Kristof Barati is a Hungarian violinist and
teacher born (in Budapest) on May 17, 1979.
Although born in Hungary, he and his family spent a few years in
Venezuela (for reasons unknown) and he even began violin lessons there with his
mother at age 5. By age 8 he was giving
concerts with orchestras in Venezuela. I
don’t know at what point the family moved from Venezuela to Europe but several
sources state he performed in France at age 11.
Sometime after or before this, he relocated to Hungary to study at the
well-known Franz Liszt Academy. Exactly
what year that was is unknown to me. His
teachers at the academy were Miklos Szenthelyi and Vilmos Tatrai. By 1995, at age 16, he began entering violin
competitions at which he was very successful, placing either first, second, or
third at all of them. In 1996, he began
studying privately with a little-known professor of violin, Eduard Wulfson, in
Paris. Music critics frequently praise
his musicianship (artistry) in addition to his phenomenal technical
prowess. In addition to his world-wide
concertizing, he also takes part in important music festivals in Italy, France,
Switzerland, and elsewhere as a chamber music player. Barati’s discography is not yet extensive,
but his recordings of the first and second Paganini concertos are among the
best. His recording of the Mozart
concertos (all five) has also been very highly praised. Although he has played other very fine and
valuable violins, for about 14 years (from 2003), he played (and recorded with)
the Lady Harmsworth Stradivarius violin constructed in 1703. I don’t know if he is currently using that
instrument. He is known for being a very
strong chess player and avid photographer.
Barati has taught at the Sorbonne in Paris and at other venues as a
masterclass professor. Although he has
not (as far as I know) performed all 24 Paganini Caprices at a single recital,
he has performed all six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin by Bach in one
(very lengthy) recital (in France, then again in Russia.) Here is a link to the entire recording of the
Mozart concertos, courtesy of Brilliant Classics recordings. Here is a YouTube video of a movement from
the Bach Sonata number 1.
Peter
Rybar was a Czech violinist and teacher born (in Vienna, Austria) on August 29,
1913. His playing style was not showy
and flashy but he was very well regarded as a soloist and concertmaster -
Rybar’s recordings (mostly produced prior to 1960) are now collector’s
items. (His recording of the Bach Double
Concerto (for two violins) with Henryk Szeryng is probably the best I have ever
heard.) Nonetheless, as were so many
other artists of the time, he was eclipsed by the likes of Heifetz, Ricci, Oistrakh,
Menuhin, Milstein, Francescatti, Kogan, Grumiaux, and a few other soloists who
performed in the limelight during the same period. Like Szeryng, he became fluent in seven
languages, although (ironically) English was his mother tongue. His first teacher (a pupil of both Otakar
Sevcik and Cesar Thomson) was his mother.
He then studied in Geneva and Leipzig with teachers whom I don’t know
anything about. He eventually (in 1929,
at age 16) ended up at the Prague Conservatory where he spent three years
(perhaps more.) One of his teachers there
was Josef Suk - the elder Josef Suk (1874-1935.) (There are three Josef Suk: the grandfather (composer
and son-in-law of Antonin Dvorak); the father (an engineer but also an
accomplished amateur violinist); and the son (the well-known concert violinist.) Rybar also later (from 1934 onward) studied
with Carl Flesch in Paris. By then, he
had already begun his concertizing career (at age 19) and been playing
professionally for at least two years. He
toured Europe many times and became known for playing the Bach Sonatas and
Partitas for unaccompanied violin to which he had dedicated more than a year of
study during a sabbatical in Portugal. Although
he did not premiere the piece (Samuel Dushkin did in Berlin), Rybar was the
first to play the Stravinsky violin concerto (composed in 1931) in Prague and
in Paris. He was also the first to
record the Goldmark and the Viotti (number 22 in a minor) concertos. In 1937 (some sources say 1938), he was hired
as violin professor at the Winterthur Conservatory (one of the oldest in
Europe) and as concertmaster of the Winterthur Symphony in Switzerland. He was 25 years old. (Winterthur can almost be considered a suburb
of Zurich.) In 1952, he formed a duo
with his wife who was a pianist. He
retired from his posts (as well as first violinist in the orchestra’s string
quartet) after about 30 years. In 1970,
he was persuaded to abandon his retirement to become concertmaster of the
Orchestra of the Suisse Romande in Geneva.
At the same time, he began teaching at the Geneva Conservatory. He was 57 years old by then. In 1980, he left the orchestra but I don’t
know if he left the conservatory as well.
He often gave recitals with pianists Wilhelm Backhaus, Edwin Fischer, and
Helene Boschi. He also sometimes
partnered with Clara Haskil as well (who often accompanied Arthur Grumiaux) in
recitals and recordings. Rybar last
played in public in 1986. His
discography is not extensive but it fills at least two dozen CDs and includes
the standard concertos as well as some not-often-heard works like the Tartini d
minor concerto and the Schumann concerto.
