Augustin Dumay

Augustin Dumay is a French violinist, teacher, and conductor born on January 17, 1949.  He has enjoyed an international career since 1979, although he has spent most of his time in Europe and Japan.  He has recorded most of the standard repertoire (a repertoire consisting of about 15 concertos plus a few sonatas by the upper crust of composers for the violin – Bach, Vivaldi, Brahms, Mozart, Beethoven, Franck, Prokofiev, Strauss, and Debussy) on more than forty discs.  Dumay has appeared with most major orchestras and conductors in the most important and prestigious venues around the world.  He began his studies as a child but with whom I do not know.  He entered the Paris Conservatory when he was 9 years old.  After two years at the Conservatory, he studied privately with a few teachers, including Nathan Milstein and Arthur Grumiaux.  His public debut came at age 14 at the well-known Montreux Festival in Switzerland.  Orchestras he has conducted include the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia (since 2003), the Salzburg Camerata, the Picardie Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony, the Kansai Philharmonic, the Sinfonia Varsovia, and the English Chamber Orchestra.  It has been said that none other than Herbert von Karajan gave him conducting lessons.  He has taught at the Queen Elizabeth College of Music in Brussels.  Here is a YouTube video of him playing the seldom heard Mendelssohn concerto for violin in d minor. 

Peter Stolyarsky

Peter Stolyarsky (Pyotr Solomonovich Stoliarsky), was a Russian (Ukrainian) violinist and teacher born on November 18, 1871 (Brahms was 38 years old.)  He, like Leopold Auer, Carl Flesch, and Ivan Galamian, is remembered as a pedagogue and not a concertizing soloist.  He began his studies with his father then progressed to Stanislaw Barcewicz, Emil Mlynarski (the founder of the Warsaw Philharmonic) in Poland, and Josef Karbulka back in Odessa.   He graduated from the Odessa Conservatory in 1893 and went to work almost immediately in the orchestra of the Odessa Opera House where he played for about 26 years.  He started teaching privately in 1898 and opened his own music school in 1912 (some sources say 1911), at age 41.  From 1919 he taught at the Odessa Conservatory.  He was instrumental in the opening in Odessa of a music school for gifted children in 1933.  His famous pupils include David Oistrakh, Nathan Milstein, Boris Goldstein, Albert Markov, Naoum Blinder, Elizabeth Gilels, Eduard Grach, and Zakhar Bron (himself an eminent teacher.)  Stolyarsky died on April 29, 1944, at age 72.

Nathan Milstein

Nathan Milstein (Nathan Mironovich Milstein) was a Russian violinist born on December 31, 1903 - some sources say December 31, 1904 and others say January 13, 1904 (Heifetz was 2 years old.) He was often called the "prince of the violin." He started studying the violin at age 4 (some say age 7) with Peter Stolyarsky, a popular teacher in Odessa (Russia) who also taught David Oistrakh around the same time. At age 10 (1914), he left studying with Stolyarsky and entered the Odessa Conservatory. By age 12, he had entered the St Petersburg Conservatory where Leopold Auer was teaching. His fellow students were Elman, Heifetz, Seidel, and Zimbalist, among many others. He studied with Auer until the summer of 1917 and had no additional instruction thereafter. He is said to have premiered the first concerto by Prokofiev in 1923 in Russia.  The concerto had already been played for the first time in Paris that same year.  In 1925, he left Russia to play a few concerts in Europe and never returned. In 1926, he studied with Eugene Ysaye (in Belgium) for a few weeks but later said he learned nothing from him - it was actually Ysaye who told him he had no need of any further lessons. In that same year, Milstein made his Paris debut. On October 17, 1929 (some sources say November 29, 1929) he made his American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra playing Glazunov's concerto and thereafter concertized non-stop until July, 1986. He is remembered for a very clean and precise technique and very appealing tone. He is also remembered for his Paganiniana - a dazzling arrangement of different tunes written by Nicolo Paganini. Between 1930 and 1986, he recorded most of the violin repertory. Of the Brahms concerto alone there are no fewer than five studio recordings available - each with a different orchestra. Although he made seven (studio) recordings of the Mendelssohn concerto, he didn't record the Sibelius or the Stravinsky concertos even once. Those works were probably not in his repertoire. There are also many superb videos of his playing on YouTube - all of them professionally produced. Milstein died in London on December 21, 1992, at age 88. (Of that era, only Ruggiero Ricci, Albert Markov, Zvi Zeitlin, David Nadien, Camilla Wicks, Ida Haendel, and Ivry Gitlis remain.)

