Henry Schradieck

Henry Schradieck was a German violinist, teacher, conductor, and composer born (in Hamburg) on April 29, 1846.  Johannes Brahms had been born there 13 years earlier.  Schradieck is best known for his many study books for violin (and viola) and for several editions of various works for violin, including the Mendelssohn violin concerto in e minor.  It has been said that he moved frequently and preferred not to remain in one place too long.  Among other violinists, Willy Hess, Mischa Mischakoff, and Steven Staryk did the same thing.  Schradieck received his first lessons from his father, who was a violinist, and first played in public at age 6, possibly age 5.  One source states that in 1854, at age 8, he entered the Brussels Conservatory and graduated in 1858.  He was 12 years old.  It has been stated that Teresa Milanollo paid for his tuition at the conservatory.  His teacher there was Hubert Leonard.  He then went to Leipzig to study with Ferdinand David.  In 1864, he was hired as professor of violin at the Moscow Conservatory.  He remained there for three years and then returned to Hamburg to lead the Hamburg Philharmonic Society Orchestra.  After 6 years, he joined (in 1874) the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig as concertmaster.  Felix Mendelssohn and Ferdinand David had already left the scene – in fact, David had died the previous year.  Schradieck also taught at the Leipzig Conservatory and conducted the theatre orchestra.  He was 28 years old.  In 1883, he came to the U.S and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio.  There, he organized an orchestra and taught at the College of Music.  He returned to Hamburg in 1889 to teach at the Hamburg Conservatory.  Nine years later, in 1898, he returned to the U.S.  He devoted most of his time to teaching in Philadelphia and New York.  Among the oddly interesting things about his career are that he could play all the Beethoven quartets (presumably the first violin part) from memory and he seriously studied the art of violin making.  Among Schradieck’s pupils are Maud Powell, Theodore Spiering, Ottokar Novacek, and Carl Tollefsen.  Schradieck died (in Brooklyn, New York) on March 25, 1918, at age 71.  

Francois Prume

Francois Prume (Francois Hubert Prume) was a Belgian violinist and composer born (in Stavelot, Belgium) on June 3, 1816.  Nicolo Paganini was then 33 years old and Beethoven, though he didn’t know it at the time, had another ten years to live.  Prume was a highly gifted and accomplished violinist who came on the scene, made an impression, and then left almost without leaving a trace.  According to one source, he began his violin studies at age 3.  His father was the organist at Stavelot.  At age 5, he began studying at the nearby town of Malmedy, in the Province of Liege, a French-speaking section of Belgium.  From 1827 to 1830, he studied at the Royal Conservatory of Liege (the Liege Conservatory.)  He then studied for two years with Francois Habeneck (Director of the Paris Opera) at the Paris Conservatory.  After graduation in 1832, he returned to Liege and was immediately appointed professor of violin at the conservatory.  He was 17 years old.  His most famous pupil was probably Hubert Leonard, though Leonard probably only studied privately with Prume since he (Leonard) began his studies at the Brussels Conservatory in the same year (1832) that Prume returned to Liege.  Prume was only 3 years older than Leonard.  In 1839, Prume toured Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Hungary, Germany, Holland, and Belgium.  In 1844, he played in Paris and in that same year was made head of the violin department at the Liege Conservatory.  He was 28 years old.  He continued touring and teaching during his entire career.  It has been said that he played with Franz Liszt on several occasions.  One source claims that he was totally blind for the last few years of his life.  Prume wrote six violin studies, a violin concerto, and a few concert pieces for his own use but which were also probably published during his lifetime.  His most famous piece is La Melancolie for violin and piano (or orchestra) which Camillo Sivori (one of Paganini’s pupils) was very fond of playing.  Leopold Auer mentioned that piece in his book on violin pedagogy.  Prume died on July 14, 1849, after a very short illness, at age 33.  

