Giovanni Ricordi

Giovanni Ricordi was an Italian violinist and publisher born (in Milan) sometime in 1785.  Mozart was then still very much alive.  Ricordi is a good example of violinists who give up their performing careers to pursue other interests – violinists such as Iso Briselli, Arthur Judson, Patricia Travers, Laura Archera, and Olga Rudge.  He began his violin studies at an early age but who his teachers were is a mystery.  He was good enough to become the concertmaster of a theatre orchestra in Milan.  However, by age 18, he was already working as a music copyist and dealer in instruments.  By 1806 he had a contract with the Carcano Theatre to supply parts and scores for their productions.  He liked the business well enough to undertake a trip to Germany in 1807 to study in Leipzig at the Breitkopf & Hartel printing establishment.  A few months later, he returned to Milan to start his own publishing company – Casa Ricordi.  He was 23 years old.  He must have been a little bit of a workaholic because he was also the prompter at the opera house (La Scala) during this time.  It can be said he established one of the first music libraries.  Ricordi gradually acquired most of the theatrical works by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, and Verdi, among many others.  By 1814, he had published his first catalogue, by that time already owning almost 800 scores.  He had by then probably given up violin playing in public completely though I am not certain of that.  In 1840, Ricordi persuaded the Austrian government to establish something akin to copyrights for composers and publishers in Italy.  The idea – which we now take for granted - soon spread worldwide.  Ricordi died (in Milan) on March 15, 1853, at age 68.  By 1908, the number of Ricordi Editions had reached 112,446.  Ricordi eventually also got into printing books and advertising posters.  Some of the posters are collectors' items although still quite affordable.  

Russian Violinists

These Russian violinists (and a few more) are included among those about whom I have written micro biographies:  Joseph Achron, Iso Briselli, Zakhar Bron, Mischa Elman, Leonard Friedman, Elizabeth Gilels, Ivry Gitlis, Boris Goldstein, Alexei Gorokhov, Eduard Grach, Jascha Heifetz, Julia Igonina, Iliana Isakadze, Ilya Kaler, Leonid Kogan, Andrei Korsakov, Natasha Korsakova, Louis Krasner, Albert Markov, Nathan Milstein, Viktoria Mullova, David Oistrakh, Anna Rabinova, Vadim Repin, Alexander Schneider, Abram Shtern, Toscha Seidel, Vladimir Spivakov, Steven Staryk, Peter Stolyarsky, Maxim Vengerov, Abram Yampolsky, Zvi Zeitlin, Efrem Zimbalist,....  Even among avid and knowledgeable concert goers, only three or four are known.  I asked a violinist colleague the other day whether he had heard a certain recording by Ivry Gitlis.  He did not even know who Gitlis was.  It is generally agreed that Heifetz, Gitlis, Kogan, Milstein, and Oistrakh, are at the very top.  The others are superlative players who for reasons known only to a few, have never achieved that rank which bequeaths an aura of violinistic sainthood of sorts – more than mere historic immortality.  Nevertheless, they form the superstructure on which the others stand, the ones against whom we identify the greatest.  It is also interesting that some of the greatest Russian players were students of a Hungarian, not Russian, violinist: Leopold Auer.

Victor Young

Victor Young was an American violinist, composer, arranger, and conductor, born (in Chicago) on August 8, 1899 (two years before Heifetz was born.)  He is an example of instrumentalists who gravitate from concertizing to other endeavors – in his case, composing, arranging, and conducting for films and records.  Violinists Iso Briselli, Pierre Monteux, Jaap Van Zweden, Eddy Brown, and Joseph Achron are five others who more-or-less switched careers as other things drew their attention.  Young is remembered as having been nominated for an Academy Award 22 times (an all-time record) and never actually winning – in any case, not while he was alive.  He began violin studies with Isidor Lotto (pupil of Joseph Lambert Massart and teacher of Bronislaw Huberman) at the Warsaw Conservatory at age 10 and later studied piano with Isidor Philipp (pupil of Camille Saint Saens) at the Paris Conservatory.  Being highly gifted, at age 13, he made his debut with the Warsaw Philharmonic.  He toured Europe as a soloist for a while, but with the outbreak of World War One in 1914, his grandparents, who had been raising him since his arrival in Europe, sent him back to the U.S.  Young then embarked on a career as an orchestral violinist with popular and classical orchestras, often serving as concertmaster or conductor in theatre and radio orchestras, all the while teaching himself the art of arranging popular music.  He was barely 16 years old.  These activities were mostly centered in Chicago.  He played in the Isham Jones and Ted Fiorito orchestras during this time - other members of the Jones orchestra were Woody Herman and Benny Goodman, both of whom would become more famous than Young.  He participated in early recordings with Bing Crosby and radio programs with Betty Grable too.  In New York, where he moved in 1931, Young recorded with Tommy Dorsey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Al Jolson, and Lee Wiley (his girlfriend), among many others.  In 1933, he started writing music for films, his first one being Murder at the Vanities (a rather obscure but notorious film.  Some sources say his first movie score was Wells Fargo – a film about the stage coach company, not the bank.)  In 1934, Young signed a contract with Decca Records and stayed with them for the rest of his life.  In 1936, he moved to Hollywood, initially writing music for Paramount Pictures and leading the orchestra at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.  In Hollywood, he eventually wrote soundtracks for movies and television and recorded with many legendary stars, Judy Garland among them.  His scores include Golden Boy, Around the World in Eighty Days, Shane, Samson and Delilah, Scaramouche, Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.  It is known that Young was a workaholic.  In fact, he died while working on a movie score (China Gate), on November 10, 1956, at age 57.  By then, he had worked on over 350 movies and had spent almost 90 percent of his professional life in the popular music sphere.  It had been a long way from the Warsaw Philharmonic to the Hollywood sound studios.  Brandeis University (Boston) has  a collection containing more than one hundred scores and recordings of Young's music.  About Victor Young, Henry Mancini has been quoted as saying “All he had to do was sit down at the piano and the melodies fell out of his sleeves.” 

