Jascha Brodsky was a Russian (Ukrainian) violinist
and teacher born (in Kharkof aka Kharkiv) on June 6, 1907. Although he began his career as a concert
violinist, he is primarily remembered as a great violin pedagogue, in the same
league as Peter Stolyarsky, Carl Flesch, Leopold Auer, Zakhar Bron, Ivan
Galamian, and Josef Gingold. Brodsky
shares a surname with another (not related) famous violinist: AdolphBrodsky. His first lessons (at age six) were
with his father. Such was also the case
with Jascha Heifetz and his father. He
also studied at the music conservatory of Tblisi (Georgia) and began
concertizing in Russia, appearing with several orchestras in Russia in his
early teens. He left for Paris in
1926. He was 19 years old. In Paris he studied with Lucien Capet and
later on, in Belgium, with Eugene Ysaye.
During that time, he played with Nathan Milstein and Vladimir
Horowitz. Milstein and Horowitz were
very close friends and had fled Russia at almost the same time in 1925. In 1930, with advice from Mischa Elman, Brodsky became a student of Efrem Zimbalist at the Curtis Institute (U.S.). In 1932, he began teaching at Curtis. By then, he had also become first violinist
of what became the Curtis String Quartet, with Benjamin Sharlip, Max Aronoff,
and Orlando Cole. The quartet was
invited to play at the White House at a later time. It was also the quartet for whom Samuel Barber wrote his string quartet - the one that includes the famous Adagio (Opus 11, completed in 1936.) The Curtis String Quartet did not, however, premiere the Barber quartet - Barber did not finish it in time. Barber's Opus 11 was premiered by the Pro Arte Quartet in late 1936 in Italy and was subsequently revised and re-premiered by the Budapest String Quartet in the U.S. in 1943. Brodsky retired from the quartet in 1981 and from
Curtis in 1996. He was 88 years old. An audio file of Schumann's Opus 41, number 1 (with Louis Berman on second violin) can be heard here in its entirety. He also taught (from
1942 onward) at the New School for Music (later – in 1986 - merging with Temple
University) in Philadelphia. His students include Jaime Laredo, Judith
Ingolfsson, Juliette Kang, Judy Barrett, Julie Kurtzman, Joey Corpus, Hilary
Hahn, Alan McChesney, Herbert Greenberg, Monica Bauchwitz, Ellen de Pasquale, Joseph
de Pasquale, Robert de Pasquale, Levon Zarasian, Martin Chalifour, Chin Kim,
Leila Josefowicz, and Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg.
For a short while, Brodsky played
– on loan from Curtis – the 1697 Molitor Stradivarius. Curtis acquired the Molitor in 1929 but got
rid of it in 1936. The Molitor has been
around a bit and is now owned by Anne Akiko Meyers - it had been previously played by Henri
Temianka and (more recently) Elmar Oliveira. For about
ten years, Brodsky also played a Stradivarius violin from 1694, also from the
Curtis Institute’s collection. The
violin had previously been owned by Karl Halir.
Curtis sold it in 1947. I don’t
know what violin Brodsky played after that. He died (in Ocala, Florida) on March 3, 1997, at age 89.
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.
Mischa Elman (Mikhail Saulovich Elman) was a Russian (Ukrainian) violinist born on January 20, 1891 (Stravinsky was 9 years old.) He was known for his short stature, unusual vibrato technique, soulful style, and beautiful tone. He auditioned for Leopold Auer at age 11, playing Wieniawski's concerto in d minor and Paganini's 24th Caprice. Auer then had Elman admitted to the St Petersburg Conservatory, where he (Auer) was a violin instructor. (An amusing song later composed by the Gershwin brothers mentioned Mischa (Elman), Jascha (Heifetz), Toscha (Seidel), and a few other students of Leopold Auer.) In 1903, Elman began to play concerts in the homes of wealthy patrons and, in 1904, made his debut in Berlin. In 1905, he made his London debut with Glazunov's concerto. In 1908, he came to the U.S. and played in Carnegie Hall. He recorded extensively but not nearly as much as other violinists of his time (such as Heifetz, Menuhin, Gitlis, Francescatti, and Ricci.) Elman died on April 5, 1967, at age 76.
Itzhak Perlman is an Israeli violinist, teacher, and conductor born on August 31, 1945 (Heifetz was 43 years old.) He is at the forefront of virtuosos (Zukerman, Kremer, Mullova, Wha Chung, Midori, Laredo, Accardo, Fodor, etc.) who came after the early Twentieth Century era of violinists – Kreisler, Milstein, Gitlis, Heifetz, Elman, Szeryng, Zimbalist, Oistrakh, Kogan, Haendel, Francescatti, Ricci, Ferras, Stern, Grumiaux and others. In addition to a golden tone and an impressive, seemingly effortless technique, he is known for having a good bass voice and a charismatic stage presence. He first took up the violin at age 5 while living in Tel Aviv, Israel. He came to the U.S. in 1958. Winning a scholarship, Perlman attended the Juilliard School of Music (New York) where his teachers were Ivan Galamian and Dorothy Delay. Today, he teaches in their place. His U.S. debut (at Carnegie Hall) took place in 1963 and Perlman has been concertizing, recording, and making television appearances ever since. In addition, as most concert artists of today do, he frequently plays chamber music. His conducting work is mostly done with the Detroit Symphony and the Westchester Philharmonic. Perlman has a profile page on MySpace and YouTube features lots of videos of his playing. A particular favorite of viewers is the Handel Halvorsen Passacaglia (with Pinchas Zukerman on viola.) Perlman plays the Soil Stradivarius of 1714, previously owned by Yehudi Menuhin.
