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Friedrich-Max "Fritz" Kreisler (February 2, 1875 – January 29, 1962) was an Austrian-born American violinist and composer.[1]
One of the most noted violin masters of his day, and regarded as one of
the greatest violinists of all time, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing.
Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a
characteristic sound which was immediately recognizable as his own.
Although it derived in many respects from the Franco-Belgian school, his
style is nonetheless reminiscent of the gemütlich (cozy) lifestyle of pre-war Vienna.Kreisler was born in Vienna, the son of Anna (née Reches)[note 1] and Samuel Kreisler, a doctor.[2][3] Of Jewish heritage, he was however baptised at the age of 12. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory under Anton Bruckner, Jakob Dont and Joseph Hellmesberger Jr., and in Paris, where his teachers included Léo Delibes, Lambert Massart and Jules Massenet.
While in Paris, he won the "Premier Grand Prix de Rome" gold medal at
the age of 12, competing against 40 other players, all of whom were at
least 20 years of age.[4He made his United States debut at the Steinway Hall in New York City on November 10, 1888, and his first tour of the United States in 1888–1889 with Moriz Rosenthal. He then returned to Austria and applied for a position in the Vienna Philharmonic, but was turned down by the concertmaster Arnold Rosé. As a result, he left music to study medicine. He spent a brief time in the army before returning to the violin in 1899, when he gave a concert with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Arthur Nikisch.
It was this concert and a series of American tours from 1901 to 1903
that brought him real acclaim. Kreisler was also an excellent pianist,
and his piano playing is preserved on Ampico reproducing piano rolls. In 1910, Kreisler gave the premiere of Sir Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto, a work commissioned by and dedicated to him. He served briefly in the Austrian Army in World War I before being honourably discharged after he was wounded. He arrived in New York on November 24, 1914,[5]
and spent the remainder of the war in America. He returned to Europe in
1924, living first in Berlin, then moving to France in 1938. Shortly
thereafter, at the outbreak of World War II, he settled once again in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen
in 1943. He lived there for the rest of his life, giving his last
public concert in 1947, and broadcasting performances for a few years
after that. On April 26, 1941, he was involved in a serious traffic accident.
Struck by a truck while crossing a street in New York, he suffered a
fractured skull and was in a coma for over a week.[6] In his later years, he suffered from not only some hearing loss but also sight deterioration due to cataracts.[7]Kreisler died of a heart condition aggravated by old age in New York City in 1962.[1] He was interred in a private mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, New York City. Kreisler wrote a number of pieces for the violin, including solos for encores, such as "Liebesleid" and "Liebesfreud". Some of Kreisler's compositions were pastiches ostensibly in the style of other composers. They were originally ascribed to earlier composers, such as Gaetano Pugnani, Giuseppe Tartini and Antonio Vivaldi,
and then, in 1935, Kreisler revealed that it was he who wrote the
pieces. When critics complained, Kreisler replied that they had already
deemed the compositions worthy: "The name changes, the value remains",
he said. He also wrote operettas, including Apple Blossoms in 1919[8] and Sissy in 1932, a string quartet, and cadenzas, including ones for Brahms's Violin Concerto, Paganini's D major Violin Concerto, and Beethoven's Violin Concerto. His cadenzas for the Beethoven concerto are the ones most often played by violinists today. He wrote the music for the 1936 movie The King Steps Out directed by Josef von Sternberg, based on the early years of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Kreisler performed and recorded his own version of the first
movement of Paganini's D major Violin Concerto. The movement is rescored
and in some places reharmonised, and the orchestral introduction is
completely rewritten in some places. The overall effect is of a
late-nineteenth-century work. Kreisler owned several antique violins made by luthiers Antonio Stradivari, Pietro Guarneri, Giuseppe Guarneri, and Carlo Bergonzi, most of which eventually came to bear his name. He also owned a Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume violin of 1860, which he often used as his second violin,[9] and which he often loaned to the young prodigy Josef Hassid.
In 1952 he donated his Giuseppe Guarneri to the Library of Congress in
Washington, D.C. where it remains in use for performances given in the
library.[10] On recordings, Kreisler's style resembles that of his younger contemporary Mischa Elman, with a tendency toward expansive tempi, a continuous and varied vibrato, expressive phrasing, and a melodic approach to passage-work. Kreisler makes considerable use of portamento and rubato[citation needed]. The two violinists' approaches are less similar in big works of the standard repertoire, such as Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, than in smaller pieces. A trip to a Kreisler concert is recounted in Siegfried Sassoon's 1928 autobiographical novel Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man.
