Montreal lost an important musical figure on March 2 with the passing of violinist and pedagogue Eleonora Turovsky. She was 72 years old.
Turovsky was best known as the concertmaster of I Musici de Montréal, the chamber orchestra founded by her husband, cellist Yuli Turovsky, in 1983.
Eleonora and Yuli Turovsky performed regularly as a duo. The French music magazine Diapaison recognized their recording of Zoltan Kodaly's music with a Diapaison d'Or.
Eleonora taught violin and viola at the Université de Montréal from 1991 to 2012. Born in Moscow in September 1939, she studied at the Moscow Conservatory and taught at the Ippolitov-Ivanov College of Music from 1964 to 1976. She became a naturalized Canadian in 1980.
In 1995 the National Film Board of Canada produced a documentary, Le Violon sur la toile, about the life of Eleonora.
Watch her play Ralph Vaughan-Williams' The Lark Ascending with I Musici de Montréal under the direction of her husband.
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