Henri Marteau

Henri Marteau was a French violinist, teacher, and composer, born (in Reims, France) on March 31, 1874.  He was a child prodigy and was similar to Felix Mendelssohn in that both of his parents came from wealthy families; however, Marteau’s parents were musicians as well – his mother was a pianist (and former pupil of Clara Schumann) and his father was a violinist and President of the Philharmonic Society of Rheims.  After hearing Camillo Sivori play a concert at the Marteau residence at age 5, Marteau began his violin studies with his father.  One usually reliable source states that Sivori himself presented the child with a violin.  Sivori would have been about 64 years old at the time.  Marteau later proceeded to study with a Swiss violinist named Bunzl (a pupil of Wilhelm Molique) and after three years went to study with Hubert Leonard at the Paris Conservatory.  He was 8 years old.  Leonard may have been Marteau’s uncle but I am not certain of that.  He made his debut at age 10 in Reims, playing for a very large audience – possibly more than 2000.  At age 13, on December 14, 1887, he played a Bruch concerto (probably the one in g minor) in Vienna, with Hans Richter on the podium.  Brahms was in the audience - it has been said that he was fascinated with the young violinist.  Grove’s Dictionary of Music says this took place when Marteau was 10 years old but that is probably quite incorrect.  In 1888, he made his debut in London, England.  He was 14 years old.  He then studied with Jules Garcin at the Paris Conservatory beginning in 1891.  In 1892, he was awarded first prize by the conservatory.  By then he was already an established touring artist.  In 1893, he toured the U.S. and again in 1898.  He also played in the U.S. in the years 1894, 1900, and 1906.  I don’t know if those appearances were part of a broader concert tour.  Marteau was a sensation each time.  It has been said that when he performed in Boston on his first U.S. tour, he played the Bruch g minor concerto with the Boston Symphony without rehearsal.  Arthur Nikisch was on the podium and Marteau had 12 curtain calls.  On March 3, 1893, he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic playing the first Bruch concerto.  Anton Seidl was on the podium.  His last concert with this orchestra was on March 18, 1906.  He played Vieuxtemps' concerto number 5 on that occasion.  He was 31 years old.  On November 28, 1894, he premiered Theodore Dubois’ violin concerto in Paris.  That work has probably not been heard from since, except, perhaps, in France.  Marteau toured Russia in 1897 and 1899.  By age 26, he was professor of violin at the conservatory in Geneva, Switzerland.  Seven years later (1907), he was called upon to take over Joseph Joachim’s position at the Advanced School of Music (Hochschule fur Musik) in Berlin, where he remained until 1915.  There was some grumbling over this appointment because he was not German and it was rumored he had even been asked to renounce his French citizenship if appointed.  He supposedly refused and, being an international celebrity of the violin, was appointed anyway.  However, being French, he was placed under house arrest in Lichtenberg in 1916 because of hostilities between France and Germany in World War One (1914-1918.)  He eventually settled in Sweden and became a Swedish citizen in 1920.  Marteau eventually also taught at the music conservatories in Prague (1921), Leipzig, and Dresden.  Max Reger and Jules Massenet composed violin concertos for Marteau.  In fact, Marteau was a champion of Reger’s music and played dozens of concerts with him throughout Europe.  He premiered Reger's monumental violin concerto in Leipzig in October, 1908.  It has been reported that it was over a dispute over Reger’s music that Marteau’s first string quartet ensemble broke up.  The quartet probably had a name but I don’t know what it was.  He later re-assembled another quartet in Berlin.  Marteau was also a champion of Swedish composer Franz Berwald's music.  He played Berwald's violin concerto all over the place but the piece never entered the standard repertoire.  (The standard concerto repertoire consists of about twenty concertos and, sadly, that will probably never change.)  In April of 1894, Marteau played a piano quartet concert with Anton Hegner (cellist), Jan Koert (violist), and Aime Lauchame in New York.  It wasn’t the first time so it would appear that he played chamber music concerts on a regular basis though his ensembles are not reported (in any sources I found) to have been well-established or even well-known.  He played a Giovanni Paolo Maggini violin which had belonged to his teacher, Hubert Leonard, and had previously been in the possession of the Austrian Emperor.  He also owned and played a 1709 Stradivarius violin which now bears his name, a 1720 Guarnerius Del Gesu (one source says from 1731) which also bears his name, an 1827 J.B. Vuillaume, and a 1925 Gaetano Sgarabotto violin.  These last four violins together were valued, in Marteau’s day, at approximately $15,000, or $175,000 in today’s dollars.  They are now worth approximately $7,000,000.  In 1920, one could buy a Stradivarius for less than $5,000.  An average person in 1920 could buy one if he worked 25,000 hours or 12 years at minimum wage and saved every penny for just that purpose.  An average person today could buy one if he worked 400,000 hours or 192 years at minimum wage.  It has always been my opinion that those old violins are simply not worth the trouble.  Their values have been hyper-exaggerated by dealers.  Marteau’s tone was said to be large and brilliant and his style warm and charming.  One reference (E.N. Bilbie, 1921) claims that Marteau, prior to 1914, played six concerts at intervals of one every two weeks and that he played three concertos at each of them – 18 different concertos altogether.  Besides a substantial amount of chamber music, Marteau composed an opera, a cantata, two violin concertos, and a cello concerto.  Marteau died (in Lichtenberg, Germany) on October 3, 1934, at age 60.  In 2002, his home in Lichtenberg became the site for part of the tri-annual Henri Marteau violin competition which was established in that year.  

