Jascha Brodsky was a Russian (Ukrainian) violinist
and teacher born (in Kharkof aka Kharkiv) on June 6, 1907. Although he began his career as a concert
violinist, he is primarily remembered as a great violin pedagogue, in the same
league as Peter Stolyarsky, Carl Flesch, Leopold Auer, Zakhar Bron, Ivan
Galamian, and Josef Gingold. Brodsky
shares a surname with another (not related) famous violinist: AdolphBrodsky. His first lessons (at age six) were
with his father. Such was also the case
with Jascha Heifetz and his father. He
also studied at the music conservatory of Tblisi (Georgia) and began
concertizing in Russia, appearing with several orchestras in Russia in his
early teens. He left for Paris in
1926. He was 19 years old. In Paris he studied with Lucien Capet and
later on, in Belgium, with Eugene Ysaye.
During that time, he played with Nathan Milstein and Vladimir
Horowitz. Milstein and Horowitz were
very close friends and had fled Russia at almost the same time in 1925. In 1930, with advice from Mischa Elman, Brodsky became a student of Efrem Zimbalist at the Curtis Institute (U.S.). In 1932, he began teaching at Curtis. By then, he had also become first violinist
of what became the Curtis String Quartet, with Benjamin Sharlip, Max Aronoff,
and Orlando Cole. The quartet was
invited to play at the White House at a later time. It was also the quartet for whom Samuel Barber wrote his string quartet - the one that includes the famous Adagio (Opus 11, completed in 1936.) The Curtis String Quartet did not, however, premiere the Barber quartet - Barber did not finish it in time. Barber's Opus 11 was premiered by the Pro Arte Quartet in late 1936 in Italy and was subsequently revised and re-premiered by the Budapest String Quartet in the U.S. in 1943. Brodsky retired from the quartet in 1981 and from
Curtis in 1996. He was 88 years old. An audio file of Schumann's Opus 41, number 1 (with Louis Berman on second violin) can be heard here in its entirety. He also taught (from
1942 onward) at the New School for Music (later – in 1986 - merging with Temple
University) in Philadelphia. His students include Jaime Laredo, Judith
Ingolfsson, Juliette Kang, Judy Barrett, Julie Kurtzman, Joey Corpus, Hilary
Hahn, Alan McChesney, Herbert Greenberg, Monica Bauchwitz, Ellen de Pasquale, Joseph
de Pasquale, Robert de Pasquale, Levon Zarasian, Martin Chalifour, Chin Kim,
Leila Josefowicz, and Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg.
For a short while, Brodsky played
– on loan from Curtis – the 1697 Molitor Stradivarius. Curtis acquired the Molitor in 1929 but got
rid of it in 1936. The Molitor has been
around a bit and is now owned by Anne Akiko Meyers - it had been previously played by Henri
Temianka and (more recently) Elmar Oliveira. For about
ten years, Brodsky also played a Stradivarius violin from 1694, also from the
Curtis Institute’s collection. The
violin had previously been owned by Karl Halir.
Curtis sold it in 1947. I don’t
know what violin Brodsky played after that. He died (in Ocala, Florida) on March 3, 1997, at age 89.
Henri Temianka was a Polish violinist, conductor, author, and teacher born on November 19, 1906 (Heifetz was 5 years old.) His teachers were Carel Blitz (1915-1923) in Holland; Willy Hess (1923-1924) in Berlin, Germany; Jules Boucherit (1924-1926) in Paris, France; and Carl Flesch at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He graduated from the Curtis Institute in 1930. However, he actually made his New York debut in 1928, prior to graduation and subsequently started touring Europe, Russia, and the U.S. Upon entering the Wieniawski Competition in 1935, he took a third prize, behind David Oistrakh (second prize), and Ginette Neveu, who later died in a plane crash at a very young age. In 1936, he founded the Temianka Chamber Orchestra in London. In 1937, he became concertmaster of the Scottish Orchestra (he was born in Scotland.) In 1941, he served as concertmaster of the Pittsburg Symphony. Then, the Second World War interrupted his career but he served as a translator for the armed services because he was fluent in four languages. Thereafter, he resumed his concertizing and eventually played in over 30 countries. In 1946, as first violinist, he founded the Paganini String Quartet. The quartet's life span was twenty years (1946-1966.) He also gave lectures, held master classes, taught for short periods at many universities around the world, and wrote articles for many periodicals. In 1960, he founded, as conductor, the California Chamber Symphony based at UCLA (USA.) Temianka was one of the first - if not the very first - to give pre-concert talks to his audiences - a common practice nowadays. He also famously said: "There are three fool-proof ways to avoid criticism - say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing." He wrote two autobiographical books: Facing the Music and Chance Encounters. Among the violins he played were a Gagliano, a 1727 Stradivarius (the Salabue), and a 1687 Guarneri. Temianka died on November 7, 1992, at age 85.
Carl Flesch was a Hungarian violinist and teacher born on October 9, 1873 (Brahms was 40 years old.) He is best known for his books on the art of violin playing, his methodical scale system (which is still in use today), and the international violin competition which bears his name. He began violin lessons at age 6 and by age 10, had started lessons with Adolf Back and Jacob Grun in Vienna (1883-1890). He entered the Paris Conservatory at age 17 and graduated with a first prize in 1894. From 1903 to 1908 he taught at the Amsterdam Conservatory. Many players who would later achieve world-wide recognition studied with him – Ivry Gitlis, Henryk Szeryng, Ginette Neveu, Eric Rosenblith, Roman Totenberg, Ida Haendel, Josef Hassid, Jean Laurent, Jacques Singer, Grigoras Dinicu, Charles Munch, Henri Temianka, Szymon Goldberg, Norbert Brainin, Alma Moodie, Dominique Blot, and others. Flesch toured the U.S. for the first time in 1914. He taught at the Curtis Institute (Philadelphia) from 1924 to 1928. Shortly thereafter he (and his family) settled in Berlin but was forced to leave in 1935. He then lived in London (1935), the Netherlands (1940), Hungary (1942), and finally, Switzerland (1943). The Carl Flesch Violin Competition was set up in his honor in 1945. It is known by a few that he had an intense dislike for Polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman - I don't know the reason. It has been said that he lost all his money in the U.S. stock market and had to sell his Brancaccio Stradivarius in 1928 to cover his financial needs. He also owned a Storioni, a Goffriller, and a Guadagnini, among many other instruments. He made very few recordings of major works but many of the small scale pieces he recorded are still available on CD – some are also on YouTube. Flesch died in Switzerland on November 14, 1944, at age 71.
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.
