Tor Aulin was a Swedish
violinist, conductor, and composer born (in Saltsjobaden) on September 10,
1866. I have never heard any of his
music but it is said to have traces of the influence of Grieg and Schumann
which is to say that it sounds nice. Here is a YouTube file of his second violin concerto - the one in a minor. Scant information is available about him on the internet so I do not
know at what age he began his violin studies.
From 1877 to 1883, Aulin studied at the Stockholm Conservatory of music
aka the Royal College of Music in Stockholm.
He then studied an additional two years with violin virtuoso Emile
Sauret in Berlin, at the Berlin Conservatory (probably the Stern Academy) from
1884 to 1886. He also studied
composition and conducting with Philipp Scharwenka in Berlin though I’m
guessing not at the same school since Scharwenka had a private conservatory of
his own. In 1887, Aulin founded the
Aulin Quartet, the first professional string quartet in Sweden. He was 21 years old. From 1889 to 1892, Aulin was concertmaster of
the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm. He
spent some time conducting the symphony orchestras in Stockholm and Gothenburg
as well – it is very likely that Sweden had no full-time orchestras prior to
1900. I do not know if he was permanent
director with any Stockholm orchestra but he did have a post with the
Gothenburg Symphony from 1909 to 1912.
The Aulin Quartet was disbanded in 1912.
He championed the works of his fellow countrymen, Franz Berwald and
Wilhelm Stenhammar and premiered some of Stenhammar’s violin works. Aulin composed a number of works for
orchestra – including three violin concertos – and numerous works for chamber
groups and solo instruments, including works for violin and piano. A YouTube file of his third violin concerto (in c minor - dedicated to Henri Marteau - published in 1904 and now in the public domain) can be found here. I do not know if it has ever been heard (in a live performance) outside Sweden. Recordings of some of Aulin's violin (with orchestra) works can be found here. He also wrote cadenzas for at least two of Mozart's violin concertos. Aulin died on March 1, 1914, at age 47 - the
First World War had not yet begun. Today, at least outside of Sweden, Aulin remains a very obscure musician.
Manrico Padovani is a Swiss-Italian violinist born on August 12, 1973 (Perlman was 27 years old.) He is the first Swiss violinist to perform all 24 of Paganini’s Caprices in concert in a single evening (Zürich, 2006.) Born in Zürich to Italian parents, he began his violin studies as a child and later entered (in Winterthur, Switzerland) the class of Aida Stucki-Piraccini (who had also taught Anne-Sophie Mutter much earlier.) (Winterthur is 15 miles northeast of the city of Zurich and is the city where in 1900, Albert Einstein first worked as a tutor before landing a job in the patent office in Bern) At the Royal Conservatory in Amsterdam, Padovani studied with Hermann Krebbers. Additionally, in Europe, he studied with Ruggiero Ricci, Boris Belkin, and Franco Gulli among other master violin teachers and composers. He graduated from the Winterthurer Conservatory in 1991 and made his debut in Lucerne in 1992. He has been concertizing in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. ever since and has even been called the “devil’s fiddler” for his brilliant technique and playing style. Nobody has yet said that Padovani is in league with the devil, as Paganini was said to be, but it could yet happen – music critics can say and write what they wish. His recordings include the concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, Paganini, Prokofiev, and others in the standard repertoire. His recording of the Beethoven concerto (with the Moscow Philharmonic) is especially remarkable in that Padovani uses Leopold Auer’s cadenza, not Kreisler’s (the Kreisler cadenza is the one most used by violinists.) He is the only one to do so. For the Paganini concerto, he uses the most difficult cadenza ever written for this concerto – the one by Emile Sauret. His recent performances in Vienna and Prague are available on DVD as well (this is not surprising since Padovani is very photogenic) and a live CD recording of the second Paganini concerto (B minor) in Seoul is also already in the catalog. He also recently recorded the soundtrack to the European film Sinestesia (2010) and the 24 Caprices of Paganini. (Other concert violinists who have recorded soundtracks are Joshua Bell, Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern, Toscha Seidel, and Louis Kaufman.) In addition, he has made a very large number of radio and television appearances in Europe and Canada. (Eddy Brown used to play almost exclusively on radio.) There are also several videos of his concert appearances on YouTube, including the incredibly difficult Ernst arrangement of Schubert’s Der Erlkonig. He frequently performs chamber music with other major artists and often appears in duo violin performances with Russian violinist Natasha Korsakova with whom he will also record several double concertos in 2011. (Natasha Korsakova is profiled on this blog - December 15.) Padovani played on a Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume violin (1861) for some time but presently plays the 1722 Jupiter (ex-Goding) Stradivarius. (There is another Jupiter Strad from the year 1700.)