Erick Friedman

Erick Friedman (Eric Friedman) was an American violinist and teacher born on August 16, 1939 (Heifetz was 38 years old.) He is mostly remembered for being Jascha Heifetz' favorite pupil. He began to study violin at age 6 with his father, an amateur violinist. A little later on, he studied with Samuel Applebaum. At age 10, he enrolled at the Juilliard School of Music (New York) where he studied with Ivan Galamian for six years. From age 14, he also studied with Nathan Milstein. It was also at age 14 that he made his New York debut. In 1959 (some sources say 1957), against the advice of his concert manager (Arthur Judson), he interrupted his concertizing career to study with Jascha Heifetz at the University of Southern California. After three years with Heifetz, he successfully re-started his world-wide concert career. By then, he had already made his most famous recording - the Bach Double Violin Concerto, with Heifetz as collaborator (1961.) It has been said that this is the only recording Heifetz ever shared with any other violinist. Some say that he developed a sound very similar to Heifetz' sound. You can judge for yourself here.  It is a recording of the Mendelssohn concerto.  Without any real need to boost his career and against the advice of Heifetz (but with plenty of prompting from David Oistrakh), Friedman entered the 1966 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Although he came in SIXTH place, his career did not seem to suffer from this apparently orchestrated setback - Friedman continued to concertize and record for the next 20 years or so. It has been said that Oistrakh engineered Friedman's low placement so as to embarrass Heifetz (who was still considered a defector from Russia), and to advance his own son's career - Igor Oistrakh's concert career, that is. Due to an auto accident in the late 1980s, which injured his left arm, Friedman gave up playing in public. After a long five-year recuperation, he returned to the stage five years later.  He took a permanent teaching position at Yale University in 1989, although he had also taught at the Manhattan School of Music, at Southern Methodist University, and at the North Carolina School of the Arts prior to this. Among many other works, he recorded the Tchaikovsky concerto three times - 1962, 1978, and 1997. He also regularly conducted various chamber groups and adjudicated at several international violin competitions. Among other violins, he played the Ludwig Stradivarius (1724.) Friedman taught at Yale up until one week before he died, March 30, 2004, at age 64.

Eugene Ysaye

Eugène Ysaÿe was a Belgian violinist, composer, conductor, and teacher born on July 16, 1858 (Brahms was 25 years old.) His first lessons were with his father but later on, he was largely self-taught until about age 12. After he entered the Conservatory at Liege at age 7, he was dismissed because he made little progress. As a teenager, he became a pupil of both Henryk Wieniawski and Henri Vieuxtemps. Having graduated from the same conservatory he had previously been kicked out of, he became concertmaster of a highly accomplished orchestra which was about to become (in 1882) the Berlin Philharmonic – Benjamin Bilse’s Band. Many famous musicians frequented the beer hall where this orchestra played – among them were Joseph Joachim, Franz Lizst, Clara Schumann, and Anton Rubinstein. At age 27, Ysaye made his Paris debut and thus began a highly successful concert career. The following year, he was appointed violin professor at the Conservatory in Brussels, Belgium. Louis Persinger, Josef Gingold, Nathan Milstein, Alfred Dubois, Jascha Brodsky, Nikolai Sokoloff, and William Primrose were among his many students. In 1886, he founded the Ysaye String Quartet. Debussy, Saint Saenz, Chausson, and Franck were among composers who dedicated works to him. Ysaye was a busy concert artist. In fact, he turned down the conductor’s post at the New York Philharmonic when it was offered to him (1898) precisely because he was too busy. Understandably, Ysaye did not have too much time to compose though he wrote six sonatas for solo violin which are part of the standard repertoire, some chamber music, a few orchestral pieces, and an opera (Peter the Miner.) Carl Flesch, the Hungarian violin pedagogue was quoted as saying that Ysaye was the most outstanding and individual violinist that he had ever heard in his life.   Ysaye was principal conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony for four years – 1918 to 1922 – and made a few recordings with that orchestra. It was during his tenure there that he met his second wife – he was 66 and she was 22 (Jeanette Dincin, a violinist.) Ysaye died in Brussels on May 12, 1931, at age 72. 

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.)

My Heifetz Theory

So, what made the great Heifetz so great and distinct? Everyone knows that there have been other very great virtuosos on the scene – Milstein, Kogan, Oistrakh, Gitlis, Rabin, just to name a very few. But almost universally, Heifetz is recognized as being above and beyond this group. Why? He had a unique style, a unique sound, and prodigious technique for sure, but so do the others. It has been said that his intonation was flawless though it wasn’t. Was it just the seriousness of his playing? My theory is that this intrinsic seriousness was part and parcel of the sound. It was communicated via his tone. Somehow, that sound always told you that something special was happening. Every time I hear someone with a similar tone, I pay attention. I take note. I know there are players out there right now who rival Heifetz’ technique, but that’s as far as they get. They do not have the sound. The secret was in his tone - but, how to describe that sound? If we could say it in words, there would be no need to listen. Still, all in all, my favorite fiddler isn’t Heifetz – it’s Ivry Gitlis.