Adam Han-Gorski

Violinist

Adam Han-Gorski, one of the last Holocaust survivors, was born in Lvov, a town of colorful history, as well as great cultural and cosmopolitan tradition. An important Polish city for over six hundred years, Lvov was, in the course of the last century, under Austrian, Polish, German, Soviet and Ukrainian rule.

Shortly after his birth, his mother, a concert pianist was stranded in the Soviet Far East during a concert tour when the Nazis attacked Russia in 1941. At the same time, his father, through some unimaginable adventures succeeded to cross the front line to escape the Nazis only to be incarcerated in the Gulag as a "German spy". With both of his parents gone, little Adam landed with his maternal grandparents in Cracow Ghetto, from which he was saved by a Christian woman, after his grandparents were taken to the death camp where they perished. He survived the rest of the Nazi occupation sheltered by these heroic people, who with a death sentence hovering over their heads, brought him up as their son.

His mother returned to Lvov after it was liberated by the Red Army and his father managed to escape the Gulag through some incredible chain of events, after which the family moved to Poland (Lvov at that point became a part of the Soviet Union). Here, he started his violin lessons at the age of six and a year later gave his first solo performance with the Silesian Philharmonic. At 14, he was the youngest participant, and a prize winner, at the International Music Competition in Warsaw.

Following his High School graduation in Poland, he received his Diploma from the Israeli Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. Immediately following this event, the legendary Jascha Heifetz, having heard Han-Gorski in Paris, invited him to take part in his Master Class at the University of Southern California. This included participation in a famous series on educational television, available today on VHS cassettes. Additionally, there were opportunities to both attend Master Classes held by William Primrose and Gregor Piatigorski.

He made his American debut by playing with the late cellist Steven Kates (a latter winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition) in a concert, which also included Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorski as soloists!

At the end of four and a half years of study with the Master, Heifetz presented him with an eighteenth century Italian violin!

Owing to all of his exquisite teachers: Partos, Végh, Heifetz, Gingold and Primrose, (alumni of respectively Hubay, Auer and Ysaye, he was directly exposed to the carriers of the greatest violin schools. Incredibly, there are but two teacher generations linking Han-Gorski in a straight line to the 19th century giants: Wieniawski , Vieuxtemps and Joachim, in a time span of over 150 years!

The great George Szell personally invited Han-Gorski to an important post in the first violin section with the Cleveland Orchestra. Additionally, he held Concertmaster posts with the Metropolitan Opera National Company, The Syracuse Symphony Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra. In 1976 he was appointed Concertmaster with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, a position he held for twenty-five years. In the course of those years, he was frequently invited as a guest Concertmaster by various orchestras in Germany, Italy and Mexico City, as well as presenting Master Classes on three continents.

As a soloist, Han Gorski has performed in major cities in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Salvador, South Korea, Japan, South Africa, Israel and all of Europe, receiving great acclaim from the press for his effortless virtuosity and profound musicianship. In 1986 he founded the ensemble "Virtuosi di Vienna," with which he has toured extensively, internationally. In recent years he has increasingly appeared in the double capacity of conductor/soloist.

His recordings include among others "THE OPERA TRANSCIPTIONS" on Opus label (with the Slovak Philharmonic), which contains the pinnacle of the romantic virtuoso literature, (Carmen, Othello, Le Coq d'Or and Faust Fantasies, specifically orchestrated for him). Significant as well are a Trio recording commemorating the three-hundredth anniversary of the institution of the Viennese Cafe, and a Viennese-Hungarian Music Album, with Han-Gorski as conductor and soloist, for which a Japanese team came to Europe for the sole purpose of recording.

An accomplished linguist, as well as musician, Han-Gorski is fluent in seven languages.

In appreciation of his cultural contributions, the President of the Republic of Austria awarded him the title of "Professor h.c."

After 30 years of work in Vienna and concertizing around the world, he decided to return to the Twin Cities as his "old" new home and has been since active performing, free-lancing and teaching on the local scale, while happily residing in Plymouth.