Tossy Spivakovsky (Nathan Spivakovsky) was a
Russian (Ukrainian) violinist and teacher born (in Odessa) on December 23,
1906. He belongs squarely in the era of
individualistic virtuosos born (mostly) in the first half of the Twentieth
Century – the era of Kreisler, Kogan, Elman, Milstein, Thibaud, Grumiaux, Spalding,
Zimbalist, Suk, Brown, Gitlis, Huberman, Hartmann, Haendel, Heifetz, Oistrakh, Ricci,
Rabin, Ferras, Francescatti, and a few others.
By 1990, most of these players were dead. It has been said that Spivakovsky was a
“highly eccentric violinist with an unconventional bow and violin hold.” For many years, Spivakovsky had a very
successful solo career, though he was not among the virtuosos who studied with
Leopold Auer, Peter Stolyarsky, Abram Yampolsky, or Carl Flesch. He studied in Berlin with Willy Hess at the
Royal Academy (Advanced School for Music) and gave his first public performance
at age 10. At age 13, as soon as World
War I ended, he toured Europe for the first time. At age 18 (1925), he became concertmaster of
the Berlin Philharmonic. He spent a year
there (one usually-reliable source says it was two years) then left to pursue a
career as a soloist. Also in the 1920s,
he – with his older pianist brother Jascha – formed the Spivakovsky Duo. In 1930, he played and toured with the Spivakovsky-Kurtz
Trio. In 1933, the trio found itself in
Australia where it (rather spontaneously) decided to stay because of the
political changes then taking place in Germany.
Spivakovsky took a teaching position at the University of Melbourne, as
did the other two members of the trio – Jascha Spivakovsky, pianist, and Edmund
Kurtz, cellist. In 1940, Spivakovsky
came to the U.S. He was 34 years
old. Interestingly, Spivakovsky had two
other (older) brothers who were accomplished musicians – Isaac and Adolf – who had
joined him in Australia in 1934. They
(and Jascha) remained in Australia when Spivakovsky emigrated to the U.S. That same year (1940), Spivakovsky made his
debut in Town Hall (New York.) After
some concertizing activity, in 1942, he was appointed concertmaster of the
Cleveland Orchestra. While serving as
concertmaster in Cleveland, he gave the U.S. premiere of Bartok’s second
concerto (1943) in one of its programs.
On October 14, 1943, he gave the first New York performance of the same
work with the New York Philharmonic, an orchestra with which he appeared more than 20 times.
Bartok himself said his playing of the concerto was first rate. Wherever he played, he received extremely
favorable reviews. With the New York
Philharmonic, he performed four concertos which never became part of the
standard repertoire – those by Gian Carlo Menotti, Roger Sessions, Carl
Nielsen, and Frank Martin. Spivakovsky stepped down from his Cleveland post in 1945. His
interpretations have been described as highly personalized, meaning that he put
his temperamental (some would say idiosyncratic) stamp on everything he
played. A few YouTube audio files bear
witness to this. One of them is
here. His playing of the Tchaikovsky
concerto is done in a manner unlike anything I have heard before. As an added bonus, in the C major passage
which immediately follows the re-statement of the main theme by the orchestra
(about 8 minutes into the first movement), Spivakovsky plays the repeat of the
variation-like section an octave higher.
I know of only eight other violinists who do this – Jascha Heifetz, Erick Friedman, Nathan Milstein, Konstanty Kulka, Jane Peters, Andras Agoston, Leonid Kogan, and Leila Josefowicz. You can listen for yourself
here. Spivakovsky concertized
extensively in Europe, the U.S., and South America for about four decades. Most of his recordings were done between 1925
and 1960 but they are few and far between - most are still available. He taught at Juilliard (New York) between
1974 and 1989. He was 68 years old when
he began teaching there and 83 when he retired.
As far as I know, he had no famous students. An explanation of his unorthodox bow hold was
published in a book in 1949. Spivakovsky
was known to conduct extensive research into original editions of music to get
as accurate a picture of composers’ intentions as possible. His violin was a 1769 G.B. Guadagnini. I don't know what became of it. He also published an essay on Bach’s
unaccompanied violin Partitas in 1967.
His ideas were not widely adopted, but that’s putting it mildly. Spivakovsky died (in Westport, Connecticut)
on July 20, 1998, at age 91.
Arthur Hartmann (Arthur Hartman or Arthur Martinus Hartmann) was a Hungarian (some would say
American) violinist, teacher, composer, and writer, born (in Philadelphia) on
July 23, 1881. He was a rather enigmatic,
romantic, and restless figure in the world of music during the turn of the
twentieth century. He is best known
today for having transcribed a work by Claude Debussy which almost all concert
violinists play – The Girl with the Flaxen Hair - a piece which Jascha Heifetz
made famous and recorded at least four times, the first time when he was 26
years old. Hartmann was a child prodigy
and first performed in Philadelphia when he was six years old (1887.) His first teacher was his father. Later, he studied with Henry Hahn and Martin
van Gelder. In 1891-92, he studied in
New York at the New York College of Music.