Carl Flesch (Hungarian: Flesch Károly, 9 October 1873 – 14 November 1944) was a violinist and teacher. Flesch was born in Moson (now part of Mosonmagyaróvár) in Hungary in 1873. He began playing the violin at seven years of age. At 10 he was taken to Vienna to study with Jakob Grün. At 17 he left for Paris, and joined the Paris Conservatoire, studying with Martin Pierre Marsick. He settled in Berlin, and in 1934 in London. He was known for his solo performances in a very wide range of repertoire (from Baroque music to contemporary), gaining fame as a chamber music performer. He also taught in Bucharest (1897–1902), Amsterdam (1903–08), Philadelphia (1924–28) and Berlin (Hochschule fuer Musik, 1929–34). He published a number of instructional books, including Die Kunst des Violin-Spiels (The Art of Violin Playing, 1923) in which he advocated for the violinist as artist rather than merely virtuoso. Among his pupils were Charles Barkel, Edwin Bélanger, Bronislaw Gimpel, Ivry Gitlis, Szymon Goldberg, Ida Haendel, Josef Hassid, Adolf Leschinski, Alma Moodie, Ginette Neveu, Yfrah Neaman, Ricardo Odnoposoff, Eric Rosenblith, Max Rostal, Henryk Szeryng, Henri Temianka, Roman Totenberg and Josef Wolfsthal, all of whom achieved considerable fame as both performers and pedagogues. He said his favorite pupil was the Australian Alma Moodie, who achieved great fame in the 1920s and 1930s but made no recordings and is little known today.[1] In his memoirs he said, "there was above all Henry [i.e., Henri] Temianka, who did great credit to the [Curtis] Institute: both musically and technically, he possessed a model collection of talents."[2] See: List of music students by teacher: C to F#Carl Flesch. One of Flesch's few recordings is a highly distinguished interpretation of Bach's great D minor Double Violin Concerto (Columbia) in which he played second violin to the great Joseph Szigeti, with Walter Goehr conducting an anonymous London string orchestra in the late 1930s. He was consulted (as was Oskar Adler) by Louis Krasner over technical difficulties in the Violin Concerto of Alban Berg, which Krasner was to premiere. Carl Flesch's Scale System is a staple of violin pedagogy. He owned the Brancaccio Stradivarius, but had to sell it in 1928 after losing all his money on the New York Stock Exchange. Flesch lived in London during the 1930s, and was later arrested by the Gestapo in the Netherlands,[3][4][5][6] was released, and died in Lucerne, Switzerland, in November 1944.
Joseph Joachim (Hungarian: Joachim József, 28 June 1831 – 15 August 1907) was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher who made an international career, based in Hanover and Berlin. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century. Joachim studied violin early, beginning in Buda at age five, then in Vienna and Leipzig. He made his debut in London in 1844, playing Beethoven's Violin Concerto, with Mendelssohn conducting. He returned to London many times throughout life. After years of teaching at the Leipzig Conservatory and playing as principal violinist of the Gewandhausorchester, he moved to Weimar in 1848, where Franz Liszt established cultural life. From 1852, Joachim served at the court of Hanover, playing principal violin in the opera and conducting concerts, with months of free time in summer for concert tours. In 1853, he was invited by Robert Schumann to the Lower Rhine Music Festival, where he met Clara Schumann and Brahms, with whom he performed for years to come. In 1879, he premiered Brahms' violin concerto with Brahms as conductor.[1] He married Amalie, an opera singer, in 1863, who gave up her career; the couple had six children. Joachim quit service in Hanover in 1865, and the family moved to Berlin, where he was entrusted with founding and directing a new department at the Royal Conservatory, for performing music. He formed a string quartet, and kept performing chamber music on tours. His playing was recorded in 1903. Joachim was born in Köpcsény, Moson County, Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Kittsee in Burgenland, Austria). He was the seventh of eight children born to Julius, a wool merchant, and Fanny Joachim, who were of Hungarian-Jewish origin.[2] He spent his childhood as a member of the Kittsee Kehilla (Jewish community), one of Hungary's prominent Siebengemeinden ('Seven Communities') under the protectorate of the Esterházy family. He was a first cousin of Fanny Wittgenstein, née Figdor, the mother of Karl Wittgenstein and the grandmother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and the pianist Paul Wittgenstein.[3] In 1833 his family moved to Pest, which in 1873 was united with Buda and Óbuda to form Budapest. There from 1836 (age 5) he studied violin with the Polish violinist Stanisław Serwaczyński, the concertmaster of the opera in Pest, said to be the best violinist in Pest.[2] Although Joachim's parents were "not particularly well off", they had been well advised to choose not just an "ordinary" violin teacher.[4] Joachim's first public performance was 17 March 1839 when he was of age 7.[5] (Serwaczyński later moved back to Lublin, Poland, where he taught Wieniawski.) In 1839, Joachim continued his studies at the Vienna Conservatory (briefly with Miska Hauser and Georg Hellmesberger, Sr.;[6] finally – and most significantly – with Joseph Böhm,[7] who introduced him to the world of chamber music).[8][9] In 1843 he was taken by his cousin, Fanny Figdor, who later married "a Leipzig merchant"[10] named Wittgenstein, to live and study in Leipzig.[11] In the journal Neue Zeitschrift fůr Musik Robert Schumann was highly enthusiastic about Felix Mendelssohn, on which Moser writes "Only in Haydn's admiration for Mozart does the history of music know a parallel case of such ungrudging veneration of one great artist for his equal."