Tibor Serly

Tibor Serly was a Hungarian violinist, violist, conductor, composer, and teacher born (in Losone, Hungary) on November 25, 1901.  He studied with some of the greatest musicians of the late nineteenth century, including Jeno Hubay and Zoltan Kodaly.  Although he was an orchestral violinist for many years, he is now mostly remembered as a composer and the arranger of the Bartok viola concerto.   Serly’s first teacher was his father who was a composer of theatre works and conductor as well.  Interestingly, Serly began his studies in the U.S. since his family brought him here as a very young child.  He played in pit orchestras in New York (which his father conducted) until he was 21 years old, at which time he returned to Hungary (in 1922) to study at the Liszt Academy in Budapest.  His main teachers there were Jeno Hubay, Zoltan Kodaly, and Leo Weiner (teacher also of Fritz Reiner, Georg Solti, and Janos Starker.)  Serly graduated from the academy in 1925.  He was 24 years old.  He then returned to the U.S. and played in the Cincinnati Symphony (as violist from 1926 to 1927 under Fritz Reiner), in the Philadelphia Orchestra (as violist – one source says violinist - from 1928 to 1937 under Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy), and the NBC Orchestra (as violist from 1937 to 1938 under ill-tempered Arturo Toscanini.)  It has been said that Stokowski appointed Serly Assistant Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1933 – perhaps it is true.  (I made an inquiry of the Philadelphia Orchestra to confirm that but they never responded.)  After 1938, Serly mostly devoted his time to composition, conducting, and teaching.  He was 37 years old.  His friendship and professional association with Bela Bartok began in 1925 (in Hungary) - he met with him sporadically thereafter.  However, Serly was in regular and frequent contact with Bartok between 1940 and 1944, after Bartok came to the U.S.  Serly completed Bartok’s viola concerto from many sketches which Bartok didn’t have time to assemble himself prior to his death.  (The concerto has subsequently been further revised by Bartok’s son Peter Bartok and violist Paul Neubauer as well as by violist Csaba Erdelyi – every edition is quite different so that an orchestra must be careful to use the same edition as the soloist when performing it.)  Serly also completed the last 17 bars of the third piano concerto – some say he merely orchestrated the last 17 bars of the piece – others say he orchestrated the entire piece.  Serly’s own works are now very seldom played but he remains an important figure in modern music because he promoted atonal and other non-traditional ways of putting notes together to form a whole.  He became a professor at the Manhattan School of Music (New York) but taught at other institutions as well.  Serly was one of many musicians who became well acquainted with poets and other artists of that period, including the notorious Ezra Pound and his violinist-lover, Olga Rudge.  (Few people know that Ezra Pound was also a composer.  It has been said that Rudge discovered 300 of Vivaldi’s forgotten concertos in Italy and thus greatly helped the resurgence in interest in Vivaldi’s music.)  Serly helped Pound organize concerts in Rapallo, Italy, to which he frequently traveled.  As late as 1976, Serly was still publishing books on music theory which are now not widely known.  He wrote a viola concerto in 1929 and that work is still sometimes played.  He also wrote a violin concerto.  His other works remain quite obscure.  He died after being struck by a vehicle (some sources say it was a car) while visiting London in 1978.  His exact date of death is October 8, 1978.  He was 76 years old.  

Franz Vecsey

Franz von Vecsey (Ferenc Vecsey) was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, and composer born (in Budapest) on March 23, 1893.  He was a child prodigy in the early part of the last century but is for the most part now forgotten.  There are a few YouTube audio files which attest to his unbelievable artistry at a very young age.  Bela Bartok served as his piano accompanist for a time.  The Sibelius violin concerto was dedicated to him (in 1905) when he was only 12 years old.  Although he did not premiere the concerto, he first played the Sibelius concerto one year later.  His first teacher was his father, Lajos Vecsey.  He studied with Jeno Hubay from age 8.  It has been said that he became Hubay’s favorite pupil.  (Eugene Ormandy and Joseph Szigeti also studied with Hubay.)  His debut took place on May 17, 1903 in Berlin.  He was ten years old and on that occasion played the Beethoven concerto while Joseph Joachim conducted the orchestra.  Afterward, he studied with Leopold Auer in St Petersburg, Russia.  Jeno Hubay dedicated his third violin concerto (probably his best-known among the four he composed) to Vecsey.  Later, after concertizing for about ten years, Vecsey married into an aristocratic family, as did four or five other famous violinists (Teresina Tua, Johanna Martzy, Cesar Thomson, and Georges Enesco come to mind.)   He managed his career from a palace in Venice.  It has been suggested that he became psychologically scarred after serving in the Austrian army during World War One and that his career suffered as a result.  He was very interested in a conducting career in the mid-1930s but became seriously ill just about then and died after an unsuccessful operation in Rome.  Vecsey’s compositional output consisted mainly of miniature violin works, one of which is Le Vent (Caprice number 1), a rather difficult work which is still very popular today.  A 1716 Stradivarius instrument was among the violins he played.  It is now owned by an Italian philanthropic foundation, which also owns other great and valuable string instruments.  Here is a YouTube audio file where Vecsey plays a Paganini caprice.  Vecsey died on April 5, 1935, at age 42.  

