Guila Bustabo

[3] Before she was five, she was studying in Chicago with Leon Samétini, a former pupil of the 19th-early 20th century virtuoso and composer Eugène Ysaÿe.

[4] She made her Carnegie Hall concert debut at age fifteen, playing the Wieniawski Violin Concerto No.

[5][6] A year later, she made her Carnegie Hall recital debut with Louis Persinger at the piano, to an audience that included Arturo Toscanini.

Her acquisition of this rare instrument is variously attributed to help from a group of professional musicians including Toscanini, to Fritz Kreisler,[3] and to the British aristocrat Lady Ravensdale.

She performed under top-rank conductors, including Sir Thomas Beecham, Issay Dobrowen, Albert Coates, Hermann Abendroth, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Oswald Kabasta, Herbert von Karajan and Willem Mengelberg.

[3] Blanche Bustabo decided that Guila would remain in Europe and perform in Germany and Nazi-occupied countries during World War II.

This, in turn, resulted in Bustabo's arrest in Paris, when U.S. Army General George S. Patton discovered that she had played as soloist under Mengelberg during some of the performances in question, as well as other concerts in occupied territory.

During this time period, she sold her Guarneri del Gesu violin and purchased an apartment house in Innsbruck.

She returned to the United States, accompanied by mother and husband, where she played for five years in the violin section of (and as occasional soloist with) the Alabama Symphony Orchestra.

Guila Bustabo's 1948 marriage to Edison Stieg, an American military musician, ended in divorce in 1976.