Sascha Jacobsen was a
Russian violinist and teacher born (in Helsinki, Finland) on December 10, 1895. Jacobsen’s birthdate is also given as
November 29, 1895 and December 11, 1895.
Little is known of his early life.
It has been said that he grew up in St Petersburg. He has been often confused with another
violinist (from Philadelphia) named Sascha Jacobson. A humorous song written by George Gershwin in
1921 includes his (first) name (along with those of Jascha, Toscha, and Mischa
– Russian violinists Heifetz, Seidel, and Elman, respectively.) It is known that he enrolled at Juilliard in
1908 where his main teacher was Franz Kneisel.
He graduated from Juilliard (Institute of Musical Art) in June of 1914
(some sources say 1915.) He was 18 years
old. (A fellow-student of his was Elias
Breeskin.) In February of 1915, Jacobsen
played parts of Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnol at an Aeolian Hall concert. On November 27, 1915, he made his official
recital debut at Aeolian Hall playing (among other things) Saint Saens’ third
concerto. After the announced program
was concluded, he had to play numerous encores and he received very favorable
reviews the following day. He first
soloed with the New York Philharmonic on March 9, 1919 (at age 23) playing
Bruch’s first concerto with Walter Damrosch conducting. Jacobsen concertized as a soloist between
1915 and 1925. He began teaching at
Juilliard in 1926. After being hired, he
almost immediately formed the Musical Art Quartet which disbanded in 1945,
after almost 20 years of concert activity.
Recordings of this quartet are not hard to find. Jacobsen also did solo recordings, although
mostly of short works for violin and piano.
A well-known recording of his is the Chausson concerto for string
quartet, violin, and piano with Jascha Heifetz as violin soloist. You can listen to that recording here. He moved to Los Angeles (California, USA) in
1946 and taught at the Los Angeles Conservatory but at other music schools as
well. From September 1947 and May 1949,
he was guest concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Some sources say he was concertmaster up to
1952 but I could not confirm that. It
has been said that Albert Einstein was one of Jacobsen’s pupils. (Einstein also took lessons from Toscha
Seidel.) Jacobsen’s most famous pupils
are probably Julius Hegyi and Zvi Zeitlin.
Among the violins he played are the Red Diamond Stradivarius (1732), the
Cessole Stradivarius (1716), the Windsor Stradivarius (1717), a GB Guadagnini
(1779), another GB Guadagnini (1772), and a Del Gesu Guarnerius constructed in
1732. Jacobsen died on March 19, 1972,
at age 76.
Josef Gingold was a Russian (Belarusian)
violinist, author, and teacher born on October, 28, 1909. He is mostly known for having been a highly
successful teacher, one of the artists who put the Indiana University School of
Music (Bloomington, Indiana) on the map.
Many have put him on the level of Ivan Galamian as an influential violin
pedagogue. He began his violin studies
as a child (perhaps at age 4) and gave his first public performance for a group
of German soldiers during World War I. He
was not yet 6 years old and had not yet learned to read music. In October of 1920, his family came to the
U.S. and he began his studies at the Music School Settlement in New York City.
Later on, from age 12, he studied privately with Vladimir Graffman (father of
pianist Gary Graffman), an assistant to the great pedagogue, Leopold Auer. Gingold then made his debut at Aeolian Hall
in 1926 when he was 17 years old – one source says 1930, which quite possibly
was a second debut. Between May, 1927
and September, 1929, he studied with Eugene Ysaye in Belgium. While there, he gave the premiere of Ysaye’s
Ballade – his third sonata for unaccompanied violin (Opus 27, No.3.) – on or
about February 28, 1928, at the Brussels Conservatory. Gingold also gave the first U.S. performance
of the same work. While in Europe,
Gingold concertized for at least a year (in Belgium, France, and Holland) but
returned to the U.S. in the fall of 1929.
He gave a recital in New York and performed as soloist with the
Minneapolis Symphony but things ended there.
Additional work was very hard to come by. Nevertheless, he played successfully, earning about $85 a week, as a free-lance
violinist – for Broadway shows, the Chicago World’s Fair, the Manhattan
Symphony, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and anywhere else he might find employment,
even if temporary - until he landed a position in the first violins of the NBC
Symphony in 1937. He played there for
seven seasons. In those years, several
string players who would later reach world-class status as soloists played
anywhere they could. Those players
included Eugene Ormandy, Pablo Casals, Mischa Elman, Leonard Rose, Joseph
Fuchs, Milton Katims, William Primrose, Oscar Shumsky, Israel Baker, Frank
Miller, Emanuel Vardi, and Elias Breeskin.
