Joseph Fuchs (Joseph Philip Fuchs) was an American violinist and
teacher born (in New York) on April 26, 1899.
His early studies were with his father.
He later studied at Juilliard (Institute of Musical Arts - New York)
with Franz Kneisel and Louis Svecenski and graduated in 1918. His American debut took place in 1920 at the
Aeolian Hall. He then went to Berlin for
further study and to play in several German orchestras in Frankfurt, Munich, and
Berlin. Returning to New York in 1922 or
1923, he played in the Capitol Theatre Orchestra for some time (where Eugene
Ormandy was concertmaster) but also played wherever else the opportunity
arose. Though very highly respected with
a distinguished career as teacher and concert violinist, his profile was never
very high because – Alessandro Rolla comes to mind - he lived during a time
when Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, Mischa Elman, Nathan Milstein, Yehudi Menuhin,
Michael Rabin, Isaac Stern, Leonid Kogan, David Oistrakh, Arthur Grumiaux, Joseph
Suk, Christian Ferras, Zino Francescatti, Joseph Szigeti, and Ruggiero Ricci
dominated the violin scene. Since he was
concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra for fourteen years (1926 to 1940), his
delayed entry into the concertizing world for that many years may have cost him
dearly. His Carnegie Hall debut did not
come until 1943. He was 44 years
old. Nevertheless, Fuchs toured
extensively all over the world (Europe – 1954, South America – 1957, Russia -
1965) while developing a teaching career in the U.S. Fuchs was also one of a few violinists who
had to retrain after undergoing surgery on his left hand – Huberman and Thibaud
did the same thing. His first appearance
with the New York Philharmonic was on August 1, 1945. He played Bruch’s first concerto on that
occasion. Soon thereafter – on October
27, 1945 - he premiered the Nikolai Lopatnikoff concerto with the same
orchestra. That concerto has probably
not been played much after that though it was recorded by Fuchs. He premiered several other modern works as
well. In 1946, the same year he acquired
the famous Cadiz Stradivarius violin, he began teaching at Juilliard and taught
there almost until the day he died – 51 years.
One of his pupils is Anna Rabinova.
In 1952, he recorded (with Artur Balsam) one of the first complete sets
of the Beethoven violin sonatas. His
last appearance with the New York Philharmonic was on August 1, 1962. A YouTube audio file featuring Fuchs playing
Beethoven’s Romance in G can be found here.
Fuchs’s last recital was in 1992, at Carnegie Hall. He was 93 years old. Nathan Milstein, Joseph Szigeti, Ruggiero Ricci,
Ida Haendal, Abram Shtern, Ivry Gitlis, Zvi Zeitlin, and Roman Totenberg have
also played recitals at a very advanced age.
On the other hand, it may well be that Nicolo Paganini played his last
concert when he was only 52. Joseph
Fuchs died in New York City on March 14, 1997, at age 97. By the way, the Cadiz Strad (1722), having
been sold to an American Foundation, is now on loan to another American
violinist.
Anna Rabinova is a Russian violinist who plays in the New York Philharmonic. She is also a concert violinist, teacher, and chamber musician whose career includes playing as a soloist and recording artist as her schedule allows. I have chosen her to exemplify the high caliber of artists currently playing in the world’s best (and most prestigious) orchestras – Berlin, Concertgebouw, Vienna, London, Chicago, Philadelphia, and, of course, the New York Philharmonic, to name a few. I was recently captivated by her live recording of the Mendelssohn concerto on YouTube (with a European Orchestra) which you can listen to here. I am very discreet with compliments but I must say that its lyricism, sincerity, and beauty took me by surprise. (As so often happens, I found Rabinova’s YouTube performance purely by accident – while researching something else – but I was very glad I did.) She began her violin studies at age 6 with Lev Kogan (pupil of Peter Stolyarsky, the eminent Russian pedagogue who was himself an orchestral violinist.) Later on, at the Moscow Conservatory, she studied with Igor Bezrodny (who premiered Kabalevsky’s violin concerto and was the violinist of the Moscow Trio and pupil of Abram Yampolsky), Mikhail Kopelman (first violinist with the Borodin Quartet and concertmaster of the Moscow Philharmonic), and in New York with Joseph Fuchs. Her debut was in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Rabinova first played in the U.S. in August of 1992 and soon after decided to stay. She joined the New York Philharmonic in 1994. In April 2004 she served as concertmaster of the Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Symphony Orchestra. In October 2008, she was a soloist with the Philharmonic in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, with Lorin Maazel on the podium. Of course, she also frequently performs as a chamber musician when the members of the Philharmonic break up into trios, quartets, sextets, and other larger combinations to perform in New York or elsewhere, as do also musicians in other top orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic (with its famous 12 cellists), the Pittsburgh Symphony, and others. Rabinova, whose repertoire includes all of the standard concertos, has toured Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Bulgaria, performing with the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra and numerous other European orchestras. These include the Halle Philharmonic, Moscow Radio Orchestra, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Russian State Symphony, and Berlin Symphony. In the U. S., she has made solo appearances with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the American Symphony Orchestra, among many others, and has premiered works by John Corigliano, David Winkler, and Alfred Schnittke. As a recitalist in Europe, she has appeared in the Shauspielhaus in Berlin, Tchaikovsky Philharmonic Hall in Moscow, and the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, as well as in venues in Rome, Leipzig, and Belgrade. In the U.S. she has performed at the Phillips Gallery in Washington, D.C., Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and many other venues too numerous to mention. Her festival performances have included appearances at the Schleswig Holstein, Berlin Chamber Music, Long Island Mozart festival, the Music Festival of the Hamptons, and Tanglewood. Rabinova’s recordings include works by Schuman (for Germany’s Auris-Subtilis) and David Winkler’s Violin Concerto (Naxos); in 1998 she recorded sonatas by Brahms and Schubert for an NHK-TV (Japan) chamber music series. Rabinova also recently premiered (May, 2010) a new double violin concerto (with Dmitri Berlinsky) by Winkler. I do not know whether that recording has been issued. She has performed on television in New York, as well as on German and Russian radio. Her violin is a Carlo Landolfi (1758 – Mozart was two years old when it was constructed.)
