Sunday Morning News

Violinist Roman Totenberg Still Making Music at 90

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Finally this morning, Roman Totenberg was a child prodigy on the violin. Now the virtuoso has reached his 90th birthday, and he's still filled with music.

CNN's Bill Delaney has his story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(MUSIC)

BILL DELANEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In what should be the autumn of his years, Roman Totenberg having none of it.

(MUSIC)

At a concert to celebrate his 90th year, playing Polish composer Carol Szymanowski's First Violin Concerto.

Conjuring hardly autumn, more a musician's eternal spring.

(on camera): How does it feel when you find yourself celebrated for being 90 years old?

ROMAN TOTENBERG, VIOLINIST: It feels very strange, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) because I don't feel that way. I feel very normal, (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

DELANEY: What's the big deal about being 90?

TOTENBERG: Exactly.

DELANEY (voice-over): The deal, the sweep of history: musical, political, encompassed by Roman Totenberg.

Born in Poland in 1911, his family moved to Russia a few years later, into the chaos of the Russian Revolution.

TOTENBERG: I played for many years most of my...

DELANEY: A child prodigy, he first played violin to eat.

TOTENBERG: ... given food and butter, sugar, bread, and things like that. Not money actually in that time. And I remember when mother came with the head of a horse and we had to get rid of the teeth from the -- from the head. It was the most horrible experience. We never forgot it.

DELANEY: What led Totenberg on, his virtuosity, to the artistic meccas of Berlin and Paris in the 1930s until, fleeing Hitler, he came to the United States in 1938.

TOTENBERG: I think in difficult times like that, art is much more important than normal times. And that's what continues living, even if -- even if the outside is horrible.

DELANEY: The refuge of art, the community of it, still echoing throughout Totenberg's house, just outside Boston.

TOTENBERG: Well, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) became a good friend of mine. My first visit to Brazil with Arthur Rubenstein. That's (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...

DELANEY: Stravinsky, Chagall, Picasso, Gertrude Stein -- he knew them all.

Now, for 40 years, Totenberg's taught at Boston University.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, I didn't bring out that...

DELANEY: Cherished as a link to an age when virtuosos were expected to really interpret a work of music, throw their hearts into it.

TOTENBERG: You constantly prepare. In my case, I'm still the first thing in the morning is music. The last thing in the evening is music.

DELANEY: His 90th year, Totenberg says, no big deal. Simply a matter of staying full of life.

Bill Delaney, CNN, Boston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And for those of you NPR fans watching, that is Nina Totenberg's dad.

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