Gingold also joined the Primrose Quartet, playing second violin to Oscar
Shumsky. He later played first violin in
the NBC Quartet. In 1944, Gingold
accepted the position of concertmaster with the Detroit Symphony. He was 34 years old. Three years later, he began his tenure as
concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra, where he remained for 13 years. While in Cleveland, Gingold taught at Case
Western Reserve University. In 1960, he
took up teaching full-time at Indiana University. He also taught master classes around the
world. It has been said that Gingold
emphasized individuality in his teaching, in the style of Leopold Auer. He edited many violin works and compiled a
3-volume set of orchestral excerpts which is highly valued by aspiring
orchestral violinists. You can hear one of Gingold's audio files on YouTube here. Among his
many pupils are Joseph Silverstein, Jaime Laredo, Philippe Graffin, Erez Ofer, Raymond
Kobler, Corey Cerovsek, Miriam Fried, Catherine Lange, Anne Akiko-Myers, Eugene Fodor, Arturo
Delmoni, Leonidas Kavakos, William Preucil, Philip Setzer, Shony Braun, and Joshua
Bell. Josef Gingold died on January 11,
1995, at age 85. His violin, which he
obtained in 1946, was the Martinelli Stradivarius of 1683. In 1998, Gingold’s son George (a lawyer) got
into a legal fight with a violin dealer over the commission he owed after the
dealer sold the violin (for $1.6 million.)
The fight was settled out of court.
Augustin Hadelich had this violin on loan from 2006 until 2010.
Louis Persinger (Louis Humphreys Persinger) was an American violinist, teacher, and pianist born (in Rochester, Illinois) on February 11, 1887 (Brahms was 54 years old.) Some sources give the year of his birth as 1888. So fleeting was his fame as a virtuoso that Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Third Edition, 1953) has no mention of him. His concertizing career was short-lived. However, his name is now immortal thanks to several outstanding violinists he taught – Yehudi Menuhin, Ruggiero Ricci, Isaac Stern, Donald Erickson, Zvi Zeitlin, Guila Bustabo, Arnold Eidus, Camilla Wicks, Louise Behrend, Nannette Levi, Fredell Lack, Leonard Posner, Frances Magnes, Francis Chaplin, Sonya Monosoff, Roland Vamos, and Hermilo Novelo among them. In fact, he not only taught them, being an accomplished pianist (as were Fritz Kreisler and Arthur Grumiaux and now Julia Fischer and Arabella Steinbacher), he accompanied several of them on recitals and recordings. (Ricci, Erickson, Wicks, Zeitlin, and Lack are still with us and Zeitlin and Ricci are still actively teaching. I believe Camilla Wicks easily rivaled Heifetz, Ricci, Milstein, and Kogan. It is an artistic tragedy that she had to interrupt her career in order to raise her five children.) Persinger also taught Dorothy DeLay who then went on to become the teacher of some of the greatest violinists of the twentieth century. Some time during his childhood, Persinger moved to Colorado (USA.) With financial backing from a generous and wealthy patron (Winfield Scott Stratton, Colorado Springs gold mine owner) he started out on his career and eventually travelled to Europe (1909) where he studied with Hans Becker at the Leipzig Conservatory, later with Eugene Ysaye (presumably in Brussels, Belgium), and with Jacques Thibaud in France for two summers. He made his London debut on May 9, 1912 (at age 25) at Bechstein Hall (now Wigmore Hall) and received excellent reviews. The Titanic disaster had already occurred - April 15, 1912. On November 1 and 2, 1912, he played with the Philadelphia Orchestra with Stokowski on the podium. On November 9 of the same year he made his New York recital debut at the Aeolian Hall, the site of the world premiere of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in 1924. It was a small hall, seating about 1100. His accompanist was pianist Samuel Chotzinoff, who would later accompany Jascha Heifetz and Efrem Zimbalist as well, become Director of Music at NBC (1936), become a music critic, and write Toscanini’s biography (1956.) Among the works Persinger played were a concerto by Pietro Nardini (an obscure work though Pinchas Zukerman has made a recording of it) and the Bruch g minor concerto. He also played six encores. The reviews were very favorable. More than a month later (December 22, 1912), he played Edouard Lalo’s violin concerto in f minor (Opus 20 – not the better-known Symphonie Espagnole, Opus 21) with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. Returning to Europe, he served as concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic (some sources say he played in the first violin section) and was also concertmaster of the Royal Opera Orchestra in Brussels, Belgium. In 1915, he accepted the post of concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony. He was also named assistant conductor. He was 28 years old. He later became the Director of the Chamber Music Society of that city. It was in San Francisco that he had the good fortune to be sought out by Ricci, Menuhin, and Stern. In 1925, he moved to New York. In 1930, he was appointed professor at the Institute of Musical Art (Juilliard) to replace Leopold Auer. He taught at Juilliard until the day he died. Menuhin later said “I was, in some ways, the pupil of Persinger’s abandoned dreams.” Around the same time, Persinger was also on the violin faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music. Persinger played a Nicolas Lupot violin for some time although he also played a Stradivarius and a Guarnerius violin. YouTube has a recording of him playing the Capriccio Espagnol solos with the San Francisco Symphony and some with him playing piano for Menuhin. The only other recording by Persinger that I know of is the one with his son Rolf, the late principal violist of the San Francisco Symphony (1963-1976), featuring works by Hindemith and Handel. He was a chess player too, though not a very good one. David Oistrakh, among others, beat him at it. (Since I have beaten a computer at its top level, I know I would probably have been able to beat him, too. On the other hand, he was a much, much better violinist than I.) Persinger died in New York City on New Year’s Eve, 1966. He was 79 years old.