[12] in 1835, Mendelssohn had become director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra. In 1843 Joachim became a protégé of Mendelssohn, who arranged for him to study theory and composition with Moritz Hauptmann and violin with Ferdinand David.[13] In his début performance in the Gewandhaus Joachim played the Otello Fantasy by Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst. On 27 May 1844 Joachim, not quite 13, in his London debut with Mendelssohn conducting at a concert of the Philharmonic Society, played the solo part in Beethoven's Violin Concerto. This was a triumph in several respects, as described by R. W. Eshbach.[14] The Philharmonic had a policy against performers so young, but an exception was made after auditions persuaded gatherings of distinguished musicians and music lovers that Joachim had mature capabilities. Despite Beethoven's recognition as one of the greatest composers, and the ranking nowadays of his violin concerto as among the greatest few, it was far from being so ranked before Joachim's performance. Ludwig Spohr had harshly criticized it, and after the London premiere by violinist Edward Eliason, a critic had said it "might have been written by any third or fourth rate composer." But Joachim was very well prepared to play Beethoven's concerto, having written his own cadenzas for it and memorized the piece. The audience anticipated great things, having got word from the rehearsal,[15] and so, Mendelssohn wrote, "frenetic applause began" as soon as Joachim stepped in front of the orchestra. The beginning was applauded still more, and "cheers of the audience accompanied every ... part of the concerto." Reviewers also had high praise. One for 'The Musical World' wrote "The greatest violinists hold this concerto in awe ... Young Joachim ... attacked it with the vigour and determination of the most accomplished artist ... no master could have read it better," and the two cadenzas, written by Joachim, were "tremendous feats ... ingeniously composed". Another reviewer, for the 'Illustrated London News', wrote that Joachim "is perhaps the first violin player, not only of his age, but of his siècle" [century]. "He performed Beethoven's solitary concerto, which we have heard all the great performers of the last twenty years attempt, and invariably fail in ... its performance was an eloquent vindication of the master-spirit who imagined it." A third reviewer, for the 'Morning Post', wrote that the concerto "has been generally regarded by violin-players as not a proper and effective development of the powers of their instrument" but that Joachim's performance "is beyond all praise, and defies all description" and "was altogether unprecedented." Joachim remained a favorite with the English public for the rest of his career. He visited England in each year 1858, 1859, 1862 largely at the behest of his friend William Sterndale Bennett, and for several decades thereafter.[16] Moser (p. 28 ff.) writes "After the appearance of the six String Quartets (Op. 18) Beethoven had complete command of the field of chamber-music", although in the later quartets he "makes many exacting demands" of string players. Moser (p. 29) further writes that "at the time of Beethoven's death", such people as Spohr and Hauptmann did not necessarily esteem the late quartets above the earliest ones. Moser, p. 30 writes that in Vienna "the public showed a marked hostility toward" the late quartets. But Joachim's teacher Böhm had an appreciation of the late quartets, which he communicated to Joachim.[17] At the age of 18, "in the whole of Germany" Joachim had no equal, either in the rendering of Bach or in the concertos of Beethoven and Mendelssohn; while as quartet player, "he had no cause to fear rivalry."[18]Following Mendelssohn's death in 1847, Joachim stayed briefly in Leipzig, teaching at the Conservatorium and playing on the first desk of the Gewandhaus Orchestra with Ferdinand David,[19] whom Mendelssohn had appointed as concertmaster on taking up the conductorship in 1835. In 1848, the pianist and composer Franz Liszt took up residence in Weimar, where Goethe and Schiller had lived.[20] Liszt was determined to re-establish the town's reputation as the Athens of Germany. There, he gathered a circle of young avant-garde disciples, vocally opposed to the conservatism of the Leipzig circle. Joachim was amongst the first of these. He served Liszt as concertmaster, and for several years enthusiastically embraced the new "psychological music," as he called it. In 1852 he moved to Hanover, at the same time dissociating himself from the musical ideals of the 'New German School' (Liszt, Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, and their followers, as defined by journalist Franz Brendel). "The worship of Wagner's music permeating musical taste in Weimar was to Joachim inordinate and unacceptable."[21] Joachim's break with Liszt became final in August 1857, when he wrote to his former mentor: "I am completely out of sympathy with your music; it contradicts everything which from early youth I have taken as mental nourishment from the spirit of our great masters."[22] Hanover "was then an independent kingdom, later to be absorbed in the German empire."[23] King Georg of Hanover was totally blind and very fond of music; he paid Joachim a good salary and gave him considerable freedom.[24] Joachim's duties in Hanover included playing the main violin part in opera performances and that or conducting state concerts.[25] He had five summer months off, in which he made concert tours around Europe.[26] In March 1853 he sent to Liszt a copy of the Overture to Hamlet he had recently composed.