Pamela Frank

Pamela Frank is an American violinist and teacher born (in New York City) on June 20, 1967.  She is now best known as a chamber music player and teacher, although she has performed as a soloist with many of the world’s top orchestras and conductors.  In the early 2000s she had to stop performing due to a serious (hand) injury suffered in 2001.  In that regard, she joins (among others) Rodolphe Kreutzer, Jascha Heifetz, Bronislaw Huberman, Fritz Kreisler, Erick Friedman, Maxim Vengerov, Emanuel Vardi, Manuel Quiroga, Kyung Wha Chung, Hilary Hahn, and Jacques Thibaud, each of whom had their career interrupted by hand or arm injuries.  After extensive rehabilitation, she returned to the stage in August of 2012.  She has taught at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore (since 2003), the Curtis Institute (since 1996) in Philadelphia, and the State University of New York.  She has also served on several juries of violin competitions around the world and played at various music festivals, including the well-known Verbier, Salzburg, and Ravinia festivals.  Frank has also frequently given masterclasses in Europe, Israel, Canada, and the U.S.  She is fluent in German, French, and (of course) English but is one of the few violinists who does not have a website.  Frank began her studies at age 5, studying violin privately with Shirley Givens for about eleven years.  She then studied further with Szymon Goldberg (1909-1993) and Jaime Laredo.  Her formal (public) debut took place in 1985 at New York's Carnegie Hall with the New York String Orchestra under Alexander Schneider.  She was 18 years old.  She had been a section player with that ensemble since the age of 15.  Frank later debuted a second time in Carnegie Hall playing a recital there in April of 1995.  She graduated from the Curtis Institute in 1989, presenting her graduation recital on February 15, 1989, playing works by Bach, Ysaye, Kreisler, Schubert, and Beethoven.  She first appeared with the New York Philharmonic on October 27, 1994, playing the Dvorak concerto.  Leonard Slatkin was on the podium.  Her second and last appearance with the orchestra was on December 1, 1998.  On that occasion she played Mozart’s third concerto.  Andre Previn conducted.  On September 11, 1996, she appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic alongside cellist Clemens Hagen playing the Double Concerto by Johannes Brahms.  Daniel Harding was on the podium.  She was 29 years old.  Her father, the pianist Claude Frank (1925-2014), often accompanied her in recital.  (Leonid Kogan and his pianist daughter (Nina) often played together too.)  In December of 1997, she and her father presented the entire Beethoven sonata cycle at London's Wigmore Hall.  Frank’s discography is not extensive although it includes the complete Mozart concertos and the complete Beethoven and Brahms Sonatas.  Her playing is featured in the soundtrack to the movie “Immortal Beloved.”  Among other violins, Frank has played a Guarnerius Del Gesu from 1736 known as the Wieniawski.  Here is a YouTube audio file of one of her Beethoven performances.  Photo is courtesy of Nicolas Lieber 