Otakar Sevcik was a Czech violinist and teacher born on March 22, 1852 (Brahms was 19 years old.) (Emile Sauret – French violinist - was born exactly two months after Sevcik.) He lived long enough to witness the transition from the old school of violin playing (Paganini, Lipinski, Spohr, Viotti, Kreutzer, Vieuxtemps, Ernst, Enesco, Wieniawski, Remenyi, Sarasate, Joachim, De Beriot, Ysaye, etc.) to the modern era (Thibaud, Elman, Milstein, Heifetz, Kogan, Ferras, Francescatti, Grumiaux, Szerying, Stern, Schneiderhan, Campoli, Haendel, Ricci, Oistrakh, etc.) which to us is now the old school. When he reached old age, it was said that during the course of his career he had had well over five thousand pupils. Of those five thousand, about seven are well known. As far as I know, he taught in more conservatories (and more cities) than any other pedagogue; Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, Kiev, Pisek, Kharkiv, London, Chicago, Boston, and New York among them. He, like Henryk Szerying, spoke seven languages fluently. At age 7, he took his first lessons from his father, though his father never intended for little Sevcik to become a violinist. His first public appearance he made at age 9. Even though he failed the entrance exam twice, he entered the Prague Conservatory at age 14 (1866) where one of his teachers was Antonin Bennewitz, Director of the Conservatory who later on became his bitter enemy. While he was there, Sevcik made his living singing in the choir in a convent. (I don’t know which convent.) At age 18 (1870), he graduated from the conservatory and made his debut soon thereafter playing Beethoven’s violin concerto. He then took a job as concertmaster (and professor) of the Mozarteum orchestra in Salzburg. In 1873, he was appointed concertmaster of the Provisional Theatre in Prague (playing under composer and conductor Bedrich Smetana) and (apparently simultaneously) conductor of the Comic Opera in the Ring Theatre in Vienna. Only two years later (1875), he took a job as professor of violin in Kiev (Ukraine) at the music school of the Russian Music Society where he remained until 1892. All the while, he had been touring as a soloist in Poland, Austria, and Russia. He had by then developed a violin method which he used in his classes (published 1880-1893.) In 1892, at age 40, he took the position of violin professor at his old school, the Prague Conservatory. He was, however, forbidden (by the Director - Bennewitz) from using his violin method at the conservatory; nevertheless, he secretly used his method using manuscript copies which students made from printed ones. He remained at the conservatory until 1906. Between 1906 and 1909, he taught privately in Pisek, a small town in Southern Bohemia. He took a position at the Vienna Music Academy in 1909 and was there until 1918 (some sources say 1919.) He left to go back to the Prague Conservatory and this time stayed until 1921. After that, he traveled in the U.S. and England, teaching as he went. It has been said that he insisted that his pupils practice eight hours a day. Some say that what he actually said was that it did not matter how long they practiced as long as they achieved the results he asked for. Among his famous pupils are Jan Kubelik, Efrem Zimbalist, Marie Hall (for whom Vaughan Williams wrote The Lark Ascending), Victor Kolar (conductor of the Detroit Symphony), Jaroslav Kocian (teacher of Josef Suk), Erica Morini, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Julius Singer, and Josef Karbulka (teacher of Peter Stolyarsky.) His various method books are still being used today. Otakar Sevcik died on January 18, 1934, at age 81, in Pisek.
William Reed (William Henry Reed) was an English violinist, teacher, composer, and conductor born on July 29, 1876 (Brahms was 43 years old.) Though he was concertmaster of the London Symphony for 23 years (1912-1935) and had a very busy career as a violinist, he is now best remembered as Edward Elgar’s biographer (1936.) Reed studied under Emile Sauret at the Royal Academy of Music (London.) In 1904, Reed was one of the founding members of the London Symphony. By 1910, he was assisting Elgar with technical problems in his violin concerto. Reed even played the concerto in a public performance of the work (off Broadway, so to speak) on September 4, 1910. The concerto was later dedicated to Fritz Kreisler, who premiered it on November 10, 1910 (presumably with the Royal Philharmonic in London.) Reed taught violin at the Royal College of Music for many years, where one of his pupils was the mother (Jean Hermione Johnstone) of Andrew Lloyd Webber, the popular music composer. Reed composed works large and small, most notably a violin concerto and a viola concerto which are now never performed. Reed died in Scotland on July 2, 1942, at age 66.
Emile Sauret was a French violinist and composer born on May 22, 1852 (Brahms was 19 years old.) He began studying violin at age 6 with Charles Rondolet at Strasburg. Two years later, he was already concertizing. As a young touring artist, his father was his constant companion. Later on, and almost simultaneously, he studied with Charles De Beriot and Henri Vieuxtemps. Like Paganini before him, he never attended a conservatory. His first appearance in England was in 1862, at age 10. He made a return visit in 1866. He was known for his constant European and world-wide travels and his numerous friendships with the most famous musicians of his time – Rossini, Grieg, Brahms, Liszt, Bruch, Saint Saenz, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Sarasate, Ernst, Wieniawski, Bazzini, and Sivori, to name a few. He toured the U.S. in 1872, where Liszt accompanied him on at least two recitals. He also often played for French Emperor-President Napoleon III and his court. It has been said that his repertoire included no less than 70 concertos and 400 miscellaneous works. In 1873, he married Teresa Carreno, the Venezuelan concert pianist and composer of the national anthem of Venezuela. They divorced in 1875. In 1879, he married Emmy Hotter and henceforth taught at the Stern Academy in Berlin for a number of years. 1890 found him teaching at the Royal Academy of Music in London, which he made his home until his death. In 1903, he taught at the Chicago Musical College. One of his students in Chicago was Sol B. Cohen, a well-known composer, violinist, conductor, and teacher of the early and mid Twentieth Century. Sauret's last teaching appointment was at the Trinity College of Music (in London) where he taught between 1915 and 1919. Among Sauret's famous pupils are William Reed and Isolde Menges. Today, Sauret is mostly remembered for the famous and very difficult cadenza he wrote for Paganini’s first violin concerto, although he wrote more than 200 other works, including three violin concertos - the first in g minor, the second in E major, and the third in B minor. He also wrote a book of extraordinarily difficult violin studies which almost nobody uses now. A Stradivarius violin from 1685 is named after him. A Guarnerius violin from 1744 is also named after him. Sauret died in London on February 12, 1920, at age 68.