[27] Also in 1853, a committee headed by Schumann invited Joachim to the Lower Rhine Music Festival.[28] At the Festival, Joachim again soloed in the Beethoven violin concerto.[29] His success made him, it is said, "the most renowned artist of Germany".[28] Robert Schumann and his wife Clara were deeply impressed, and formed a "close connection" with Joachim.[30] Joachim met the then publicly unknown 20-year-old Brahms, and wrote of him that his playing "shows the intense fire...which predicts the artist" and "his compositions already betoken such power as I have seen in no other musician of his age".[31] Joachim strongly recommended Brahms to Robert.[32] Brahms was received by the Schumanns with great enthusiasm. After Robert's mental breakdown in 1854 and death in 1856, Joachim, Clara, and Brahms remained lifelong friends and shared musical views. Joachim's performing style with the violin, like Clara's at the piano, is said to have been "restrained, pure, antivirtuosic, expressing the music rather than the performer."[33] In December 1854, Joachim visited Robert at the Endenich asylum where he had been since February, Joachim being his first visitor.[34] Early on, Brahms already played and composed for the piano, which "he had mastered in a supreme fashion", but he felt deficient in orchestration.[35] In 1854 he began composing what was to become his first piano concerto, his first orchestral piece. He sent a score of the first movement to Joachim, requesting his advice.[36] After getting Joachim's response, Brahms wrote to him "A thousand thanks for having studied the first movement in such a sympathetic and careful manner. I have learned a great deal from your remarks. As a musician I really have no greater wish than to have more talent so that I can learn still more from such a friend."[37] Later in the composition of the concerto, which took four years, Brahms wrote to Joachim "I am sending you the rondo once more. And just like the last time, I beg for some really severe criticism."[38] The final manuscript of the concerto "shows many alterations in the handwriting of Joachim".[39] Joachim's time in Hanover was his most prolific period of composition. Then and during the rest of his career, he frequently performed with Clara Schumann. For example, in October–November 1857 they took a recital tour together to Dresden, Leipzig, and Munich.[40] St. James's Hall, London, which opened in 1858, hosted a series of "Popular Concerts" of chamber music, of which programmes from 1867 through 1904 are preserved.[41] Joachim appears a great many times. He visited London each year from 1866 on.[42] In March 1898 and in 1901–1904 Joachim appeared in his own quartet of players, but otherwise far more often he appeared with resident Popular Concerts artists Louis Ries,[43] second violin, J. B. Zerbini,[44] first viola, and Alfredo Piatti, first cello, reputed to be "one of the most celebrated cellists" of the time. George Bernard Shaw wrote that the Popular Concerts had helped greatly to spread and enlighten musical taste in England.[45] Joachim had been a mainstay of the chamber music Popular Concerts. At 18 of the Popular Concerts at least, Clara Schumann performed along with Joachim, Zerbini and Piatti, presumably playing piano quartets (without second violin), or sometimes piano trios (for piano, violin, and cello). (The programs of those concerts very likely also included string quartets in which she of course did not play, as Ries is also listed.) A favorite piece of Clara's was Brahms's Piano Quartet in A major. She wrote to Brahms 27 February 1882 from London that the piece had received "much applause".[46] About a performance of it in Liverpool 11 February she had written in her diary that it was "warmly received, much to my surprise as the public here is far less receptive than that in London."[47] In January 1867 there had been a tour to Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland, by Joachim, Clara, her oldest daughter Marie, Ries, Zerbini, Piatti, two English sisters "Miss Pyne," one a singer, and a Mr. Saunders who managed all the arrangements. Marie Schumann wrote home from Manchester that in Edinburgh Clara "was received with tempestuous applause and had to give an encore, so had Joachim. Piatti, too, is always tremendously liked."[48] Joachim had extensive correspondence with both Clara and Brahms, as Brahms greatly valued Joachim's opinion of his new compositions. In 1860 Brahms and Joachim jointly wrote a manifesto against the "progressive" music of the 'New German' School, in reaction to the polemics of Brendel's Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. This manifesto, a volley in the War of the Romantics, had originally few (four[13]) signers (more later) and met with a mixed reception, being heavily derided by followers of Wagner. On 10 May 1863 Joachim married the contralto Amalie Schneeweiss (stage name: Amalie Weiss) (1839–99). Amalie gave up her own promising career as an opera singer and gave birth to six children. She continued to perform in oratorios and to give lieder recitals. In 1865 Joachim quit the service of the King of Hanover in protest, when the Intendant (artistic director) of the Opera refused to advance one of the orchestral players (Jakob Grün) because of the latter's Jewish birth.