Melanie Clapies

Melanie Clapies is a French violinist, teacher, and composer born (in Paris) on December 16, 1981.  She is one of less than a handful of concert violinists who currently write works for their own use, in the style of so many violinists of past generations – Tartini, Corelli, Nardini, Geminiani, Biber, Vivaldi, Locatelli, Mozart, Leclair, Paganini, Viotti, Lipinski, Gavinies, Spohr, Wieniawski, Joachim, Ernst, Vieuxtemps, De Beriot, Conus, Enesco, Ysaye, Kreisler, Spalding, and Markov are among them.  In fact, the tradition of the violinist-composer has so much been neglected that violinists do not even write their own cadenzas to concerti anymore.  Clapies does.  As did Bronislaw Huberman so many years ago, Clapies has had a good number of teachers.  She began her violin studies at age 5 in Paris and later, in the southern coastal city of Toulon, beginning at age 8, with Solange Dessane (Toulon is located about 520 miles south of Paris but only 25 miles west of Saint-Tropez.)  Her public debut came at age 14.  She later studied with Pavel Vernikov and Christophe Poiget at the Lyon Conservatory.  She graduated in 2003.  While studying in Lyon, she also studied with John Glickman at the Guildhall School in London as an exchange student.  She later entered the Paris Conservatory where she was a student of Ami Flammer and Claire Desert, graduating in 2011.  Clapies also received her Master’s from Yale University in the US this year (2014.)  Her chamber music studies were under the tutelage of the world-famous Tokyo String Quartet and the Emerson String Quartet.  Clapies has already taught at the conservatories in Toulon and Bordeaux, and at the Alfred Cortot Music School in Paris (Zino Francescatti, Pablo Casals, Charles Munch, Jacques Thibaud, and Paul Dukas were once teachers there.)   She has also founded (with French cellist Yan Levionnois) a Chamber Music Festival in Burgundy, France.  Clapies has performed most extensively in England, France, Italy, Russia, Canada, and the US.  Leonard Bernstein once said that “music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.”  In a similar vein, Clapies has stated that her compositions are attempts to catch something from the inexpressible.  She has also stated the following: “To me, a good interpreter is a researcher, someone able to find new ways to express and reveal what the pieces possess.  I find a direct path to composition from there.  For me, composing is a means by which to interrogate my surroundings; to make deeper my relation to it.”  She formerly played a Tommaso Carcassi violin and a modern violin by Italian luthier Carlo Colombo Bruno but her current violin is a Joseph Gagliano from 1781.  Nonetheless, Clapies also plays an authentic (period instrument) baroque violin on occasion.  Among the works in her extensive repertoire is one of my favorites – the Schumann concerto.  Here is her recording of the second movement from it on YouTube with the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra.  You will immediately notice that her playing is intensely poetic.  Her recordings include a collection of duo works – in a more contemporary vein - for violin and cello, available here.  She is currently organizing a piano trio in New York as well as a project which will feature the music of Ravel which combines music and mime.  In addition, Clapies is also interested in conducting!  In her upcoming performances of the Beethoven concerto, she will be using her own cadenza.  (There are at least ten cadenzas to the Beethoven concerto out there (Kreisler’s and Joachim’s being the most played) and Heifetz used his own too (some of it borrowed from Leopold Auer), but there are no contemporary violinists who play their own original cadenzas so this will be a unique joy for her audiences.)  Photo of Melanie Clapies is used courtesy of Francois Olivier de Sardan.  

Edouard Colonne

Edouard Colonne (Edouard Juda Colonne) was a French violinist and conductor born (in Bordeaux) on July 23, 1838.  He is best recognized as the founder (actually, co-founder) of the Concerts Colonne and what became known as the Colonne Orchestra in Paris, in 1873.  He was an orchestral violinist for at least ten years but is now almost exclusively remembered as a conductor and concert promoter, in the style of Theodore Thomas.  He began his music studies at age 8, but not on the violin.  He entered the Paris Conservatory at about age 17 but did not study with any famous teachers there.  While going to school, he played in the orchestra of the Lyric Theatre.  In 1863 he won first prize for his violin playing and had already (in 1858) won first prize in harmony.  He was engaged as concertmaster for the Paris Opera orchestra in 1858 – he was 20 years old.  He also played second violin in the Lamoureux Quartet at the same time – Charles Lamoureux played first violin.  Possibly (actually, very probably) simultaneously, he also played in Jules Pasdeloup’s orchestra.  In 1867, he came to New York to play in an orchestra for a newly founded comic opera company; while in New York, Colonne later led an ensemble called Niblo’s Garden Orchestra which until now I had never heard of.  He returned to Paris in 1871 and conducted a hotel orchestra for a while.  In 1873, he founded – together with a music publisher – the orchestra that would become the Colonne Orchestra.  His concerts became known as the Concerts Colonne.  This name was used until the 1960s – about ninety years.  At first, the orchestra presented its concerts at the Odeon Theatre and later at the Theatre of the Chatelet.  Colonne was known to champion the music of Hector Berlioz, Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, and Camille Saint Saens.  It has been said that Pierre Monteux was Principal violist of the Colonne Orchestra.  Other famous players who played in his orchestra for a time were Julius Conus and Jacques Thibaud.  Colonne gave the Paris premiere of Tchaikovsky’s fourth symphony in 1878, the year it was completed.  The orchestra toured Spain, Russia, Portugal, Germany, and England.  Among the musical luminaries who conducted the orchestra in performances of their own works were Serge Prokofiev, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Peter Tchaikovsky, Claude Debussy, Edvard Grieg, and Maurice Ravel.  In 1892, Colonne became conductor and adviser at the Paris Opera.  He was 54 years old.  In 1907 (one source says 1906), he was one of the first to record with an orchestra.  It has been said that he was hard on his players.  Colonne was a pioneer in that his program books were the first to include program notes.  Perhaps they included advertisements as well though I’m not at all sure about that.  He died (in Paris) on March 28, 1910, at age 71.  

