Michael Rabin stood among the most gifted yet ill-fated violin virtuosi of his era. Recognized early as a prodigy whose technical command developed smoothly into maturity, he nevertheless lagged in emotional development, which abruptly curtailed his professional trajectory. Though he never lived to see his thirty-sixth birthday, both audiences and colleagues such as Pinchas Zukerman, who shared one of his instructors, continue to recall him with particular affection among virtuoso violinists.
His father performed as a violinist with the New York Philharmonic while his mother, a pianist trained at Juilliard, provided a musical household. Rabin demonstrated an ability to keep flawless time before his second birthday and revealed perfect pitch at three; by five he had begun piano lessons, and shortly afterward, during a visit to a physician who collected violins as a hobby, he picked up a miniature instrument from the office, tuned it, played it, and refused to put it down. His father soon started lessons, yet quickly recognized that the boy’s abilities had already surpassed his own instruction. Rabin ultimately worked with Ivan Galamian, later the teacher of Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman.
Rabin’s first professional engagement occurred in 1947 when, at age ten, he appeared with the Havana Philharmonic conducted by Artur Rodzinski in the Wieniawski Concerto No. 1. Two years afterward he made his recording debut for Columbia Masterworks with eleven of Paganini’s Caprices for unaccompanied violin. The next season brought his Carnegie Hall debut at thirteen, again featuring the Vieuxtemps Concerto No. 5; The New York Times praised him as “already an accomplished artist…play[ing] with real grace and beauty of tone.” Conductor George Szell named Rabin the finest violin talent to reach him in three decades, while Dimitri Mitropoulos labeled him “the genius violinist of tomorrow.”
During the 1950s Rabin recorded for Capitol-EMI, producing the core of his discography: the Paganini Violin Concerto No. 1, both Wieniawski violin concertos, and the concertos by Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, and Glazunov. Toward the close of the decade he unexpectedly withdrew from the recording studio for reasons that remained unexplained. He maintained an active concert schedule across the globe and delivered broadcast recitals throughout the 1960s that displayed undiminished command. Accounts nevertheless surfaced of emotional volatility and a turbulent private life; the transition from celebrated child prodigy to adult virtuoso proved difficult, even though his technical facility showed no decline. Reports of sustained drug use circulated in the late 1960s, and he exhibited notable phobias, among them an acute dread of falling from the stage—yet none of these circumstances satisfactorily explained why recordings ceased while live performances continued. Rabin never returned to a studio after 1959, and in 1972 he died in an accidental fall after slipping on a parquet floor and striking his head against a chair.
His recorded legacy resides chiefly in the EMI catalogue. The complete set of Paganini’s 24 Caprices appears on a single compact disc, while the remainder of his output occupies a specially priced six-CD collection that contains virtually every concerto recording he made. These interpretations continue to be regarded as benchmark accounts of each work.
