\n<\/p>\n
Norman Carol, a former violin prodigy who was first chair and concertmaster for the acclaimed Philadelphia Orchestra for nearly three decades, accompanying it on a history-making trip to China under Mao Zedong in 1973, died on April 28. He was 95.<\/p>\n
His death, at an assisted living center in Bala Cynwyd, a community on Philadelphia\u2019s Main Line, was announced in a statement<\/a> posted on social media by the orchestra. It was not widely reported outside the classical music world at the time.<\/p>\n As concertmaster, tuning the orchestra and overseeing the string section, Mr. Carol served under the celebrated conductors Eugene Ormandy, Riccardo Muti and Wolfgang Sawallisch<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was dashing, comfortable, even swashbuckling as a leader,\u201d Paul Arnold, a violinist with the orchestra, said in the statement. \u201cHis playing was bold, expressive and hall-filling.\u201d Mr. Carol \u201cwent on to personally embody the \u2018Philadelphia Sound,\u2019\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That fabled sound, which emerged under Leopold Stokowski<\/a> and took shape under Ormandy<\/a>, the orchestra\u2019s longtime music director starting in the 1930s, is built on \u201cdistinctive honeyed timbre\u201d<\/a> emanating from its strings, as the journal Classical Voice North America noted in 2015, along with softer attacks from the brass section and a more blended percussion approach.<\/p>\n The orchestra\u2019s sound became known around the world in tours of Europe and Asia during Mr. Carol\u2019s tenure.<\/p>\n The groundbreaking trip<\/a> to China, in which the orchestra performed in Beijing before Mao\u2019s wife, Jiang Qing, also known as Madame Mao, came at the behest of President Richard M. Nixon as part of his efforts to re-establish ties<\/a> with the country. The visit, in September 1973, was a musical analogue to the \u201cping pong diplomacy\u201d<\/a> of American table tennis players who visited China in 1971.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were the first Western orchestra to go,\u201d Mr. Carol said in a 2013 interview with Ovation Press, a music publisher that he worked with on several compositions. \u201cIt was just at the end of the Cultural Revolution, and people were really starving for classical music.\u201d<\/p>\n The orchestra, led by Ormandy, performed before packed audiences in three concerts over three nights at the Cultural Palace of Nationalities in Beijing. The orchestra agreed to perform the \u201cYellow River\u201d concerto, a communally written piece that was considered an anthem of the Cultural Revolution, the decade-long effort by Mao, starting in 1966, that was intended to purify the revolutionary spirit of the country but that descended into bloody purges<\/a> costing an estimated 1 million or more lives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As for Western compositions, works by Tchaikovsky and other Russian composers were forbidden to be played because of fractures in Chinese-Russian relations at the time. Beethoven was considered acceptable because he was seen as something of a revolutionary<\/a>, as James Carter, a historian of China, wrote in an article about the China visit published in 2021 by the China Project, a New York-based news site.<\/p>\n By special request of Madame Mao, the Philadelphia Orchestra performed Beethoven\u2019s Sixth Symphony, known as the Pastoral Symphony, a piece that dovetailed with the agrarian ideals of the revolution.<\/p>\n Ormandy was not particularly fond of the symphony but relented, telling a colleague, \u201cWhen in Rome<\/a>, we should do as the Romans wish.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Norman Carol was born on July 1, 1928, in Philadelphia, one of two children of Anna and Max Carol, both Russian immigrants.<\/p>\n He started on the violin at 6. \u201cMy older sister played violin, and in those early days there was no such thing as a babysitter<\/a>, so my mother used to take me along to the lessons,\u201d he told Ovation Press. \u201cMy sister\u2019s violin teachers saw another \u2018victim\u2019 in me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n By 9 he was performing his first Mozart concerto, and at 13 he began studying at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he would serve on the faculty for 35 years starting in 1979.<\/p>\n Following graduation in 1947, Mr. Carol pursued a solo career, making his New York City debut at Town Hall in a performance covered by Time magazine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He was drafted into the Army during the Korean War. While stationed at the Presidio base in San Francisco, he played in a military band with the jazz trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker<\/a> and the future conductor Andr\u00e9 Previn<\/a>.<\/p>\n During that period he met his future wife, Elinor Trobbe. After they married in 1952, Mr. Carol discovered that \u201cif you want to eat and do other things in life, solo careers aren\u2019t always as wonderful as they look,\u201d he said in the Ovation Press interview.<\/p>\n After serving as concertmaster for orchestras in New Orleans and Minneapolis, he landed with his hometown orchestra in 1966 and remained with it until 1994, when he was forced to retire at 66 because of chronic pain in an arm and shoulder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n His survivors include his daughter, Leslie; his son, Dan; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Last year, a delegation of musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra toured several cities in China to mark the 50th anniversary<\/a> of the 1973 trip. At one point they joined their counterparts from the China National Symphony Orchestra for a concert in Beijing.<\/p>\n While the 1973 visit to China became part of Cold War lore, it did not mark Mr. Carol\u2019s last trip there.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went again in 1993, exactly 20 years later,\u201d he said. \u201cThings had changed so dramatically in China. We went from seeing no automobiles on the street to streets having traffic jams.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n