Julian Olevsky

Julian Olevsky (Julian Olewsky) was an American violinist and teacher born (in Berlin) on May 7, 1926 - Olevsky's mother was Russian and his father was Polish.  He was a highly respected and admired musician who died at a relatively young age.  At age 7, Olevsky began his studies with his father (Siegmund Olewsky), who was a professional violinist and leader of an orchestra in Berlin.  In 1935, the family had to move from Berlin (by way of Luxembourg) to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where they stayed for about 12 years and perhaps many more.  There, he first studied with Aaron Klasse for two years and then with Alexander Petschnikoff, both of whom were pupils of the famous Hungarian violin pedagogue Leopold Auer, although Petschnikoff also studied with Jan Hrimaly in Moscow.  At age 10, Olevsky made his recital debut and about two years later - in 1938 - made his debut with orchestra.  On that occasion, with the Orquesta Sinfonica Argentina under Austrian conductor Kurt Pahlen, Olevsky played the Glazunov concerto.  He was 12 years old.  Interestingly, Mischa Elman made his British debut with this concerto and Nathan Milstein and Efrem Zimbalist both made their U.S. debuts with this concerto as well.  It has been said that Fritz Busch (brother of violinist Adolf Busch) conducted the orchestra for Olevsky's debut but such is not the case.  However, he later did play (in that same year, 1938) with an orchestra conducted by Fritz Busch - Orquesta de la Asociacion Wagneriana (Orchestra of the Wagner Association) - at the Teatro Presidente Alvear.  The work on the program was Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante (for violin and viola) and the violist was Andre Vancoillie.  Olevsky went on to present his Teatro Colon debut (in Buenos Aires - similar to playing a Carnegie Hall debut in the U.S.) in 1942 with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires with Juan Jose Castro on the podium.  Olevsky subsequently toured South America extensively and eventually came to reside in the U.S. (1947.)  He was 21 years old.  I could not find any reference stating that he had ever attended a conservatory so it is quite possible that all of his music studies were done privately.  In 1949, he made his New York debut at Town Hall.  Between 1947 and 1949, he had devoted much of his time to studying and enriching his recital repertoire.  During that time he also briefly studied with Raphael Bronstein, another pupil of Leopold Auer.  His appearance at Town Hall was highly successful and much-praised.  His accompanist was Wolfgang Rose', Mischa Elman's former accompanist.  Until 1965, Rose' would remain his accompanist for concerts and recordings.  In 1950, Olevsky played his first recital at Carnegie Hall.  He played three more recitals there over the course of his career.  He went on to play in most of the great halls around the world and with some of the great orchestras and conductors - too numerous to mention - who have since become icons and legends in the classical music firmament.  In 1965, he formed a duo with pianist Estela Kersenbaum with whom he toured and later recorded all of the Mozart Sonatas.  With the addition of cellist Paul Olefsky (Olevsky's cousin), the duo also performed as the Olewsky Trio, recording all of the trios by Brahms as well as trios by Arensky and Tchaikovsky.*  In 1967, Olevsky was appointed to a teaching position at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), where he taught until the year he died.  His discography on the Westminster label is somewhat limited but includes twelve concertos of Vivaldi (including the Four Seasons with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra), Bach’s six works for unaccompanied violin, Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole, the Brahms concerto, Bruch’s first concerto, Mendelssohn’s second concerto, and Wieniawski’s second concerto.  I don’t think all of the records have been digitized but you can still acquire one via record collectors – they usually run about forty dollars - although many of his recordings have also been re-issued on the Doremi label.  You will discover that music critics frequently compared Olevsky to Jascha Heifetz and David Oistrakh.  Here is a YouTube file of a performance by Olevsky.  His collection of orchestral and piano scores is now housed at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  Among the violins he played was the Emperor Guarnerius Del Gesu from 1738, one of the better-known Guarnerius violins.  That violin had been owned by one of Napoleon’s Military Assistants and that’s supposedly how it acquired its name.  None of that has actually been confirmed by anyone but is part of violin lore.  Olevsky died suddenly (in Amherst) on May 25, 1985, at age 59.  His students include Charles Sherba, Chris Devine, David Tasgal, Dean Radin, Eric Bachrach, Eric Tanner, Gerald Itzkoff, Matthew Hunter, and Steve Leonard.  
* I am indebted to Ms Estela Kersenbaum Olevsky for much of the information on this blog post. Her website pays tribute to this magnificent violinist, her late husband. 