Iso Briselli

Iso Briselli (Isaak Briselli) was a Russian (Ukrainian) violinist born on October 20, 1912 (Heifetz was 11 years old.)  Although he concertized for over two decades, he is remembered (as is Franz Clement) for having commissioned a famous concerto – Samuel Barber’s violin concerto.  He began studies at age 3 and while still a child studied with Peter Stolyarsky before his family moved to Berlin (1922) where he began his studies with Carl Flesch.  Two years later, when Flesch moved to the U.S. to teach at the new Curtis Institute (Philadelphia), he encouraged Briselli to go with him.  He arrived in the U.S. - together with the Flesch family - in December of 1924.  Briselli entered Curtis during the winter of 1925 and thus became part of the very first class, at age 13, to enter Curtis.  After Flesch left Curtis (1928), Briselli studied with Leopold Auer and Efrem Zimbalist, among others.  He graduated in May, 1934.  Soon after Briselli arrived in the U.S., a rich Philadelphian – Samuel Fels - informally adopted Briselli and became his patron as well.  Briselli made his debut in 1926 with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Artur Rodzinski, playing the first Paganini concerto.  He was 14 years old.  In 1939, Fels engaged (for $1000) the unknown Barber – who was a fellow Curtis student, although much older - to write a concerto for Briselli.  The concerto was finished in December of 1939.  The myth about Briselli finding the third movement of the concerto too difficult started with Barber and a writer by the name of Nathan Broder.  It was documented later on by Barbara Heyman, a Samuel Barber biographer (1992), that the story was wholly untrue.  Thousands of historically incorrect concert program notes (and liner notes for albums) have been written since Broder’s false story first came out.  Although Barber knew the true facts, he never did anything to set the record straight.  At the time of the commission, Briselli was already a brilliant violinist who regularly played the works of Paganini, Wieniawski, Sarasate, Vieuxtemps, Ysaye, Bruch, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Dvorak, and all the rest.  It is logical to suppose that the third movement of the Barber would have posed no serious challenges.  Indeed, Briselli never said the movement was too difficult or unplayable.  He objected to the music itself – it did not musically fit the other two movements and it was not an appropriate finale and not grand enough – speaking from a traditional point of view, it was too weak.  It is interesting that critics who first heard the concerto agreed with Briselli’s opinion, though they did not know it at the time.  Briselli never played the concerto in public.  Briselli stopped concertizing in the mid 1940s to devote his time to the various Fels Fund philanthropic projects.  He died on April 9, 2005, at age 92. 