[50] In 1866, as a result of the Austro-Prussian war, in which Prussia and its capital Berlin became the dominant German state and city, Joachim moved to Berlin, where he was invited to help found, and to become the first director of, a new department of the Royal Academy of Music, concerned with musical performance and called the Hochschule für ausübende Tonkunst. On Good Friday, 10 April 1868, Joachim and his wife joined their friend, Johannes Brahms, in the celebration of one of Brahms' greatest triumphs, the first complete performance of his German Requiem at the Bremen Cathedral. Amalie Joachim sang "I Know that My Redeemer Liveth" and Joseph Joachim played Robert Schumann's Abendlied. It was a glorious occasion, after which about 100 of the composer's friends, the Joachims, Clara Schumann, Albert Dietrich and his wife, Max Bruch and others gathered at the Bremen Rathskeller. In 1869, the Joachim String Quartet was formed, which quickly gained a reputation as Europe's finest. It continued to perform until Joachim's death in 1907. Other members of the Quartet were, Karel Halíř (2nd violin) from 1897 on; Emanuel Wirth (viola) from 1877 on; and Robert Hausmann (cello), from 1879 on.[51] In 1878 while writing his violin concerto, Brahms consulted Joachim, who "freely gave him encouragement and technical advice".[52] Brahms asked Joachim to write the cadenza for the concerto, as he did. In 1884, Joachim and his wife separated after he became convinced that she was having an affair with the publisher Fritz Simrock. Brahms, certain that Joachim's suspicions were groundless, wrote a sympathetic letter to Amalie, which she later produced as evidence in Joachim's divorce proceeding against her.[53] This led to a cooling of Brahms' and Joachim's friendship, which was not restored until some years later, when Brahms composed the Double Concerto in A minor for violin and cello, Op. 102, 1887, as a peace offering to his old friend. It was co-dedicated to the first performers, Joachim and Robert Hausmann. In late 1895 both Brahms and Joachim were present at the opening of the new Tonhalle at Zürich, Switzerland; Brahms conducted and Joachim was assistant conductor. But in April, two years later, Joachim was to lose forever this revered friend, as Johannes Brahms died at the age of 64 at Vienna. At Meiningen, in December 1899, it was Joachim who made the speech when a statue to Brahms was unveiled. In March 1877, Joachim received an honorary Doctorate of Music from Cambridge University. For the occasion he presented his Overture in honor of Kleist, Op. 13.[54] Near the 50th anniversary of Joachim's debut recital, he was honored by "friends and admirers in England"[55] on 16 April 1889 who presented him with "an exceptionally fine" violin made in 1715 by Antonio Stradivari, called "Il Cremonese".[56] About ten years later, for the sixtieth jubilee, a concert in honor of Joachim was given by his former students of violin and viola playing and cellists who had studied quartet playing with him, on 22 April 1899.[57] The total of some 140 string players was impressive, as were their instruments (made by Stradivari, Guarneri, Bergonzi, Amati, etc.).[58] An honor such as that concert "had been accorded to no other musician during his lifetime".[57] During 1899, Joachim was invited to become president of the newly established Oxford & Cambridge Musical Club in London. He remained club president until his death.[59] In Berlin, on 17 August 1903, Joachim recorded five sides for The Gramophone & Typewriter Ltd (G&T), which remain a fascinating and valuable source of information about 19th-century styles of violin playing. He is the earliest violinist of distinction known to have recorded,[citation needed] only to be followed soon thereafter when Sarasate made some recordings the following year. Joachim's portrait was twice painted by Philip de László. A portrait of Joachim was painted by John Singer Sargent[60] and presented to him at the 1904 "Diamond Jubilee" celebration of his sixtieth anniversary of his first appearance in London. Joachim remained in Berlin until his death in 1907. At his 75th birthday observance in June 1906, Joachim saidThe Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven's. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart's jewel, is Mendelssohn's.[61] Bruch wrote three violin concertos. Joachim was presumably referring to his Concerto No. 1, which is the most well-known and frequently performed. Joachim had assisted Bruch in revising that concerto.
Efrem Zimbalist Sr. (April 21, 1889 – February 22, 1985) was a concert violinist, composer, teacher, conductor and director of the Curtis Institute of Music. Zimbalist was born in the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, the son of Jewish parents Maria (née Litvinoff) and Aron Zimbalist (Цимбалист, Russian pronunciation [tsɪmbaˈlʲist]), who was a conductor.[2] By the age of nine, Efrem Zimbalist was first violin in his father’s orchestra. At age 12 he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and studied under Leopold Auer. He graduated from the Conservatory in 1907 after winning a gold medal and the Rubinstein Prize, and by age 21 was considered one of the world's greatest violinists.[3] After graduation he debuted in Berlin (playing the Brahms Concerto) and London in 1907 and in the United States in 1911, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1912, he played the Glazunov Concerto in a concert marking Leopold Stokowski's first appearance with the London Symphony Orchestra. He then settled in the United States. He did much to popularize the performance of early music. In 1917, he was elected as an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the national fraternity for men in music, by the fraternity's Alpha Chapter at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He retired as a violinist in 1949, but returned in 1952 to give the first performance of the Violin Concerto by Gian Carlo Menotti, which is dedicated to him. He retired again in 1955. He served as a juror of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1962 and 1966. In 1928, Zimbalist began teaching at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He was director of the school from 1941 to 1968. His pupils included such distinguished musicians as Lynn Blakeslee Aaron Rosand,[4] Oscar Shumsky, Norman Carol, Joseph Silverstein, Jascha Brodsky, John Dalley, Michael Tree, Felix Slatkin, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Harold Wippler, Leonid Bolotine, and Hidetaro Suzuki. See: List of music students by teacher: T to Z#Efrem Zimbalist. His own compositions include a violin concerto, a piano concerto (1959), the American Rhapsody, a tone poem called Daphnis and Chloe, a Fantasy on themes from The Golden Cockerel by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, a Fantasy on Bizet's Carmen (1936) and a piece called Sarasateana, for viola and piano. He also wrote an opera, Landara, which premiered in Philadelphia in 1956.