He toured Europe very successfully from 1892 to 1894. He was 11 years old. From 1894 to 1897, he played in America
wherever his father could find him opportunities. He then studied with Charles Loeffler in
Boston for two years, beginning in 1897.
His patron in Boston was a wealthy merchant: Arthur Curran. From 1899 to 1903, he studied in Europe – I do
not know where (perhaps Berlin) or with whom.
Although he appears to have begun his career quite strongly, he suffered
reversals which put him in very precarious financial circumstances a number of
times. The year 1929 was especially
difficult – he suffered from very poor health, his wife and children left him,
and he could not work at all for many months.
His concertizing was done in fits and starts but it has been said his
performances were acclaimed. He appeared
with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1906.
He was 25 years old. On November
13, 1908, he played Saint Saens’ third concerto with the New York Philharmonic
in Carnegie Hall. Again, on March 2,
1913, he played a Mozart concerto with the philharmonic. On February 5, 1914, he gave a recital in
Paris with Claude Debussy at the piano. A
recording of some of his music – by violinist Solomia Soroka - came out in 2009
which finally illuminated some of his work.
He seems to have been a prolific writer and a very enthusiastic promoter
of new music and miscellaneous projects.
He was prone to wear fancy Spanish hats and a cape. He also knew – in the style of Tivadar Nachez
- almost every major figure in music and regularly corresponded with them –
Claude Debussy, Edvard Grieg, Bela Bartok, Richard Strauss, Anton Webern,
Arnold Schoenberg, Aaron Copland, Christian Sinding, Alexander Glazunov, Zoltan
Kodaly, Efrem Zimbalist, Tivadar Nachez, Leopold Auer, Joseph Joachim, Eugene
Ysaye, Walter Damrosch, Carl Flesch, Frank Bridge, Fritz Kreisler, Maud Powell,
Emil Sauret, Albert Spalding, Joseph Szigeti, Edward MacDowell, and Otakar
Sevcik were among them. However, he was
no dilettante; he was on the founding faculty of the Eastman School of Music
(Rochester, New York) in 1921 – he had initially been recruited in 1918. He left Eastman in 1922 to concertize in
Germany. On October 21, 1922, he played
both, the Tchaikovsky and the Saint Saens B minor concertos with the Berlin
Philharmonic – something that no violinist today would attempt or even
contemplate doing. He was 41 years
old. He returned to the U.S. in 1923 and
taught privately in New York. In 1925 he
formed his own quartet – the Hartmann Quartet – which made its debut in New
York on November 16, 1925. It was very
favorably received. It went on a U.S.
tour in 1928 but was disbanded in 1929, despite the success it was
experiencing. Hartmann began having
difficulties with his health in 1929.
For a decade, life was hard for him.
He would play and teach sporadically. In 1931, he was forced to sell one of his violins, a Maggini,
in order to make ends meet. From 1931 to
1933, he had a studio in Toronto, Canada, though he continued living in New York.
On December 16 and 17, 1932, he played the Tchaikovsky concerto with the
Syracuse (New York) Symphony. He was 51
years old. Up to that point, he may
easily have already given over a thousand performances – Ruggiero Ricci gave
over five thousand performances during a 75-year career. One source states that Hartmann was a
composer of a substantial body of symphonic music, choral works, and chamber
music but that may be an exaggeration.
He did write over 200 transcriptions for violin, several works for
orchestra, a few for string quartet, and some vocal music. A great abundance of his music was published,
especially that written for violin. Timar,
a symphonic poem, is an example of a work which was initially very
well-received and then forgotten. Every
piece he wrote was performed and favorably received. As far as I know, all of this music is now
out of print. Hartmann was also an
authority on J.S. Bach’s violin works, but especially his famous Chaconne,
about which he wrote a lengthy analysis. However, just as Joseph Achron is known for
his Hebrew Melody, Hartmann is known for his Debussy transcription – The Girl
with the Flaxen Hair. After 1932, Hartmann
dedicated the rest of his life (more than twenty years) mostly to writing and
composition. A small book written by
Hartmann – Claude Debussy as I Knew Him and Other Writings – though never completed, came out (with
extensive notes) in 2010. It is probably
the best writing on Debussy in existence.
Among Hartmann’s violins was a 1735 Stradivarius which he acquired in
1901 and which was later played by Mischa Elman - it eventually ended up in the
hands of a collector in Pennsylvania: Raymond Pitcairn, great uncle of
violinist Elizabeth Pitcairn. Between
1905 and 1925, Hartmann also owned a 1752 Guadagnini. It’s anyone’s guess where that violin ended
up. He may have acquired it from Franz
Kneisel, though that’s only a wild conjecture on my part. As far as I know, Hartmann never recorded
anything commercially. He died in
obscurity (in New York City), on March 30, 1956, at age 75.
