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The media followed Camilla throughout her life and told her story.
‘Timing is everything’ is an obsessive motto of mine. I also believe strongly in playing everything by memory, for which I encourage digital practice away from the violin: it heightens one’s sense of the work’s topography – its skylines, its mountains and valleys, the shapes and colours that form it,” Camilla Wicks (The Strad November 2004)
“The little musician astonished her friends and the larger audience with her marvelous performance … her blond loveliness heritage of her Norwegian ancestors, and the seriousness of a seasoned artist, there was something seemingly superhuman in the way she anticipated the mood of the conductor …the joyous abandon of the little prodigy was intriguing and brought forth unstinted applause.”
- Pacific Coast Musician
12/5/1936
“Camilla will be presented in concerts in Europe when 10 years of age and foreign musicians are looking forward to these events with great expectation.”
- Long Beach Morning Sun
5/12/1937
“Young Musicians to Offer Program at (Redlands) Bowl Tonight … Camilla Wicks, Violinist, and Andre Previn, Pianist, Will be Featured …”
- San Bernardino County Sun
7/8/1945
“Camilla Wicks plays in Hollywood Bowl Tonight … she’s grown up now.”
- Metropolitan Pasadena Star-News
7/14/1946
“Little Camilla Wicks, 8-year-old violinist, proved herself to be an innately musical and precocious child with remarkable finger and bowing facility and indefatigable memory, in her first public concert …”
- Long Beach Morning Sun
6/7/1937
“Camilla Wicks, 14-year-old violin prodigy, recently returned from New York where she made an appearance at Carnegie Hall … she was enthusiastically received by an audience of 4000 and personally congratulated by Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Martha of Norway …”
- Long Beach Independent
6/11/1943
“Hollywood Bowl concerts … Camilla Wicks, 17-year-old violinist who studied and played in her native Long Beach as a child prodigy before going on to New York …”
- Los Angeles Times
7/14/1946
“The last movement was taken at dizzying speed and yet this young girl met all of the technical difficulties with complete assurance and ease.”
- Pacific Coast Musician
7/20/1946
“… for at the moment she puts her violin under her chin, and draws the bow across the strings, she is away from everything but the music that she is entirely one with.”
- Copenhagen Politiken
7/19/1947
“… the appearance will be her last before beginning her fourth European tour. Though only 23, she has been acclaimed throughout the world.”
- Pasadena Independent
11/30/1951
“Camilla has been on a U.S. tour, but is now resting and rehearsing in New York preparing for the climax of any musician’s career, an appearance with the great New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall.”
- Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram
2/8/1953
… “I think the essence of the thrill of concert life all boils down to a single multiple experience – the time one stands, drained of all you have given that evening, on the particular stage – loving the people you have played for and that you now hold in a special moment of rapport – listening to their cries for ‘Encore!’ … feeling unworthy of all this and yet knowing something important and great has just happened to you and to the people out there, which in time will dim and perhaps be forgotten, but now exists and breathes as a tangible thing,” says Camilla.
- Southland Magazine
3/8/1953
“Long Beach citizens are more than proud of Miss Camilla Wicks … Camilla won great acclaim at the summer music festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, through her playing of the violin concerto in Valen’s Norwegian film, ‘Concerto.’ And just this month, Camilla’s recital in London’s Royal Albert Hall was a ‘fantastic success’ …”
- The Los Angeles Times
12/31/1950
“Music Lovers – and especially those in Long Beach who have known her since she was a child – rejoice in the release of the Sibelius Violin Concerto played by Camilla Wicks of this city in a fine album of long-playing records … It is considered one of the outstanding releases by Capitol Records.”
- Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram
9/14/1952
“Bruno Walter will return as conductor of the New York Philharmonic on today’s broadcast over CBS radio and KWKH at 1:30 p.m. Soloist will be the young California violinist, Camilla Wicks …
- Shreveport Times
2/15/1953
“Long Beach residents … remember when she was a plump little girl making mud pies … when she made her first public debut at the age of 4 … when she gave her first recital at 8 …”
- Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram
3/8/1953
“Miss Wicks has just returned from her fourth concert tour of Europe. She has been soloist with many major American orchestras including the Chicago and San Franciscan symphonies and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.”
- The Spokesman-Review
3/8/1953
“Miss Wicks, who will celebrate her 25th birthday today, has made four tours of Europe, has been the guest of the royal family in Norway and has received the congratulations of Jean Sibelius on her rendition of the Sibelius Concerto.”
- Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram
8/9/1953
“… Miss Wicks left the United States with only one assured booking in Oslo, Norway, which was so successful that she played a total of 87 additional concerts before the conclusion of that tour. The music critics of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Holland, France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, England and Spain unanimously acclaimed her as a ‘violin phenomenon.'”
- Oshkosh Daily Northwestern
3/3/1955
Of her latest New York recital, March 12, the Times reported “Camilla Wicks further consolidated her position as one of America’s outstanding young instrumentalists of concert stature.”
- Tampa Tribune
3/20/1955
“Musical Beauty – The artist is described as a violinist who looks more like a Hollywood starlet than a young star of the music world.”
- Santa Maria Times
3/19/1953
“Camilla Wicks is living proof that a prodigy can mature to complete artistry.”
- Santa Cruz Sentinel
11/29/1953
“Camilla Wicks gives Virtuosic Performance; Famed as Greatest Woman Violinist. Flawless intonation, virile-like execution and purity of tone characterized the artist’s performance throughout the evening and the applause was sincere and demanding.”
- Oshkosh Daily Northwestern
3/7/1955
“When she was 13, Miss Wicks made a successful recital debut in New York’s Town Hall and … with the New York Philharmonic. Her subsequent tours in this country have included many appearances with … the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Denver … and many others.”
- The Philadelphia Inquirer
12/15/1957
… “the recital signals Miss Wicks’ return to the concert stage. She will embark in January on a tour of the Scandinavian countries, marking her 8th European tour since 1946 … During her more than 1,000 concerts in the world’s music capitals, she was hailed by critics as a “genius” and the “world’s foremost woman violinist.”
- The Los Angeles Times
2/10/1960
“Sibelius heard her perform his concerto and was so delighted with her performance that he invited her to be a guest for a time in his home. She played the concerto to rave reviews … and her recording with the Stockholm Orchestra is acknowledged as the one which sets the standard for all others.”
- Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram
11/6/1964
“Miss Wicks played the solo lines of the Sibelius Violin Concerto with a warmth and largeness of tone, a mastery of technique and as an understanding of the work which one seldom hears.”
- Detroit Free Press
10/7/1967
“… the largest crowd in 11 years to attend a symphony concert at Redlands Bowl was present … approximately 4200 listeners actively demonstrated their enthusiasm and appreciation for the music of exceptional quality … starring the gifted violinist, Camilla Wicks. Miss Wicks, who first played at the Bowl in 1949 as a girl, captivated her audience … Since then, she is the mother of five children and returned three times – in 1957, in 1965 and last evening.”
- Redlands Daily Facts
7/10/1968
“The same woman who was the recipient of a Times Woman of the Year Award in 1950 one day in 1960 packed up her five children in the car – she had become, as she put it, a ‘single mother’ – and ‘just drove,’ looking for a place she and her children could be happy.”
- The Los Angeles Times
2/28/1984
“Perhaps only one or two today play violin in a grand manner like Camilla Wicks. Her technique is at the service of music. She creates a beautifully turned phrase, turned with a sense of humility and breathtaking soul.”
- The Epoch Times
12/23/2013
“Her playing of the Brahms Violin Concerto was in a class with the great virtuoso players of today. Her technique is remarkable and she drew the bow with surety, authority and power. Most beautiful was her legato phrasing and the quality of her tone was ravishingly warm and smooth.”
- Long Beach Independent
3/1/1960
“… the excitement generated by Camilla Wicks’ violin playing at Redlands Bowl last evening was really something special. It not only brought the audience to its feet, but also prompted shouts of acclamation never before heard at the end of a Bowl recital.”
- Redlands Daily Facts
7/28/1965
“The former child prodigy, now living in San Clemente, has just completed a three-month tour of Scandinavia and is in Detroit to perform with the Detroit Symphony.”
- San Bernardino County Sun
7/7/1968
“Early this year, Wicks returned from Norway where she filled a three-year appointment by the King of Norway to the position of professor of violin at the University of Oslo.”
- Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram
10/9/1977
“Mechanically imperturbable, Wicks humanizes the high gloss of her technique with that most pertinent of interpretative devices, simple musicality.”
- The Los Angeles Times
12/11/1979
“She has worked with several noted composers and performed their works, including Jean Sibelius, Ernest Bloch, Harald Saeverud, Klaus Egge, Bjarne Brustad and Fartein Valen.”