[5] Pablo Casals writes in his biography, Joys and Sorrows, that Zimbalist was a member of the Musician's Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy which Casals founded and chaired in 1936.[6] Zimbalist married the famous American soprano Alma Gluck and they toured together for a time. Alma Gluck died in 1938. In 1943, having been a widower for five years, he married the Curtis Institute of Music's founder, Mary Louise Curtis Bok,[7] daughter of publisher Cyrus Curtis, and 14 years his senior. He died in 1985, at the age of 95. His and Alma's son, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., and their granddaughter, Stephanie Zimbalist, both became popular actors.[8]
Moses or Moishe Elman[2] was born in the small town of Talnoye (now known as Talne) in the Umansky Uyezd of the Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine).[1] His grandfather was a klezmer, or Jewish folk, musician who also played the violin. It became apparent when Mischa was very young that he had perfect pitch[citation needed], but his father hesitated about a career as a musician, since musicians were not very high on the social scale. He finally gave in, and gave Mischa a miniature violin, on which he soon learned several tunes by himself. Soon thereafter, he was taken to Odessa, where he studied at the Imperial Academy of Music. Pablo de Sarasate gave him a recommendation, stating that he could become one of the great talents of Europe. He auditioned for Leopold Auer at the age of 11, playing the Wieniawski Concerto No. 2 and 24th Caprice by Paganini. Auer was so impressed that he had Elman admitted to the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Elman was still only a boy when Auer arranged for him to play with the famous Colonne Orchestra during their visit to Pavlovsk. Knowing Édouard Colonne's hatred of child prodigies, Auer did not tell him Elman's age when making the arrangements, and not until the famous conductor saw young Mischa waiting to go on the platform did he realize that he had engaged a child. He was furious, and flatly refused to continue with the programme. Frantic attempts were made to assure him that Elman had the recommendation of Auer himself and was well capable of doing justice to the music, but Colonne was adamant, "I have never yet played with a child, and I refuse to start now," he retorted. So Elman had to play with piano accompaniment while conductor and orchestra sat listening." According to Elman ."I was eleven at the time. When Colonne saw me, violin in hand, ready to step on the stage, he drew himself up and said with emphasis: 'I play with a prodigy! Never!' Nothing could move him, and I had to play to a piano accompaniment. After he had heard me play, though, he came over to me and said: 'The best apology I can make for what I said is to ask you to do me the honor of playing with the Orchestre Colonne in Paris.' He was as good as his word. Four months later I went to Paris and played the Mendelssohn concerto for him with great success."[3] In 1903, Elman began to play concerts in the homes of wealthy patrons of the arts, and he made his Berlin debut in 1904, creating a great sensation. His London debut in 1905 included the British premiere of Alexander Glazunov's Violin Concerto in A minor. He played in Carnegie Hall in 1908, making a great impression on his American audience. He toured Australia in 1914. In 1917, he was elected to honorary membership in Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity. He sometimes performed in as many as 107 concerts in a 29-week season. The Elman family moved to the United States, and Mischa became a citizen in 1923. In 1943, he gave the premiere of Bohuslav Martinů's second concerto, which was written for him. Sales of his records exceeded two million. A frequent accompanist in chamber works during Elman's early American career was Emmanuel Bay, who was born on exactly the same day as Elman, January 20, 1891. But Elman also performed and recorded with Josef Bonime, Carroll Hollister, Wolfgang Rosé and others, and from 1950, his steady accompanist and recital partner was Joseph Seiger. He also briefly performed and made recordings with the Mischa Elman String Quartet. Elman died in his apartment on April 5, 1967 in Manhattan, New York City, a few hours after completing a rehearsal with Seiger.[1] He is buried in the Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. Elman's recorded legacy spanned more than six decades. His first 78 rpm discs were made for Pathe, in Paris, in 1906; his final LP sessions were for Vanguard, in New York, in 1967. The greater part of his discography was recorded for the Victor Talking Machine Company/RCA Victor, with whom he had an exclusive relationship through 1950. Thereafter, he recorded for Decca/London and later the Vanguard label. Regrettably, Elman's discs have never been reissued on CD in a systematic manner (whereas almost every recording which his contemporary Jascha Heifetz made has been readily available on CD for years).
