Music: Arrival in Manhattan

Two years ago, a slender, dark-haired 18-year-old from Philadelphia named Norman Carol stepped up to show the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Serge Koussevitzky what he could do with a fiddle and bow. He did well enough to win a scholarship to the Berkshire Music Center that summer and, more unusual, a seat in the first-violin section of the Boston Symphony.

Last week, for the first time, Manhattan critics got to hear Koussy’s wonder boy. For his Town Hall debut, Norman’s program was by no means all apple pie: a Handel sonata, a Bach partita for unaccompanied violin, two difficult Paganini caprices. By the time he was halfway through the Handel, critics were wondering at the sureness of his phrasing and rhythmic pulse. When he had finished with the Paganinis and a blazing performance of Sarasate’s tricky Zigeunerweisen, there was no question about the finish of his technique. Twenty-year-old Norman Carol was more than a comer: he had arrived.