Martin Marsick

Martin Marsick (Martin Pierre Joseph Marsick) was a Belgian violinist, teacher, and composer born on March 9, 1847.  He created a scandal toward the latter part of his life as did Jean Marie Leclair at the very end of his.  Thanks to a few of his students, he will forever remain in the history books, even if his name is not exactly the most remembered among violinists.  These students included Bronislaw Huberman, Carl Flesch, George Enesco, and Jacques Thibaud.  He is also identified with the violin David Oistrakh played from 1966 until the day he died – the Marsick Stradivarius of 1705.  That violin ended up in the hands of Igor Oistrakh, but its present whereabouts are unknown to me.  In 1854, seven-year old Marsick was admitted to the Royal Conservatory of Music in Liege (in other words, the Liege Conservatory.)  He studied violin with a very obscure teacher named Desire Heynberg and graduated in 1864.  Brahms was about 31 years old at the time.  Marsick then continued his studies in Brussels with Hubert Leonard.  Later still (1868) he went to Paris – which he made his home from that time forward - to study with Joseph Lambert Massart at the Paris Conservatory.  He was 21 years old.  Sponsored by the Belgian government, he went to Berlin in 1870 to study privately with Joseph Joachim.  In 1871, he founded a string quartet – not an unusual thing to do for recently-graduated violinists.  His debut took place in Paris in 1873.  He then concertized in Europe and the United States for about 20 years.  He was by then playing a Nicolo Amati violin from 1652, given to him by a member of the French nobility.  Conductors with whom he frequently worked in Paris included Edouard Colonne, Jules Pasdeloup, and Charles Lamoureux.  He also gave concerts with a piano trio which included Anatolyi Brandukov (teacher of Gregor Piatigorsky), and Vladimir de Pachmann (pupil of Anton Bruckner.)  In 1892, Marsick was appointed professor of violin at the Paris conservatory.  He was 45 years old.  He stayed until 1900.  In that year, he left his job, his students, and his wife and did not return until 1903.  The woman he lived with during this brief time was married and the situation, which was widely known, created a scandal.  It has been said that this incident ruined his career.  In 1906, he published a study book for violinists entitled Eureka (Opus 34, 18 pages long) and another book (Violin Grammar) published in 1924.  Perhaps these books are available in France.  Thibaud did record at least one of his pieces (Opus 6, number 2, Scherzando) about one hundred years ago and that recording is still available.  Among many other things, Marsick also composed three violin concertos, a quintet, a piano quartet, and a music drama.  Whether these works are nowadays performed is unknown – I would guess probably not, except perhaps in France.  According to some sources, Marsick died in poverty (in Paris) on October 21, 1924, at age 77.

Silvia Marcovici

Silvia Marcovici is a Romanian violinist and teacher born (in Bacau) on January 30, 1952 (Itzhak Perlman was 7 years old.)  She is practically the only artist in the western world without a website.  Marcovici began her studies at an early age in Bacau.  Her formal studies took place at the Conservatory in Bucharest.  Stefan Gheorghiu, a pupil of Oistrakh, was one of her teachers.  At 13, Marcovici made several public appearances and played on Romanian Television.  She made her professional debut at the age of 16 at The Hague.  At age 17, she took second prize in the Jacques Thibaud Competition in Paris – nobody took first prize.  (Something similar happened to Eugene Fodor at the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1974.)  Marcovici later said that she was so nervous before this competition that someone had to push her on stage to perform.  The following year, she took first prize in the George Enesco Competition in Bucharest.  Marcovici first toured the U.S. at age 20.  She played the Glazunov Concerto with the London Symphony (with Leopold Stokowski) at the Royal Albert Hall in 1972. (They had performed the same concert the previous evening at the Festival Hall. Please see comments below.) That was Stokowski’s final appearance with the London Symphony.  It has been frequently remarked that her stage presence is striking.  Her first appearance with the New York Philharmonic was on January 24, 1980.  She was (almost) 28 years old - the third concerto of Saint Saens was the work she played.  Her second (and most recent) appearance with the Philharmonic was on September 28, 2001,  Of the Big Five American orchestras (New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, and Boston) the only one she has never soloed with is the Boston Symphony.  She has recorded under the Decca, BIS, Doremi, and Aurophon labels.  Her discography includes the concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Bruch, Sibelius, and Nielsen.  One of her specialties is the second concerto of Bartok.  Marcovici has toured Japan, Europe, South America, the U.S., and the Middle East, and played with some of the world’s leading conductors.  She also frequently participates in chamber music concerts.  Her playing has been described (by the Daily Telegraph, London, UK) as “beautiful, perfect, with genuine eloquence and feeling.”  There are many great videos of her playing on the internet, including this one on YouTube.  Marcovici currently teaches at the University for Music and Art in Graz (Austria) and has also taught at the Conservatory in Lausanne, Switzerland.  Her views on the career of an artist are stated thus: “The secret of a career lies in the knowledge of how to manage it - adapt your repertoire to your talent, choose carefully where, when and with whom you play.  Know your strengths and your weaknesses.  And then, just pray to the gods that luck may smile on you." 