Valeriy Sokolov

Valeriy Sokolov is a Russian (Ukrainian) violinist born (in Kharkiv) on September 22, 1986.  He has a very busy concert career and he tours throughout Europe regularly.  He is known for having a highly personal (and distinctive) style of playing.  He began his studies in his native Ukraine but left at age thirteen (1999) upon receiving a scholarship (from the Sarasate violin competition) to study in England with Natalya Boyarskaya.  He began his violin studies in Kharkiv at age five but I do not know who his first teachers were.  He later studied with Felix Andrievsky and in Germany and Vienna with (among others) Ana Chumachenco, Mark Lubotsky, and Boris Kuschnir.  By 2006, his career was firmly established.  He was barely 20 years old.  Sokolov is particularly well known for his interpretation of Bartok’s second concerto which he has recorded.  He made his U.S. debut in 2007.  Sokolov is the subject of a 2004 documentary about his emerging career.  Here is a short YouTube video of him playing Beethoven.  Photo is courtesy of Derry Moore.  

Stefi Geyer

Stefi Geyer (Steffi Geyer) was a Hungarian violinist and teacher born (in Budapest) on June 28, 1888.  Although a very popular and distinguished violinist in the early part of the century, she is better known for her relationship to Bela Bartok, one of the greatest composers of the 20^th Century.  Bartok dedicated his first violin concerto (composed in 1907 but not published until 1959) to her, although she never performed it in public.  It is said she had the only copy of the score and did not release it until very late in her life, after Bartok had died.  Her violin studies began at age three – her father was her first teacher.  From age seven she studied with Kalman Adolf, an obscure violinist.  At age ten she began studying at the Budapest Academy of Music with Jeno Hubay, one of the most respected violinists and teachers of the time.  Geyer began concertizing in Hungary and Austria at age twelve.  Her studies with Hubay ended in 1902.  She was fourteen years old.  She toured Europe frequently and was admired for her intelligent and elegant interpretations of a very wide repertory.  She moved to Vienna in 1911.  In 1919 she settled in Zurich.   She was very busy playing throughout Europe, giving over 100 concerts in the 1922-23 season alone.  She toured the U.S. in 1924, although not for the first time.  Geyer taught at the Zurich Conservatory from 1934 to 1953 (one source says 1923 to 1953.)  In 1935 she was appointed concertmaster of the Sacher Chamber Ensemble.  She became the concertmaster of the Collegium Musicum in Zurich in 1941.  Beginning in 1938, she would often play in the orchestra of the Lucerne Festival.  She played a 1742 Guarnerius (del Gesu) violin known as the Soldat.  The violin has an interesting history.  Her recordings from the 1930s are numerous but somewhat hard to find.  Here is a YouTube audio file of one of her recordings from the year 1927.  Geyer died in Zurich on December 11, 1956, at age 68.  

Favorite Performances

This is a list of my favorite performances or recordings of the standard violin concerto repertoire, and perhaps a couple that are not yet so standard.  The word “favorite” does not necessarily mean “best,” it just means the one I enjoy the most or the one that speaks to me best or the one I favor for reasons I can’t readily explain.  Just as are my choices of violinists who are profiled here, the list is completely arbitrary.  You will notice that Heifetz figures somewhat prominently and perhaps he would have been named even more times but there are many concertos which he – to the best of my knowledge - never recorded: the Barber, Berg, Dvorak, Haydn, Khachaturian, Mendelssohn 1, Saint Saens 3, Schoenberg, Schumann (!!!), Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and Vivaldi.  Heifetz is named 12 times; Isaac Stern is named 1 time,  Gil Shaham is named 2 times; Michael Rabin is named 2 times; all the rest only once.  Not counting Vivaldi, there are 42 concertos included. I also threw in a few concert favorites which are not concertos but are very frequently played. 

