strong, and he continued to draw large audiences to his concerts. In Naples, Italy, in November 1956, just after the Soviets crushed the Hungarian uprising, as soon as he walked onto the stage the audience burst into wild applause and shouts of Viva l’Ungheria! (Italian for "Long live Hungary!"), delaying the concert for nearly fifteen minutes. In 1960 Szigeti officially retired from performing, and returned to Switzerland with his wife. There he devoted himself primarily to teaching, although he still traveled regularly to judge international violin competitions. Top-class students from all over Europe and the United States came to study under him. One of these students was Arnold Steinhardt, who spent the summer of 1962 with Szigeti. He came to the conclusion that "Joseph Szigeti was a template for the musician I would like to become: inquisitive, innovative, sensitive, feeling, informed". Toward the end of his life, Szigeti suffered from frail health. He was put on strict diets and had several stays in hospital, but his friends asserted that this did nothing to dampen his characteristic cheerfulness. He died in Lucerne, Switzerland on February 19, 1973, at the age of 80. The New York Times ran a front-page obituary that ended with this 1966 quote from violinist Yehudi Menuhin: We must be humbly grateful that the breed of cultured and chivalrous violin virtuosos, aristocrats as human beings and as musicians, has survived into our hostile age in the person of Joseph Szigeti. Family life In 1918, while teaching in Geneva, Szigeti met and fell in love with Wanda Ostrowska. She was born in Russia and had been stranded by the Russian Revolution of 1917 with her sister at a finishing school in Geneva. In 1919, Szigeti and Ostrowska decided to get married, but due to the turbulent political situation in Europe, many unexpected bureaucratic obstacles were thrown up in their path. The first problem was the impossibility of contacting Ostrowska's family, and the couple were forced to go ahead without parental consent, with the permission only of Ostrowska's sister and the headmistress of the finishing school. Further bureaucratic entanglements threatened the young couple's hopes, but eventually the officials responsible granted them a dispensation to marry. Szigeti recalls in his memoirs the words of Consul General Baron de Montlong at the critical moment: Let us not, if we can avoid it, fall victim to the dead letter of the law. I