and Betty were said to have had fine singing voices. In 1939, Spivakovsky migrated to the United States on the S.S. Monterey with his wife and baby daughter, and settled in New York, New York. In 1940, he made his New York debut at Town Hall. He became concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1942, under Artur Rodziński, in that capacity also often performing as soloist. In 1943, Rodziński invited him to present the premiere United States performance of Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 2 in Cleveland, Ohio. Spivakovsky subsequently gave this work its first performances in New York and San Francisco. Bartók himself described Spivakovsky's New York performance of his violin concerto as "first rate". His rendition of this concerto, which elicited extraordinary critical acclaim, launched his U.S. career as soloist. According to the critic Alfred Frankenstein of the San Francisco Chronicle, Spivakovsky's was "The finest violin playing of a generation!" The critic Virgil Thomson of the New York Herald Tribune wrote: "Such unfailing nobility of tone, such evenness of coloration through the scale and, most extraordinary of all, such impeccable pitch...left one a little gasping." "Was this the best since Heifetz," asked Frankenstein after a 1948 performance of the Bartók Violin Concerto, "or was this just the best, period?" Following Spivakovsky's New York performance of the violin concerto by Gian Carlo Menotti, a review appearing in the May 3, 1954 edition of Time stated: "As always, his tone was luxuriant, his pitch impeccable, and he brought the music to full-blooded life." The same article referred to Spivakovsky as "one of the most brilliant violinists alive." Spivakovsky was soloist in the premiere performances of Leon Kirchner's Sonata Concertante and David Diamond's Canticle and Perpetual Motion. Accompanied by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, he gave the New York premieres of violin concerti by Frank Martin and Carl Nielsen. He composed his own cadenzas for the Beethoven violin concerto that were published in 1964 by Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden, No. 6460. He also composed cadenzas for all five Mozart violin concerti that were published in 1967 by Wilhelm Zimmermann, Frankfurt am Main. For more than four decades, represented by Columbia Artists Management, he travelled extensively throughout the U.S., Canada, South America, Israel, and Europe giving solo performances. He also found time to teach violin and chamber music at the Juilliard School in New York City from 1974 to 1989. In order to