Erica Morini

Erica Morini (Erika Morini) was an Austrian violinist born on January 5, 1904 (Heifetz was 3 years old.) Morini was known for a refined, silken tone and for being one of the few female concert violinists of the early twentieth century. She received her first instruction from her father (Oskar Morini, student of Joseph Joachim) and mother and completed her studies under the famous pedagogue Otakar Sevcik although she also studied with Jakob Grun, Alma Rose, and Adolf Busch. In 1916, she made her orchestral debut in Vienna, playing Mozart's A major concerto.  In 1917, she made her debut in Berlin under Arthur Nikisch. Her U.S. debut in New York on January 26, 1921 (in Carnegie Hall) was a phenomenal success.  She was 17 years old.  Soon afterward, Maud Powell's Guadagnini violin was presented to her, though most likely only as a loan, since the instrument was later sold to Henry Ford, the car maker.  She made her first visit to London in 1923. When she was 21, her father purchased the Davidoff Strad from a Paris dealer for her and that's the instrument she used for the remainder of her career. After 1938, Morini lived in New York City. She concertized far and wide until her retirement in 1976. She was 72 years old. It has been said that she taught Jascha Heifetz the bowing technique known as staccato.  There are numerous recordings of hers still available and at least one video on YouTube. Some time in 1994 or 1995, her Stradivarius was stolen from her Fifth Avenue apartment but (according to one source), Morini was never told about the theft. It has not been heard from since. Whether the instrument was insured or not is unknown to me. Erica Morini died on October 31, 1995, in relative obscurity, at age 91.

Adolf Busch

Adolf Busch (Adolf Georg Wilhelm Busch) was a German violinist, composer, and teacher born on August 8, 1891 (Stravinsky was 9 years old.) He began violin lessons at age 3 and studied – from age 11 - with Willy Hess at the Cologne Conservatory. Busch also studied composition with his future father-in-law (Hugo Gruters) in Bonn, where he used to sit in on the Joachim Quartet’s rehearsals. In 1912, Busch founded his first quartet, which floundered when the First World War overtook it. After the war, in 1918, he founded the famous Busch Quartet, which played almost continuously until 1951. Apart from this, Busch is remembered for having been one of Yehudi Menuhin’s teachers, though he also taught Erica Morini, among others. In 1927, he moved to Switzerland and from there, in 1939, he moved to Vermont. In the middle of all this, the Busch Quartet had become the core of the Busch Chamber Players, another group Busch founded, and the forerunner of today’s ubiquitous chamber orchestras. In Vermont, he eventually founded (with his son-in-law, Rudolf Serkin, and Marcel Moyse) the Marlboro Music School and Marlboro Music Festival (1951.) During his career, Busch kept concertizing as a soloist, solidifying his reputation as a great Beethoven and Brahms interpreter. Rudolf Serkin often served as his recital accompanist. Though Busch recorded extensively with the quartet, few studio recordings exist of him as a solo player. Live recordings of his performances can be found on YouTube – sound only. It is said that Max Reger (whom he knew since 1907) greatly influenced his composition style. Among his many compositions are a violin concerto, a Quintet for saxophone and string quartet, and a Concerto for Orchestra (1929, fourteen years before Bela Bartok wrote his concerto for orchestra in 1943.)  Adolf Busch died on June 9, 1952, at age 61.

