-school classes, will graduate next year. "I don't miss doing things other boys do," he says. "Music is enough fun for me."

Jaime plans to make his first concert tour in September (Peru, Bolivia and possibly Colombia) and then return for more studies, heading for eventual participation in the 1958 Brussels International contest. But he is cautious about predicting a future for himself: "Maybe it will be the concert stage, if I can make it. I can only hope and try."