Guila Bustabo

Brilliant violinist accused of being a Nazi sympathiser

Guila Bustabo, violinist: born Manitowoc, Wisconsin 25 February 1916; died Birmingham, Alabama 27 April 2002.

When the pianist Ivor Newton first heard the teenage violinist Guila Bustabo, he remarked, "She looks like an angel and she plays like an angel."

Soon acknowledged as one of the most brilliant young musicians of the day, she was also extremely beautiful, with classic features and long, dark hair, which added to her charismatic platform personality. In the Thirties she enjoyed an international reputation, but after the Second World War she was accused of Nazi and Fascist sympathies and her career came to a halt. Several unsuccessful attempts were made to reinstate her and she finally devoted herself to teaching.

Guila Bustabo was born in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, the daughter of an Italian-French father and a Bohemian mother. She had her first lessons at the age of four with Leon Sametini in Chicago and played in her first concert at five. That same year she won a scholarship to the Chicago College of Music and made such progress that she appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when she was only nine years old.

Two years later she was accepted as a pupil of Louis Persinger, the most important teacher in the United States at the time; he had taught many gifted children, the most prominent being Yehudi Menuhin. The story goes that when Persinger heard her play he said, "Very good", then shook his head and muttered, "But too old." Although this is told as a joke, it holds an element of truth. What Persinger meant is that it is more difficult to retrain an established talent than to guide it from the beginning.

Bustabo, accompanied on the piano by Persinger, made her Carnegie Hall début in 1931 when she was 15 and received rave reviews. Toscanini and many other celebrated musicians were in the audience and all were astounded at her technique, her style and her uncanny understanding of the music itself.

Two years later she played the Brahms Concerto in New York and critics praised her "breadth of style and emotional warmth". From this time on she could do no wrong and was in demand all over the US. In 1934 she made her first European tour, starting in London.

In order to make a good impression at her first London appearance she had borrowed a Guaneri del Gesù violin from a well-known London dealer. The concert was an unqualified success, and of her performance of the Paganini I Palpiti one critic wrote: "Guila Bustabo is the only violinist who can make double harmonics sound almost human."

On the strength of such praise she asked if she might borrow the violin for her Scandinavian tour. The dealer was reluctant to allow it to go out of the country, so Lady Ravensdale, a great patron of music, purchased it and presented it to the surprised and delighted 18-year-old. Unfortunately, Lady Ravensdale's sister was married to Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the infamous British Union of Fascists, and the association would later have ominous repercussions.

In the early 1930s Bustabo travelled the world. She was a great favourite of German and Italian audiences and it was her suspected sympathies with the governments of these countries which later led people to condemn her. After the war she was arrested in Paris accused of being a Nazi sympathiser but eventually the charge was dropped. However, she never regained her previous popularity. Even in Germany where she gave some concerts in the mid-1960s they showed little enthusiasm and she was not invited again.

The violinist Yfrah Neaman attended a Wigmore Hall recital that she gave in the late 1940s. Having heard so much about her, he was expecting a great deal: "What was interesting is that I felt her development had also been halted and seemed to be suspended in time. I came away very disappointed."

As a performer, in her prime she was possessed of a rare talent and her ability and musicality were never in doubt. Having finally resigned herself to teaching she taught at the Conservatory of Innsbruck in Austria from 1964 to 1970.

Margaret Campbell