music at yale
photo sequence by robert handelman
Aldo Parisot: Virtuoso and master teacher by Susan Hawkshaw
As you walk into the newly-renovated Leigh Hall, you see three brightly colored paintings by renowned cello virtuoso Aldo Parisot that convey the immediate impression of a vibrant, vital personality. The paintings seem to symbolize the long and happy relationship between Parisot and the School of Music that culminates this year in the celebration of his fiftieth year on the faculty. The name of Yale is worked into the closest one. When entering his studio, one sees more of these unusual canvases — one of them spills over its rectangular edge, another can be turned in any direction. Parisot tells his students: “Try for a variety of color in your sound, as I do in my painting.” Going beyond the ordinary has been part of his life. Born in Natal, in Brazil’s Nordeste, he studied with his stepfather at an early age, playing difficult concerti in the evening and acquiring a formidable technique. At ten Parisot was already concertizing, touring all over South America. At sixteen he took a lucrative job with a radio station in Recife. Soon he became principal cellist of the Orquestra National do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro. He wanted to study with the virtuoso Emmanuel Feuermann, but when Feuermann passed away, Parisot decided to attend Yale at the recommendation of Carleton Sprague Smith, then attaché to the U. S. Embassy in Rio. Parisot flew to the U.S. with two hundred dollars in his pocket, and began his studies here in 1946. Parisot was enrolled as a special student, and among his many activities he studied theory and played chamber music with Paul Hindemith, who invited students to his home on the weekends. He made his debut in 1947 at Tanglewood with the Boccherini Concerto, conducted by Eleazar de Carvalho, who later joined the School’s faculty in the 1990s. Parisot was principal cellist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra from 1948–1950 but left the post to realize his dream: to concertize with all the major orchestras of the world as soloist. At his New York debut at Town Hall in 1950, again with Carvalho conducting, he played Boccherini and a piece entitled Fantasy and Dance, written for him by Quincy Porter, then at Yale. After that, Parisot’s career took off: he played
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Parisot enjoyed a sensational career as a soloist, performing with the world’s leading orchestras.
approximately sixty-five concerts in this country and twenty-five in Europe every year, with prominent conductors and first-rate orchestras in Berlin, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Rio, Munich, Warsaw, Chicago, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh, including difficult concerti by Schoenberg, Lutoslawski, and Barber, adding interpretive touches and making suggestions that delighted the composers. Following these successes, Dean Luther Noss invited Parisot to return to New Haven to join the Yale faculty in 1958, filling a vacancy created by the departure of Luigi Silva. The position became full time in 1965. As chamber musician, Parisot played widely: in Pittsburgh with Lorin Maazel, violinist in the orchestra; at Yale with Quincy Porter, a violist, his wife Lois, and Howard Boatwright. “Every piece that Porter wrote for string quartet, he’d try first with us,” Parisot recalls. Parisot played at Norfolk for decades, and in the 1960s he made acclaimed recordings of the late Beethoven