Albert Spalding

Albert Spalding was an American violinist, composer, writer, and teacher born (in Chicago) on August 15, 1888 (Brahms was 55 years old.) It has been said that he was the first American-born violinist of international stature. Aside from being a superlative virtuoso, he is remembered for many different things. Spalding was an early recording pioneer, playing for over 100 recordings, mostly for the Edison Company. He was also a member of the armed forces twice – during World War One and World War Two, serving in what today would be known as the Intelligence branches. Spalding premiered Barber’s violin concerto (February, 1941) when the violinist who commissioned it (Iso Briselli) refused to play it. He wrote two violin concertos (among other things), though they are no longer played. In the 1920s, he was one of the first to play classical music concerts on the radio. His uncle was a Hall-of-Fame baseball player (pitcher) who began a world famous sporting goods company. Spalding began his violin studies at age 7. His first lessons were in Florence, Italy. He also studied in New York, Paris, and Bologna. At the age of 14, he received his degree and title of Professor of Music from the Bologna Conservatory. He made his public debut in Paris at age 16 (1906) with the third Saint Saens Concerto. With the composer on the podium, Spalding played the same concerto in Florence a year later and received much praise. He then appeared in London and Vienna. On November 8, 1908, he made his American debut in New York (with the New York Symphony, under the baton of Walter Damrosch.) In 1909, he toured the U.S. with the Dresden Philharmonic. He was 21 years old.  From that point forward – except for the two breaks taken to serve during World Wars One and Two - he concertized throughout the world. Spalding retired in May of 1950, just after having played with the New York Philharmonic for an audience of 20,000 in New York. He taught at Boston College and Florida State University. Spalding also wrote his autobiography (1946) and a novel (1953.) He died unexpectedly in New York on May 26, 1953, at the age of 64.

Leopold Auer

Leopold Auer was a Hungarian violinist, teacher, conductor, and composer born on June 7, 1845 (Brahms was 12 years old.) He was born in a small town and first studied with Kohne in Budapest then with Dont in Vienna but stopped in 1858 when the scholarship money from his wealthy patrons ran out. At that point, being only 13 years of age, he was actually forced to start playing for a living. Auer went on to study with Joseph Joachim for two very critical years in Hanover (1861-1863.) From there, he went to work as an orchestral musician in Dusseldorf and Hamburg. In 1868, a trip to London proved fruitful. There, he met pianist Anton Rubinstein, who invited him to teach at the recently founded (1862) St Petersburg Conservatory. The rest is history, since Auer stayed on for 49 years. Nevertheless, Auer continued to play in the various orchestras of the Imperial Theatres and to perform extensively as soloist in other venues. He was also first violin of the string quartet of the Russian Musical Society for 38 years. He came to the U. S. in 1918, debuting in Carnegie Hall in March of that year – aged 73. He started teaching at the Juilliard School of Music in 1926 and at the Curtis Institute in 1928. Before then, he had taught privately from his home studio. Auer is remembered for refusing to play the Tchaikovsky violin concerto despite its having been dedicated to him and for having produced some of the finest violinists of the early Twentieth Century – Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein, Mischa Elman, Boris Chumachenko, Iso Briselli, Mishel Piastro, Kathleen Parlow, Toscha Seidel, Emil Mlynarski, and Efrem Zimbalist among them. He was also somewhat unusual in that, unlike most violinists, he did not idolize J.S. Bach, though he played some of Bach’s music for violin. In addition to three books on violin technique, he wrote some pieces which are now seldom played (if at all) and an arrangement of Paganini’s Twenty Fourth Caprice which Heifetz used to play. Auer died on July 15, 1930, at age 85 (Heifetz was 28 years old.)

Ole Bull

Ole Bull (Ole Bornemann Bull) was a Norwegian violinist and composer born on this day (February 5) in 1810 (Beethoven was 40 years old). At the early age of 9, he was a soloist with the Bergen Music Society. He studied briefly with Louis Spohr, although he disliked him. Ole Bull was not one to do things formally or by the book but he became a very successful performer and knew many of the outstanding musicians of his day, some of whom admired him greatly. Perhaps he was a lot like Franz Clement, the violinist who commissioned Beethoven's violin concerto. In 1829, Bull played in Copenhagen and Kassel and in 1831 he travelled to Paris. He was 21 years old. He is said to have killed a man in a duel. He concertized a great deal in England, Ireland, and America, making quite a bit of money. The great fortune he made was badly invested several times but he always recovered by taking up the violin and touring again. His second wife was young enough to be his granddaughter, but the marriage was a happy one. Eugene Ysaye was like Ole Bull in this respect - in his old age, he married a woman 44 years younger than he was. Bull's first concert in America took place on November 25, 1843. He was 33 years old. His first violin seems to have been a 1734 Guarnerius.  He later acquired a 1690 Stradivarius and a 1687 Stradivarius which now bears his name.  That violin was later played by Paul Kochanski then still later by Iso Briselli.  A 1647 Amati and a 1610 Gasparo Bertolotti may have been Ole Bull's last instruments.  Bertolotti (aka Da Salo) was one of the earliest known violin makers.  It appears Ole Bull went backwards in the age of his violins - the older he got, the older his violins, too.  Bull died on August 18, 1880, at age 71. One of his violin concertos can be heard here. It is surely one of the most bombastic works for violin ever written and gives an indication to his performing style.