Actor                        Pip Clarke

Bach 1                      Vladimir Spivakov

Bach 2                      Isabelle Faust

Barber                      Elmar Oliveira

Beethoven                Arabella Steinbacher

Berg                         Ivry Gitlis

Brahms                     Jascha Heifetz

Bruch 1                     Isaac Stern

Bruch 2                     Jascha Heifetz

Conus                       Jascha Heifetz

Dvorak                     Joseph Suk

Elgar                        Jascha Heifetz

Glazunov                  Ilya Kaler

Haydn 1                    Judith Ingolfsson

Khachaturian            Leonid Kogan

Korngold                  Jascha Heifetz

Lalo 2                       Joshua Bell

Mendelssohn 1         Yehudi Menuhin

Mendelssohn 2         Gil Shaham

Mozart 3                   Arthur Grumiaux

Mozart 4                   JuliaFischer

Mozart 5                   Jascha Heifetz

Paganini 1                Michael Rabin

Paganini 2                Tedi Papavrami

Paganini 3                Henryk Szeryng

Paganini 4                Uto Ughi

Paganini 5                Salvatore Accardo

Prokofiev 1              Jascha Heifetz

Prokofiev 2              Jascha Heifetz

Saint Saens 3           Zino Francescatti

Schoenberg              Zvi Zeitlin

Schumann                Frank Zimmermann

Shostakovich 1        Leonid Kogan

Shostakovich 2        Itzhak Perlman

Sibelius                    Jascha Heifetz

Stravinsky                Hilary Hahn

Tchaikovsky            Tossy Spivakovsky

Vieuxtemps 4           Jascha Heifetz

Vieuxtemps 5           Jascha Heifetz

Vivaldi 1-50             Fabio Biondi

Vivaldi 50-100         Giuliano Carmignola

Vivaldi 100-150       Simon Standage

Vivaldi 150-200       Enrico Onofri

Walton                     Jascha Heifetz
Wieniawski I           Gil Shaham 

Wieniawski II         Michael Rabin 

Zigeunerweisen       Joseph Lendvay 
Zigeunerweisen      Arthur Grumiaux 
Zigeunerweisen       Mischa Elman 

Zigeunerweisen       Leila Josefowicz 
Tzigane                    Jascha Heifetz 

Poeme                      Jascha Heifetz 
Rondo Capriccioso Leila Josefowicz 

Bach Chaconne       Viktoria Mullova 

Tossy Spivakovsky

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.  

Silvia Marcovici

Silvia Marcovici is a Romanian violinist and teacher born (in Bacau) on January 30, 1952 (Itzhak Perlman was 7 years old.)  She is practically the only artist in the western world without a website.  Marcovici began her studies at an early age in Bacau.  Her formal studies took place at the Conservatory in Bucharest.  Stefan Gheorghiu, a pupil of Oistrakh, was one of her teachers.  At 13, Marcovici made several public appearances and played on Romanian Television.  She made her professional debut at the age of 16 at The Hague.  At age 17, she took second prize in the Jacques Thibaud Competition in Paris – nobody took first prize.  (Something similar happened to Eugene Fodor at the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1974.)  Marcovici later said that she was so nervous before this competition that someone had to push her on stage to perform.  The following year, she took first prize in the George Enesco Competition in Bucharest.  Marcovici first toured the U.S. at age 20.  She played the Glazunov Concerto with the London Symphony (with Leopold Stokowski) at the Royal Albert Hall in 1972. (They had performed the same concert the previous evening at the Festival Hall. Please see comments below.) That was Stokowski’s final appearance with the London Symphony.  It has been frequently remarked that her stage presence is striking.  Her first appearance with the New York Philharmonic was on January 24, 1980.  She was (almost) 28 years old - the third concerto of Saint Saens was the work she played.  Her second (and most recent) appearance with the Philharmonic was on September 28, 2001,  Of the Big Five American orchestras (New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, and Boston) the only one she has never soloed with is the Boston Symphony.  She has recorded under the Decca, BIS, Doremi, and Aurophon labels.  Her discography includes the concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Bruch, Sibelius, and Nielsen.  One of her specialties is the second concerto of Bartok.  Marcovici has toured Japan, Europe, South America, the U.S., and the Middle East, and played with some of the world’s leading conductors.  She also frequently participates in chamber music concerts.  Her playing has been described (by the Daily Telegraph, London, UK) as “beautiful, perfect, with genuine eloquence and feeling.”  There are many great videos of her playing on the internet, including this one on YouTube.  Marcovici currently teaches at the University for Music and Art in Graz (Austria) and has also taught at the Conservatory in Lausanne, Switzerland.  Her views on the career of an artist are stated thus: “The secret of a career lies in the knowledge of how to manage it - adapt your repertoire to your talent, choose carefully where, when and with whom you play.  Know your strengths and your weaknesses.  And then, just pray to the gods that luck may smile on you." 

Joseph Szigeti

Joseph Szigeti was a Hungarian violinist born on September 5, 1892 (Stravinsky was ten years old.) He has never been one of my favorites, though he has been praised by many famous violinists and musicians. It has been said many times that his tone left something to be desired, and that his playing seldom seemed effortless, although his interpretations seemed to have been well thought out, cerebral and intellectual exercises. He began his studies at the age of six but eventually ended up at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest under the tutelage of Jeno Hubay. He began playing many concerts in public while still studying and actually made his Berlin debut at age thirteen. In his late teens, he met Busoni (the piano player), who almost instantly became a great musical influence on him. Somewhat coincidentally, a little later on, while recuperating at a hospital in Geneva, he met Bela Bartok, with whom he remained friends until the end of Bartok's life (1945). In 1917, he was appointed violin teacher at the Geneva Conservatory of Music. He married around that same time (1919) - he and his wife settled in the United States in 1940, but returned to Geneva in 1960. Szigeti retired from playing that same year but continued to teach. He published his violin method book (whom nobody uses any more) in 1969. There are many recordings by him of standard and not so standard pieces in the violin repertoire. You Tube also has several videos of his playing. He appears to have been a pedantic teacher and tutor, focusing much attention on minute details of playing. He died in Geneva, Switzerland on February 19, 1973, at age 80.