Jacques Thibaud

Jacques Thibaud was a French violinist born on September 27, 1880 (Brahms was 47 years old.) After studying with his father, he entered the Paris Conservatory at the age of 13, studying with Martin Marsick, among others. Upon graduation in 1896, he shared first prize in violin with Pierre Monteux (who later dedicated his life to conducting.) At first, in order to just make a living, he played in the Cafe Rouge in Paris. The French conductor, Edouard Colonne, heard him playing there and offered Thibaud a position in his orchestra. In 1898, he made his debut with this orchestra and subsequently enjoyed great success as a soloist in Europe and everywhere else. This episode mirrors that of another famous violinist who was discovered playing in an Italian Cafe by Toscanini – Vasa Prihoda. (Albert Sammons was also discovered in similar fashion by Thomas Beecham.) In any case, Thibaud made his first tour of the U.S. in 1903 and thereafter came often. He was in the French armed forces during World War One (1914) and suffered injuries which required him to rebuild his technique. With his two brothers (a pianist and a cellist), he also formed a piano trio. Later, he disbanded the brothers’ trio in order to join Pablo Casals and Alfred Cortot in another trio (1930-1935.) Eugene Ysaye dedicated his second unaccompanied violin sonata to him. In 1943, with pianist Marguerite Long, he established the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud International Competition for violinists and pianists. His recordings are (understandably) few but they are now collectors’ items. He had a habit of holding his violin pointing downward although that did not detract from the technique or the sound. There are even a few videos of him playing on YouTube – from filming done in the 1930s. Here is one of them. Thibaud died on September 1, 1953 in an airplane crash in the French Alps. He was 72. His fellow French concert violinist, Ginette Neveu, had earlier died in a plane crash as well (1949 - at age 30.) Thibaud owned the 1716 Colossus Stradivarius violin which was stolen in 1998. It has been missing ever since. 

Henryk Szeryng

Henryk Szeryng was an extraordinary Polish violinist, teacher, and composer born on September 22, 1918 (Heifetz was 17 years old.) He began his violin studies at age 7 with Maurice Frenkel and, after his prodigious talent was recognized, continued with Carl Flesch in Germany (1929-1932) and Thibaud in Paris later on. He made a sensational debut in Warsaw in 1933 (in his early teens) and started concertizing right away, even while continuing further studies. In 1937, he graduated from the Paris Conservatory. During the Second World War, Szeryng served as an interpreter but also played more than 300 concerts for the Allied troops. In 1946, he became a naturalized Mexican citizen in appreciation for Mexico's efforts to take in several thousand Polish war refugees. He was the only violinist who travelled on a diplomatic passport after he was appointed Ambassador for Cultural Affairs by the Mexican Government. While continuing to concertize internationally, he taught at the National Conservatory in Mexico City for many years. It is not clear to me whether he was fluent in six, seven, or eight languages - there are varying accounts. In addition to being a virtuoso of the highest caliber, he was a great humanitarian and philanthropist. There is insufficient space here to post even a few of this phenomenal violinist's accomplishments. I must therefore refer you to his official website. There are many, many recordings by this artist (among them 2 sets of the Bach Sonatas and Partitas) and several videos on YouTube. As far as I know, he was one of only four concert violinists who played three concerti in a single program - Yehudi Menuhin, Raymond Cohen, and Szymon Goldberg were the other three.  One thing which is not well known is that Szeryng also composed concertos and chamber music. Among his violins, his favorite seems to have been the famous LeDuc Guarnerius Del Gesu. He also owned a copy of the Messiah Stradivarius (by Vuillaume, who made many copies of that instrument.) His King David Stradivarius was bequeathed to the State of Israel. Szeryng died unexpectedly on March 8, 1988  at age 70. Heifetz died one year earlier.

