GREGOR PIATIGORSKY - CHRISTMAS / HOLIDAY CARD SIGNED CO-SIGNED BY: JACQUELINE DE ROTHSCHILD PIATIGORSKY - HFSID 177423

GREGOR PIATIGORSKY and JACQUELINE PIATIGORSKY
Season's Greetings card signed by cellist Gregor and chess champion Jacqueline in blue ink
Christmas card signed "Jacqueline and" by Jacqueline Piatigorsky and "Gregor Piatigorsky" on lower inside panel. 4 panels, 7x3, 1 sheet cardstock folded, front and verso. Imprinted: "Season's Greetings" on front cover. Imprinted inside message: "Best Wishes for the New Year". Piatigorsky had married his second wife, Jacqueline de Rothschild, in January 1937, and the couple settled permanently in America in 1939. He was previously married to Lyda Antik. Ukraine-born cellist GREGOR PIATIGORSKY (1903-1976), who won a scholarship to the Moscow Conservatory, began playing with the Lenin Quartet and was the principal cellist for the Bolshoi Theatre while still a teenager. When he was not allowed to travel abroad to further his studies, Piatigorsky escaped to Poland and later studied briefly in Berlin and Leipzig before becoming the principal cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic. He made his U.S. debut in 1929, playing with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowsi and the New York Philharmonic under Willem Mengelberg. Piatigorsky, who recorded and toured extensively with Arthur Rubinstein and Jascha Heifetz, also enjoyed a successful solo career, bringing the cello to the forefront as a solo instrument. To help to make the cello as facile and expressive as the violin, he transcribed, arranged, composed and commissioned works for the instrument. Piatigorsky moved to America in 1939 and became a U.S. citizen three years later. From 1941-1949, he was the head of the cello department at the Curtis Insitute of Music in Philadelphia, and "Grisha" later taught at Tanglewood and Boston University before his tenure at the University of Southern California (1962 until his death). JACQUELINE PIATIGORSKY, born Jacqeuline de Rothschild in Paris, France in 1911, is an American chess and tennis champion, author and sculptor. She was born into the Rothschild banking family of France and, according to her 1988 autobiography Jump in the Waves, was raised by her nanny. Jacqueline married cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, her second husband, in 1935. They fled from France with during the Nazi occupation of France in 1939 with their daughter Jephta and settled in the United States. Jacqueline was the United States' second-highest ranked female chess player in the 1960s; she represented the United States at the first women's Chess Olympiad in 1957, winning a bronze, and organized the first Piatigorsky Cup, a triennial series of grandmaster chess tournaments, in 1963; grandmaster Bobby Fischer made an appearance at the second Piatigorsky Cup in 1966 and came in second. Lightly toned and creased. Covers are lightly soiled. Spine is worn. Otherwise in fine condition.