Camilla Wicks, one of the first prominent female violin virtuosos, celebrated for her performances of the Sibelius and Beethoven concertos, has died at 92.
Wicks, a California-born prodigy who enrolled at New York’s Juilliard School when she was 10 and by her late teens was performing throughout the US and Europe, played with major conductors and orchestras in the 1940s and ’50s.
She married in 1951 and began rearing a family, leading to her withdrawal from most concert work in 1958. She subsequently taught at a succession of music schools in the US and Norway (homeland of her father), performing intermittently. She retired from her last teaching post, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, in 2005.
An obituary by The Washington Post’s Matt Schudel:
Sibelius is said to have considered Wicks’ performance of his Violin Concerto to be the best he had heard. Here’s her 1952 recording, with Sixten Ehrling conducting the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Stockholm:
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