Ivry Gitlis

Ivry Gitlis is a Russian violinist, composer, actor, writer, and teacher born on August 22, 1922 (Heifetz was 21 years old.) He received his first violin at the age of five and gave his first concert at age ten. After graduating from the Paris Conservatory, he studied with Carl Flesch, Georges Enesco and Jacques Thibaud, among others – almost the same teachers under whom Henryk Szeryng studied a few years before him. After the Second World War, he made his European debut at the Royal Albert Hall. In 1951, he made his debut in Paris – which was later to become his main residence - and has since gone on to give concerts all over the world. His first recording, Alban Berg’s violin concerto, won the Grand Prix du Disque (Grand Record Prize) in France. Subsequent recordings, many of which until their recent re-releases had become sought-after collectors’ items, have included the concertos of Paganini, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Stravinsky, Bruch, Sibelius, Wieniawski, and Bartok. Gitlis is also a renowned pedagogue giving master classes all over Europe and beyond, regularly spending summers at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and in France where he has created memorable festivals. In 2001 he was one of the featured commentators in Bruno Monsaingeon’s film, “The Art of the Violin”. Tony Palmer’s 2004 film on Ivry Gitlis was premiered at the Prague Spring Music Festival where it was lauded by the Oscar-winning director Andrea Anderman as "the best artist's profile I have ever seen". And, most recently, he was honored in 2004 as part of the Festival devoted to great violinists of the 20th century, at the Louvre Museum in Paris. Gitlis has lived in Paris since the end of the sixties. His immense impact on the art of violin playing cannot be measured and his unique personality and extraordinary, deeply felt interpretations, many of which can be seen or heard on YouTube are a testament to the great man and artist. The depth of his expressive powers can hardly be exaggerated. You can judge for yourself here and here.  He plays the "Swan Song" Stradivarius of 1737 (the year of Stradivari’s death.)

Louis Krasner

Louis Krasner was a Russian (Ukrainian) violinist, teacher, and composer born on June 21, 1903 (Heifetz was 2 years old.) He is remembered for having commissioned and premiered Alban Berg’s violin concerto. Krasner asked for the concerto in 1934 - Berg completed it in 1935 and Krasner premiered it in 1936 in Spain. He also premiered the Schoenberg violin concerto (in 1940) among other modern works. Krasner’s live recordings of each concerto date from 1938 and 1954, respectively. Krasner came to the U.S. from Russia as a 5 year-old boy. After the usual course of study at Boston English High School, he attended and graduated from the New England Conservatory. As had Alfredo Campoli, Geza Legocky, Albert Sammons, Vasa Prihoda, Jacques Thibaud, and Grigoras Dinicu, he played popular music in clubs in order to support himself while he studied. He also studied violin in Europe with Lucien Capet, Otakar Sevcik, and Carl Flesch. In the U.S., he studied with Eugene Gruenberg (of the Boston Symphony), among others. He played his New England Conservatory graduation recital in 1922 though he graduated in 1923. After concertizing for two decades, he became concertmaster of the Minneapolis Symphony (1944-1949.) He then moved to Syracuse, New York to teach at Syracuse University. Krasner retired from concertizing in 1973 but dedicated the rest of his life to teaching - he taught at the New England Conservatory from 1976 until the year he died. Krasner died on May 4, 1995.

Yfrah Neaman

Yfrah Neaman was a British violinist and an eminent teacher born on this day (February 13) in 1923. Although he was born in Lebanon, he studied at the Paris Conservatory with Jacques Thibaud, from which he graduated at age 14, and then settled in London where he continued his studies with Carl Flesch and then Flesch’s pupil, Max Rostal. His unplanned debut was in 1944 in London with the London Symphony. He taught at the Guildhall School of Music from 1958 until 2003 and was artistic director of the Carl Flesch Competition. His influence and reputation as a teacher was spread far and wide. There are numerous recordings of his playing some modern violin concertos by seldom-heard composers. He died in January, 2003.

Henryk Szeryng

Henryk Szeryng was an extraordinary Polish violinist born on September 22, 1918. He owned the violin whose picture is shown in the previous blog. He began his violin studies at age 7 and, after his prodigious talent was recognized, continued with Carl Flesch in Germany (1929) and Jacques Thibaud in Paris later on. He made a sensational debut in 1933 (in his early teens) and started concertizing right away, even while continuing further studies. In 1946, he became a naturalized Mexican citizen in appreciation of Mexico's efforts to take in several thousand Polish war refugees. He was the only violinist who travelled on a diplomatic passport after he was appointed Ambassador for Cultural Affairs by the Mexican Government. It is not clear to me whether he was fluent in six, seven, or eight languages. There are varying accounts. In addition to being a virtuoso of the highest caliber, he was a great humanitarian and philanthropist. There is insufficient space and time to post even a few of this phenomenal violinist's accomplishments here. I must therefore refer you to his wonderful, official website - henrykszeryng.net. There are many, many recordings by this great artist and several amazing videos on YouTube. One thing which is not well known is that he also composed concertos and chamber music. He died unexpectedly on March 3, 1988, at age 69.