A few of his hard-to-find recordings are priced at over one thousand
dollars. Here is a YouTube audio file of
the Tartini concerto. Rybar died in
Lugano, Switzerland, on October 4, 2002 at age 89.
Tossy Spivakovsky (Nathan Spivakovsky) was a
Russian (Ukrainian) violinist and teacher born (in Odessa) on December 23,
1906. He belongs squarely in the era of
individualistic virtuosos born (mostly) in the first half of the Twentieth
Century – the era of Kreisler, Kogan, Elman, Milstein, Thibaud, Grumiaux, Spalding,
Zimbalist, Suk, Brown, Gitlis, Huberman, Hartmann, Haendel, Heifetz, Oistrakh, Ricci,
Rabin, Ferras, Francescatti, and a few others.
By 1990, most of these players were dead. It has been said that Spivakovsky was a
“highly eccentric violinist with an unconventional bow and violin hold.” For many years, Spivakovsky had a very
successful solo career, though he was not among the virtuosos who studied with
Leopold Auer, Peter Stolyarsky, Abram Yampolsky, or Carl Flesch. He studied in Berlin with Willy Hess at the
Royal Academy (Advanced School for Music) and gave his first public performance
at age 10. At age 13, as soon as World
War I ended, he toured Europe for the first time. At age 18 (1925), he became concertmaster of
the Berlin Philharmonic. He spent a year
there (one usually-reliable source says it was two years) then left to pursue a
career as a soloist. Also in the 1920s,
he – with his older pianist brother Jascha – formed the Spivakovsky Duo. In 1930, he played and toured with the Spivakovsky-Kurtz
Trio. In 1933, the trio found itself in
Australia where it (rather spontaneously) decided to stay because of the
political changes then taking place in Germany.
Spivakovsky took a teaching position at the University of Melbourne, as
did the other two members of the trio – Jascha Spivakovsky, pianist, and Edmund
Kurtz, cellist. In 1940, Spivakovsky
came to the U.S. He was 34 years
old. Interestingly, Spivakovsky had two
other (older) brothers who were accomplished musicians – Isaac and Adolf – who had
joined him in Australia in 1934. They
(and Jascha) remained in Australia when Spivakovsky emigrated to the U.S. That same year (1940), Spivakovsky made his
debut in Town Hall (New York.) After
some concertizing activity, in 1942, he was appointed concertmaster of the
Cleveland Orchestra. While serving as
concertmaster in Cleveland, he gave the U.S. premiere of Bartok’s second
concerto (1943) in one of its programs.
On October 14, 1943, he gave the first New York performance of the same
work with the New York Philharmonic, an orchestra with which he appeared more than 20 times.
Bartok himself said his playing of the concerto was first rate. Wherever he played, he received extremely
favorable reviews. With the New York
Philharmonic, he performed four concertos which never became part of the
standard repertoire – those by Gian Carlo Menotti, Roger Sessions, Carl
Nielsen, and Frank Martin. Spivakovsky stepped down from his Cleveland post in 1945. His
interpretations have been described as highly personalized, meaning that he put
his temperamental (some would say idiosyncratic) stamp on everything he
played. A few YouTube audio files bear
witness to this. One of them is
here. His playing of the Tchaikovsky
concerto is done in a manner unlike anything I have heard before. As an added bonus, in the C major passage
which immediately follows the re-statement of the main theme by the orchestra
(about 8 minutes into the first movement), Spivakovsky plays the repeat of the
variation-like section an octave higher.
I know of only eight other violinists who do this – Jascha Heifetz, Erick Friedman, Nathan Milstein, Konstanty Kulka, Jane Peters, Andras Agoston, Leonid Kogan, and Leila Josefowicz. You can listen for yourself
here. Spivakovsky concertized
extensively in Europe, the U.S., and South America for about four decades. Most of his recordings were done between 1925
and 1960 but they are few and far between - most are still available. He taught at Juilliard (New York) between
1974 and 1989. He was 68 years old when
he began teaching there and 83 when he retired.
As far as I know, he had no famous students. An explanation of his unorthodox bow hold was
published in a book in 1949. Spivakovsky
was known to conduct extensive research into original editions of music to get
as accurate a picture of composers’ intentions as possible. His violin was a 1769 G.B. Guadagnini. I don't know what became of it. He also published an essay on Bach’s
unaccompanied violin Partitas in 1967.
His ideas were not widely adopted, but that’s putting it mildly. Spivakovsky died (in Westport, Connecticut)
on July 20, 1998, at age 91.