Joseph Szigeti (Hungarian: Szigeti József, [ˈjoːʒɛf ˈsiɡɛti]; 5 September 1892 – 19 February 1973) was a Hungarian violinist. Born into a musical family, he spent his early childhood in a small town in Transylvania. He quickly proved himself to be a child prodigy on the violin, and moved to Budapest with his father to study with the renowned pedagogue Jenő Hubay. After completing his studies with Hubay in his early teens, Szigeti began his international concert career. His performances at that time were primarily limited to salon-style recitals and the more overtly virtuosic repertoire; however, after making the acquaintance of pianist Ferruccio Busoni, he began to develop a much more thoughtful and intellectual approach to music that eventually earned him the nickname "The Scholarly Virtuoso". Following a bout of tuberculosis that required a stay in a sanatorium in Switzerland, Szigeti settled in Geneva, where he became Professor of Violin at the local conservatory in 1917. It was in Geneva that he met his future wife, Wanda Ostrowska, and at roughly the same time he became friends with the composer Béla Bartók. Both relationships were to be lifelong. From the 1920s until 1960, Szigeti performed regularly around the world and recorded extensively. He also distinguished himself as a strong advocate of new music, and was the dedicatee of many new works by contemporary composers. Among the more notable pieces written for him are Ernest Bloch's Violin Concerto, Bartók's Rhapsody No. 1, and Eugène Ysaÿe's Solo Sonata No. 1. After retiring from the concert stage in 1960, he worked at teaching and writing until his death in 1973, at the age of 80. Szigeti was born Joseph "Jóska" Singer[1] to a Jewish family in Budapest, Austria-Hungary. His mother died when he was three years old, and soon thereafter the boy was sent to live with his grandparents in the little Carpathian town of Máramaros-Sziget (hence the name Szigeti). He grew up surrounded by music, as the town band was composed almost entirely of his uncles. After a few informal lessons on the cimbalom from his aunt,[2] he received his first lessons on the violin from his Uncle Bernat at the age of six.[3] Szigeti quickly showed a talent for the violin. Several years later, his father took him to Budapest to receive proper training at the conservatory. After a brief stint with an inadequate teacher, Szigeti auditioned at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music and was admitted directly into the class of Jenő Hubay, without the usual delays and formalities.[4] Hubay, who had been a student of Joseph Joachim in Berlin, had by that time established himself as one of the preeminent teachers in Europe and a fountainhead of the Hungarian violin tradition.[5] Szigeti joined such violinists as Franz von Vecsey, Emil Telmányi, Jelly d'Arányi and Stefi Geyer in Hubay's studio. In those days, Europe produced a great many child prodigies, inspired by the phenomenal success of the young Czech virtuoso Jan Kubelík and formed by rigorous teaching and enthusiastic parents. The Hubay studio was no exception; Szigeti and his fellow wunderkinder performed extensively in special recitals and salon concerts during their study at the Liszt Academy. He went to study at the Conservateur in Budapest for 2 years before his debut.[7] In 1905, at the age of thirteen, Szigeti made his Berlin debut playing Bach's Chaconne in D minor, Ernst's Concerto in F-sharp minor, and Paganini's Witches Dance. Despite the formidable program, the event received mention only by a photograph in the Sunday supplement of the Berliner Tageblatt captioned: "A Musical Prodigy: Josef Szigeti". In those days, Europe produced a great many child prodigies, inspired by the phenomenal success of the young Czech virtuoso Jan Kubelík and formed by rigorous teaching and enthusiastic parents. The Hubay studio was no exception; Szigeti and his fellow wunderkinder performed extensively in special recitals and salon concerts during their study at the Liszt Academy. He went to study at the Conservateur in Budapest for 2 years before his debut.[7] In 1905, at the age of thirteen, Szigeti made his Berlin debut playing Bach's Chaconne in D minor, Ernst's Concerto in F-sharp minor, and Paganini's Witches Dance. Despite the formidable program, the event received mention only by a photograph in the Sunday supplement of the Berliner Tageblatt captioned: "A Musical Prodigy: Josef Szigeti". The most significant of the new contacts was Busoni. The great pianist and composer became Szigeti's mentor during these formative years, and the two would remain close friends until Busoni's death in 1924. By Szigeti's own admission, before meeting Busoni his life was characterized by a certain laziness and indifference brought on by the then-typical life of a young prodigy violinist.[13] He had grown accustomed to playing crowd-pleasing salon miniatures and dazzling virtuosic encores without much thought. He knew little of the works of the great masters; he could play them, but not fully understand them. As Szigeti put it, Busoni—particularly through their careful study of Bach's Chaconne—"shook me once and for all out of my adolescent complacency". In 1913, Szigeti was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was sent to a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland to recover, interrupting his concert career. During his stay at the sanatorium, he became re-acquainted with the composer Béla Bartók, who was recovering from pneumonia. His doctor recommended to practice the violin 25 to 30 minutes a day.[7][15][16] The two had known each other only in passing during their conservatory days, but now they began a friendship that would last until Bartók's death in 1945. He was allowed to visit to him for the last time in 1943 in the Mount Sinai Hospital with his illness worsening, reading Turkish poems while they spread out on his hospital bed. In 1917, having by then made a full recovery, at age 25 Szigeti was appointed Professor of Violin at the Geneva Conservatory of Music. Szigeti said that this job, although generally satisfying, was often frustrating due to the mediocre quality of many of his students.