Hubert Leonard

Hubert Leonard was a Belgian violinist, teacher, and composer born (in Bellaire) on April 7, 1819.  He is mostly remembered for having taught – for almost 20 years - at the Brussels Conservatory where Charles De Beriot, between 1843 and 1852, had also taught.  Leonard later settled in Paris where he continued to teach privately.  Among his most celebrated students were Henry Schradieck and Martin Marsick.  As a child, he began his studies with his father and even gave a public concert before entering  the Brussels Conservatory in 1832, at age 12.  From age 9, he had also been studying privately with an obscure teacher surnamed Rouma - this is probably one and the same as Francois Prume, another Belgian violinist who at age 17 (1832) was already professor of violin at the Liege Conservatory and who was only 3 years older than Leonard.  Leonard enrolled in the Paris Conservatory in 1836 where his principal teacher was Francois Habeneck.  He was 17 years old.  Funding for his studies came from a wealthy merchant.  He left the conservatory in 1839 but stayed in Paris where he was employed by the orchestras of the Variety Theatre and the Opera Comique.  He toured through various European cities from 1844 to 1848.  A single source gives a different date for this event in Leonard’s life (1845.)  In Leipzig, he met Mendelssohn who briefly tutored him in composition.  Leonard also learned Mendelssohn’s concerto and played it on tour.  The concerto had just then recently been premiered in 1845 by Ferdinand David but Leonard was the first to play it in Berlin with Mendelssohn on the podium.  Leonard began teaching at the Brussels Conservatory in 1848 (Grove’s Dictionary says 1847), at age 29, but continued to tour sporadically, extending his tours as far as Norway and Russia.  After quitting the conservatory in Brussels in 1866, he again settled in Paris, where he spent the next 24 years.  Leonard’s compositions include five (or six) violin concertos, duos for violin and piano, a cadenza for the Beethoven concerto, fantasias, salon pieces, and etude books for violin, including a book entitled 24 classic etudes.  I am not certain but I’m pretty sure the concertos have never been recorded.  Supposedly, Leonard once said “The bow is the master, the fingers of the left hand are but his servants.”  Leonard died in Paris on May 6, 1890, at age 71.  He had owned a G.B. Guadagnini (1751), an Andrea Guarneri (1665), and two Magginis, one of which went to his widow, who sold it in 1891.  

Tivadar Nachez

Tivadar Nachéz was a Hungarian violinist, teacher, and composer born (in Budapest) on May 1, 1859.  He began his violin studies at age 5, then later studied with the concertmaster of the Budapest Opera, known to me only as Mr. Sabathiel.  He was never a virtuoso of the first rank but was nonetheless successful as a performer, arranger, and composer.  He lived in England most of his life and even became a naturalized English citizen.  While still a young boy, he was accompanied by Franz Liszt.  In Berlin, he studied for three years with Joseph Joachim - at the same time as Jeno Hubay - and privately in Paris with Belgian violinist Hubert Leonard.  He made formal debuts in Hamburg and London in 1881.  He was 22 years old.  He toured regularly - and made friends with all the important musicians of his day - for the rest of his life.  Even as early as 1889, critics who heard him expressed admiration for his musicianship but pointed out technical deficiencies in his playing.  An indication of his limitations as a violinist can be gathered from his opinion that Ernst’s arrangement of Schubert’s Erlkonig for solo violin was “so difficult, in fact, that it should not be played.”  He was quoted as saying that he often practiced between 8 and 10 hours a day.  He performed his second violin concerto with the London Philharmonic on April 17, 1907.  His best known works are probably his edition of one of Vivaldi’s concertos for two violins – the one in a minor, Opus 3, Number 8 – and his Gypsy Dances.  It has been said he used a Tourte bow previously owned by Heinrich Ernst.  He also owned several magnificent violins, including a 1716 Stradivarius which I was not able to find on any list of Stradivari violins.  Nachez died in Switzerland on May 29, 1930, at age 71.