About Toni: An Overview
Toni Koves-Steiner, pioneering concert virtuoso of the cimbalom, passed away on April 2nd, 2007 at the age of 88.
In a concert career that spanned over thirty years she played and recorded with most of the major U.S. symphonies, among them the New York Philharmonic, The Boston Symphony, The Philadelphia Symphony, the Minneapolis Symphony, The Chicago Symphony, and virtually all the great conductors of her time working in the United States, including Eugene Ormandy, Leonard Bernstein, Fritz Reiner, Tibor Serly, Dimitri Mitroupolos, George Szell, Erich Leinsdorf, Antal Dorati, Pierre Boulez and many others. Later, she inspired and mentored percussionists who now play the instrument. She continued to concertize and do the solo and ensemble work she loved in clubs and restaurants until her retirement in the 1980's.
Toni was an artist with incomparable musical instincts and as a person possessed unforgettable, sparkling vivacity and an indomitable can-do spirit. She had a successful career as a soloist in nightclubs when she was recruited by Leopold Stokowski in the 1950's to record his arrangements of Liszt and Enesco. She then took on the scores by Stravinsky, Kodaly and Bartok that called for the cimbalom but were being performed on piano. At that time, cimbalom players capable of performing these parts just could not be found.
She made the definitive recordings of Stravinsky's works with the Composer and Robert Craft that have recently been reissued. After she began concertizing and recording, Peter Maxwell Davies and Pierre Boulez are among those who began to write new music for the instrument.
Toni Koves-Steiner, pioneering concert virtuoso of the cimbalom, passed away on April 2nd, 2007 at the age of 88.
In a concert career that spanned over thirty years she played and recorded with most of the major U.S. symphonies, among them the New York Philharmonic, The Boston Symphony, The Philadelphia Symphony, the Minneapolis Symphony, The Chicago Symphony, and virtually all the great conductors of her time working in the United States, including Eugene Ormandy, Leonard Bernstein, Fritz Reiner, Tibor Serly, Dimitri Mitroupolos, George Szell, Erich Leinsdorf, Antal Dorati, Pierre Boulez and many others. Later, she inspired and mentored percussionists who now play the instrument. She continued to concertize and do the solo and ensemble work she loved in clubs and restaurants until her retirement in the 1980's.
Toni was an artist with incomparable musical instincts and as a person possessed unforgettable, sparkling vivacity and an indomitable can-do spirit. She had a successful career as a soloist in nightclubs when she was recruited by Leopold Stokowski in the 1950's to record his arrangements of Liszt and Enesco. She then took on the scores by Stravinsky, Kodaly and Bartok that called for the cimbalom but were being performed on piano. At that time, cimbalom players capable of performing these parts just could not be found.
She made the definitive recordings of Stravinsky's works with the Composer and Robert Craft that have recently been reissued. After she began concertizing and recording, Peter Maxwell Davies and Pierre Boulez are among those who began to write new music for the instrument.