[19] The years teaching in Geneva provided an opportunity for Szigeti to deepen his understanding of music as an art, along with other aspects such as chamber music, orchestral performance, music theory and composition.[20] Also during that time, Szigeti met and fell in love with Wanda Ostrowska, a young woman of Russian parentage who had been stranded in Geneva by the Russian Revolution of 1917. They married in 1919. In 1925, Szigeti met Leopold Stokowski and played the Bach Chaconne in D minor for him. Less than two weeks later, Szigeti received a telegram from Stokowski's manager in Philadelphia inviting him to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra later that year: it was his American debut.[22] Szigeti had never played with an American orchestra before, nor heard one, and later he wrote of suffering stage fright. He was taken aback by the American concert scene, and the way that its publicity and popularity driven agents and managers determined much of what was heard in American concert halls. He believed they were not interested in works by the great masters, but preferred the popular light salon pieces he had left behind in his prodigy days.[23] (To the end of his life, Szigeti loved to quote one memorable, cigar-chewing impresario who told him, with regard to Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata, "Well, let me tell you, Mister Dzigedy—and I know what I’m talking about—your Krewtzer Sonata bores the pants off my audiences!") By 1930, Szigeti was established as a major international concert violinist. He performed extensively in Europe, the United States and Asia, and made the acquaintance of many of the era's leading instrumentalists, conductors and composers. In 1939, to escape the war and Nazi persecution of the Jews, Szigeti emigrated with his wife to the United States, where they settled in California. (A year later, Bartók also fled to America, and just two days after his arrival, he and Szigeti played a sonata recital at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.) During the 1930s, 1940s and into the 1950s, Szigeti recorded extensively, leaving a significant legacy. Notable recordings include the above-mentioned Library of Congress sonata recital; the studio recording of Bartók's Contrasts with Benny Goodman on clarinet and the composer at the piano; the violin concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Prokofiev (No. 1) and Bloch under the batons of such conductors as Bruno Walter, Hamilton Harty and Sir Thomas Beecham; and various works by J.S. Bach, Busoni, Corelli, Handel and Mozart. One of his last recordings was of the Six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin by Bach; although his technique had deteriorated noticeably by that time, the recording is prized for Szigeti's insight and depth of interpretation. In 1950, Szigeti was detained at Ellis Island upon returning from a European concert tour and was held for several days, officially "temporarily excluded" from the country. The reasons for his detention remain unclear.[27] The following year, he became a naturalized American citizen. During the 1950s, Szigeti began to develop arthritis in his hands and his playing deteriorated.[29] Despite his weakened technical mastery, his intellect and musical expression were still 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.[32] He died in Lucerne, Switzerland[33] 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. 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.[34] 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 don't want to postpone the happiness of these two youngsters if we can help it. All laws have been twisted and tortured out of semblance of law, what with war and revolutions. For once let's twist and turn one for a good cause, yes? Just before the birth of their only child, daughter Irene, Szigeti found himself stuck in Berlin during the Kapp Putsch of 1920, unable to return to Geneva. The entire city had been paralyzed by a general strike, and the trains were not running. His scheduled concert could not go on as planned, but he was forced to stay in Berlin for "interminable days" while the Putsch ran its course. Szigeti writes: "... the impossibility of communicating by phone or wire with my wife--whose condition I pictured with the somewhat lurid pessimism usual to young prospective fathers--was certainly a greater torment to me than all the other discomforts put together". By 1940, the outbreak of World War II forced the Szigetis to leave Europe for the United States. (Irene remained in Switzerland, having married pianist Nikita Magaloff earlier that year.) They settled in California, where Wanda, always fond of nature, was delighted to be able to raise her own garden. In a letter to a friend, Szigeti describes their California life: Wanda is happy, doing wonders with her gardening, chicken and rabbit raising, preserve and pâté de foie making. She doesn't budge from our place, doesn't want to come back to New York even for a visit, which I, for one, can well understand! Two dogs, an aviary full of exotic birds, tomatoes, grapes, strawberries, asparagus, artichokes, lovely flowers (camellias too!), right in our own little world. Szigeti narrowly escaped being killed in the plane crash that claimed the life of movie star Carole Lombard in January 1942. Szigeti, who was on his way to Los Angeles for a concert, was forced to give up his seat on TWA Flight 3 at a refueling stop in Albuquerque, NM to allow the plane to take on 15 soldiers who, it being wartime, had priority. The plane, off course at night and with wartime blackout conditions in effect, crashed into a mountain cliff after take off from an intermediate stop in Las Vegas, killing everyone on board. In 1960, the couple returned to Europe and settled near Lake Geneva in Switzerland, close to the home of their daughter and son-in-law. They remained there for the rest of their lives. Wanda died in 1971, predeceasing her husband by two years.[28]