Prizewinner from Bolivia

"It's not so bad when your hands are wobbling, but when your feet start wobbling, too . . ." On that nervous note, the teen-age Bolivian violinist walked onto the stage of the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels to play before the world's toughest violin jury* in the finals of the famed Queen Elisabeth of Belgium International Music Competition. With his boyishly chubby face creased in an intent frown, he fiddled his way through the Sibelius Concerto in D Minor, Bartok's Rumanian Dances, and Darius Milhaud's Royal Concerto. Two days later, the world's most prestigious violin prize went to U.S.-trained Jaime Laredo, still a week short of his 18th birthday and the youngest winner in the contest's history. (Runner-up of last week's contest: Russia's Albert Markov, 26.)

The son of a gifted Bolivian pianist, Jaime was reading music by the time he was four, received a violin when he was six and tuned it without help, correctly pointing out that the family piano was flat. The Laredos sold their house in Bolivia, finally settled in Philadelphia, where Jaime attended Curtis Institute of Music and studied with famed Teacher Ivan Galamian. In his rare public appearances Jaime astounded critics with his virtuoso technique and sweetly purling tone (TIME, May 21, 1956). "If you closed your eyes," wrote one critic, "it could have been Busch and Serkin."

Jaime's family has scrimped and saved to keep him in catgut. His father padded out an annual $600 allowance, given Jaime by the Bolivian government, with jobs as a theater usher, truck driver and (currently) laboratory clerk in a Philadelphia hospital. The trip to Brussels was made possible by the sale of the family's baby grand, plus a $250 gift from the Cleveland Society for Strings and the loan of a $40,000 Stradivarius. Jaime's victory brought him $3,000 in prize money. He is now concertizing in Belgium, and will soon start practicing for his Manhattan debut --in Carnegie Hall next fall.

* Including David Oistrakh, Yehudi Menuhin, Zino Francescatti, Joseph Szigeti, Ivan Galamian, Arthur Grumiaux.

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