Margarita Mandelstamm

Margarita Mandelstamm was born in Riga (then in the Russian Empire),[2] the daughter of Faivush (Pavel) Mandelstamm and Minna Mandelstamm. Her family was Jewish. Her father was a medical doctor in the Russian Army. Her younger sister was architect Elsa Gidoni.[3][4] Mandelstamm trained as a violinist in Berlin with Willy Hess, and at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory with Leopold Auer.[5]

Mandelstamm made her concert debut in Saint Petersburg in 1915. In 1917, during World War I, she and her family were held for several weeks in a German refugee camp in Ukraine, briefly returned to Riga, then moved to Berlin. She played with the Berlin Philharmonic, and in recitals there.[6] In 1921, she moved to the United States with her American husband, Max Selinsky, a fellow musician. The Selinskys gave their first American recital at New York's Aeolian Hall,[7][8] and toured North America playing rarely-heard violin duets through the 1920s and 1930s.[9][10][11] In 1940 they performed with their pianist daughter in 1940 as the Selinsky Trio.[12]

Mandelstamm married American violinist Max Selinsky in 1920.[5] They had a son, Victor, who became an artist and art teacher,[13] and a daughter, Xenia, who became a pianist[14] and performed with her parents from an early age.[15][16] Margarita Selinsky died in 1962, in Los Angeles, aged 66 years.[17]