Ruggiero Ricci

Ruggiero Ricci is an Italian (some would say American) violinist, writer, and teacher born (in San Bruno, California) on July 24, 1918 (Heifetz was 17 years old.) He is one of the last great living (legendary) violinists of the Heifetz era – Ivry Gitlis, and Ida Haendel being the other two. He was a child prodigy who first studied violin with his father. At age seven, Ricci studied with Louis Persinger (who also taught Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin, and Zvi Zeitlin, among others.) Later on, Persinger was also his piano accompanist for many recitals and recordings. One of Ricci’s other teachers was Adolph Busch. His first public performance took place in San Francisco in 1928, at age 10, playing works by Wieniawski, Vieuxtemps, Mendelssohn, and Saint Saens. At age 11, he made his orchestral debut with the Mendelssohn concerto and later that same year gave his Carnegie Hall debut in New York which solidly established him as a virtuoso concert violinist. A quote from a review of the concert has become famous: "All that great violinists do, he did." As a teenager, he went to Berlin for further study. He toured Europe in 1932 (age 14) and continued his worldwide concertizing until 1942. During the Second World War, he played hundreds of concerts everywhere as an enlisted man (1942-1945.) His repertoire includes over 50 concertos, myriads of solo violin works, sonatas, and showpieces. There are several videos of his playing on YouTube, though some are sound-only uploads. One of them is here. His discography is enormous – over 500 recordings. In fact, he has recorded the complete Paganini Caprices no less than four times, the first one dating from 1947 (he was the first to do so) and the last one from 1988.  On one of his interesting recordings he plays 16 different cadenzas for the Brahms concerto.  Jascha Heifetz, Louis Kaufman, and Steven Staryk might rival him in the recording sphere - they also have enormous discographies.  Ricci has taught at Juilliard, Indiana University, and at the Mozarteum (Austria), among other schools. His book on left hand technique is a classic. Ricci played his last concert in the U.S. in October, 2003, in Washington D.C., having already given over 5000 concerts during his 75-year career.  In all those years, he played many violins - a 1731 Guarnerius, a 1734 Guarnerius, a 1771 Balestrieri, a 1780 Storioni, a 1714 Stradivarius, and a Vuillaume (with double purfling) from an undetermined year. (See comment below.)  The 1714 Stradivarius has had at least 18 different owners but only 3 have been musicians.  In 1995, Ricci commissioned a violin from modern luthier Samuel Zygmuntowicz.  The violin was a copy of the famous Plowden Guarnerius Del Gesu.  It was sold in 2012 for about $65,000. 

Willy Hess

Willy Hess was a German violinist and teacher born on July 14, 1859 (Brahms was 26 years old.) He first studied with his father, who was a student of Louis Spohr, and later with Joseph Joachim. He was the concertmaster of the opera orchestra in Frankfurt from 1878 to 1886. Thereafter he taught violin at the Rotterdam Conservatory from 1886 to 1888. He then left to sit first chair in the Halle Orchestra (1888-1895.) From there, he went to the Cologne Conservatory (1895-1903.) For six years he was the concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1904-1910.) While there, he also taught at Harvard University. In 1910, he moved back to Berlin to teach violin at the Hochschule (Academy for Music) after receiving an invitation some time in March of that year. Hess worked closely with composer Max Bruch for a time and even premiered some of his violin works. Adolf Busch, Henri Temianka, and Arthur Fiedler were among his many students. It has been said that Hess was a tall and slender man, in the style of Paganini. He also sometimes sported a beard. I have no photos of him, only his autograph, with a quote from the Beethoven violin concerto. Hess died in Berlin on the eve of World War Two - February 17, 1939.

Yehudi Menuhin

Yehudi Menuhin, was a Russian violinist and conductor born on April 22, 1916 (Heifetz was 15 years old.) He began his career as a child prodigy, having started on the violin at age 3. His teachers were Sigmund Anker, Louis Persinger, Eugene Ysaye, Adolf Busch, and Georges Enesco, among others. He made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony in 1923 – at age 7. It is after a concert of his in 1929 that Einstein made the comment after hearing him play "Now I know that there is a God!" All I know is that he played the Paganini Moto Perpetuo faster than anyone else I’ve heard. He was one of four concert violinists to play three concerti in one concert (1929 - Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.) Raymond Cohen, Szymon Goldberg, and Henryk Szeryng were the other three. He was also the first Jewish musician to play in Germany after the Holocaust (1947.) His recording contract with EMI set a record for longevity (70 years.) Menuhin played the Prince Khevenhuller Stradivarius (1733), among other fine violins. In the midst of his career he developed arm problems for which he consulted Theodore Pashkus and his wife (Alice), well-known violin pedagogues at the time. He died on March 12, 1999, at age 82.