Florence Naprstek was with Sinfonietta Bel Canto from its very beginning in 2010. She played 1st violin, and sometimes substituted as principal 2nd violin. Her volunteer duties were many including managing tickets, incoming mail, donations, answering the SBC info line, assisting with receptions, and taking care of whatever needed attention. She devoted countless hours and much energy in helping SBC. More importantly, Florence was a good friend, a fellow music-lover, and she will be greatly missed by all of us.
Here is a brief biography from her family –
Florence Martha Anderson was born on January 27, 1930, which happened to be the 184th birthday of her favorite composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Her parents were both immigrants from Sweden via Canada.
When Florence was 10 years old, she took up the violin – or I should say her brother’s violin, after he had lost interest in it. Four years later she was soloing at her 8th Grade graduation. She was in the orchestra at Proviso Township High School, now Proviso East, but by her sophomore year she was also travelling to the Loop to take private lessons with Ann Crane at the Chicago Conservatory of Music. She graduated in the top 2% of her class at Proviso in 1948 and somehow convinced her parents to let her attend the Chicago Conservatory as a music performance major. From 1948 to 1949 she played with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, considered the “training ground” for the Chicago Symphony. After a year she transferred to the more prestigious American Conservatory of Music, where she graduated in 1953. Her violin teacher was Scott Willets and her theory teacher was Leo Sowerby, winner of the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for music composition and called the “Dean of American Organists.”
In September 1954 Florence married Richard Naprstek who was a fellow student at the American Conservatory of Music studying piano and bassoon. Florence and Richard both worked full time as private music teachers at first. When children came along Florence gave up her teaching and playing for about 23 years. Florence had three sons, Paul, David, and Erik.
In 1968 Richard started teaching at the College of St. Francis, now the University of St. Francis, in Joliet. The highlight of his tenure there was when, in 1969, Florence and Richard together performed Edvard Grieg’s third violin sonata in concert.
In 1980 David worked as a staff photographer at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York. David figured that Mom would love the environment, and he was right. In fact, it prompted her to pull out her violin for the first time in nearly 20 years and start practicing again, and she made Chautauqua her summer destination for another 25 years.
Florence built on her rekindled love of the violin by playing in a succession of community orchestras: the Hinsdale Chamber Orchestra, DuPage Symphony Orchestra (both in the 1st and 2nd violin sections), Salt Creek Sinfonietta, Sinfonietta Bel Canto, and the Senior Symphony Orchestra for 18 years, where she served as concertmistress for 17 years. She kept on playing in one or more of these orchestras right up until the fall of 2017.