Edouard Colonne

Edouard Colonne (Edouard Juda Colonne) was a French violinist and conductor born (in Bordeaux) on July 23, 1838.  He is best recognized as the founder (actually, co-founder) of the Concerts Colonne and what became known as the Colonne Orchestra in Paris, in 1873.  He was an orchestral violinist for at least ten years but is now almost exclusively remembered as a conductor and concert promoter, in the style of Theodore Thomas.  He began his music studies at age 8, but not on the violin.  He entered the Paris Conservatory at about age 17 but did not study with any famous teachers there.  While going to school, he played in the orchestra of the Lyric Theatre.  In 1863 he won first prize for his violin playing and had already (in 1858) won first prize in harmony.  He was engaged as concertmaster for the Paris Opera orchestra in 1858 – he was 20 years old.  He also played second violin in the Lamoureux Quartet at the same time – Charles Lamoureux played first violin.  Possibly (actually, very probably) simultaneously, he also played in Jules Pasdeloup’s orchestra.  In 1867, he came to New York to play in an orchestra for a newly founded comic opera company; while in New York, Colonne later led an ensemble called Niblo’s Garden Orchestra which until now I had never heard of.  He returned to Paris in 1871 and conducted a hotel orchestra for a while.  In 1873, he founded – together with a music publisher – the orchestra that would become the Colonne Orchestra.  His concerts became known as the Concerts Colonne.  This name was used until the 1960s – about ninety years.  At first, the orchestra presented its concerts at the Odeon Theatre and later at the Theatre of the Chatelet.  Colonne was known to champion the music of Hector Berlioz, Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, and Camille Saint Saens.  It has been said that Pierre Monteux was Principal violist of the Colonne Orchestra.  Other famous players who played in his orchestra for a time were Julius Conus and Jacques Thibaud.  Colonne gave the Paris premiere of Tchaikovsky’s fourth symphony in 1878, the year it was completed.  The orchestra toured Spain, Russia, Portugal, Germany, and England.  Among the musical luminaries who conducted the orchestra in performances of their own works were Serge Prokofiev, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Peter Tchaikovsky, Claude Debussy, Edvard Grieg, and Maurice Ravel.  In 1892, Colonne became conductor and adviser at the Paris Opera.  He was 54 years old.  In 1907 (one source says 1906), he was one of the first to record with an orchestra.  It has been said that he was hard on his players.  Colonne was a pioneer in that his program books were the first to include program notes.  Perhaps they included advertisements as well though I’m not at all sure about that.  He died (in Paris) on March 28, 1910, at age 71.  

Ferdinand Laub

Ferdinand Laub was a Czech violinist, teacher, and composer, born (in Prague) on January 19, 1832.  Though he worked closely with Tchaikovsky and other famous musicians, he is almost completely forgotten today.  It has been said that he lived the life of a Romantic (Bohemian) because he had no permanent residence.  Since he gave a public concert at age six, he must have had lessons from infancy, though it is not known with whom he began his violin studies – it may have been his father or mother.  By age nine, he was already being praised by well-known musicians, including the Norwegian violinist, Ole Bull.  In 1843, he entered the Prague Conservatory, where he studied with Moritz Mildner.  He was 11 years old.  Archduke Stephan subsequently gave him an Amati violin and recommendations which helped Laub in Vienna.  Upon leaving the Conservatory in 1846, he played in the Imperial band (Court Orchestra) in Vienna.  He was 14 years old.  Hungarian violinist Joseph Bohm was playing in the same orchestra at that time.  In 1850, he toured Europe as a soloist and was very well received in Paris and London.  From 1853 to 1855, he taught at a music school in Weimar, where Joseph Joachim had previously taught.  From 1855 to 1862, he taught at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin.  He was also concertmaster of the Court Orchestra there (until 1864.)  In 1864, he undertook another European tour with three other musicians.  Musicians with whom he came in contact included Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, Hans Von Bulow, Clara Schumann, Bedrich Smetana, Heinrich Ernst, and Joseph Joachim.  In 1866, at age 34, he became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory.  Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky called him “the best violinist of our time.”  Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky did not write his famous violin concerto for Laub – Laub died before the concerto was even begun.  Perhaps it might have been – we will never know.  Tchaikovsky wrote the concerto for Joseph Kotek (who later refused to play it) but dedicated it to Leopold Auer, a teacher at the St Petersburg Conservatory, who did not particularly like it and did not play its premiere.  However, Laub, as first violinist of a string quartet, did give the first performances of Tchaikovsky’s first and second string quartets.  In 1874, Laub was forced to stop working altogether because of illness.  On March 17, 1875, he died (in Gries, Northern Italy), on his way to a spa, being only 43 years old.  Laub played the Laub Stradivarius of 1722 (or 1727 – sources differ) which later went to violinist Alexander Petschnikoff and later still to Calvin Sieb, concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony.  It is now presumably in the hands of one of the concertmasters of that orchestra, since the violin belongs to the orchestra.  Laub’s compositions include violin and vocal works which are now never performed.

Antonio Bazzini

Antonio Bazzini was an Italian violinist, composer and teacher born on March 11, 1818 (Beethoven was 48 years old.) He began violin studies at age 7 with Faustino Camisani, director of the local orchestra. He only studied with him until he was 12 because Camisani then died. After that, he didn’t bother with any other teachers - he taught himself. By age 17, he had been appointed music director of the San Filippo church in Brescia, his native town. It has been said that after a chamber music concert on March 20, 1836, the great Paganini himself advised the young 18-year-old Bazzini to tour as a concert virtuoso. Bazzini took his advice and toured much of Europe on and off until about 1864, finally settling down in Brescia, where he taught and composed. He had already lived in Leipzig, Germany for four years (1841-1845) and in Paris for eleven (1852-1863.) It is thought that along the way, he gave the first private performance of Mendelssohn’s e minor violin concerto. In 1873, he became professor of composition at the Milan Conservatory, where three of his pupils were Catalani, Mascagni, and Puccini. Thanks partly to Bazzini’s advocacy, musicians have been using A-440 as the standard pitch for tuning, first adopted in Italy in 1881. As a composer. he is mostly remembered for the Dance of the Goblins, a tune for violin and piano which every violinist who can play it plays. However, he also wrote chamber music and many oratorios, tone poems, operas, and concertos, among which are several violin concertos which are now completely forgotten. His Turandot opera came 57 years before Puccini’s (in 1924), but he also wrote Francesca Da Rimini (in 1890) 14 years after Tchaikovsky composed his. Bazzini died in Milan on 10 February 1897 (Stravinsky was nine years old) at age 78.

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.)