Edouard Rappoldi

Edouard Rappoldi (Eduard Rappoldi) was an Austrian violinist, teacher, conductor, and composer born (in Vienna) on February 21, 1839.  He is best known for his teaching and his close association with Joseph Joachim.  He began his violin studies at an early age, as do most concert violinists.  His first teachers were two violinists I had never heard of until now - Leopold Jansa and a Mr. Doleschall, whose first name eluded me as I was doing my research, such as it was.  At only age 7, he made his first public appearance as a violinist and pianist.  It has been said that he later became a skilled pianist.  At the Vienna Conservatory he studied (1851-1854) with two of the best teachers in the world, Georg Hellmesberger (Sr.) – or possibly Josef (Joseph) Hellmesberger (Sr.) - and Joseph Bohm.  From 1854 to 1861, he played violin in the Vienna Court Opera Orchestra, though presumably not as concertmaster.  He also toured Europe as a soloist.  He was 15 years old when he joined the orchestra and 22 when he left.  From 1861 to 1866 he was concertmaster of the Rotterdam German Opera Orchestra.  He then became conductor of orchestras (I don’t know which orchestras) - between the years 1866 and 1870 - in Lubeck (in 1866), Stettin (in 1867), and Prague (in 1869), successively.  In 1871, at age 32, he was appointed violin teacher at the Royal School of Music in Berlin, which Joachim had helped establish.  Joachim was already teaching there.  Rappoldi was a member of the Joachim Quartet (as violist) between 1871 and 1877.  When Rappoldi joined the quartet, Heinrich De Ahna moved from viola to second violin and after Rappoldi left the quartet, Emmanuel Wirth took his place as violist.  De Ahna stayed on second.  In 1877, Rappoldi was appointed principal violin instructor at the Dresden Conservatory.  He taught there for 15 years.  He was also concertmaster of the Dresden Opera during those years but retired from playing in 1898.  He was 59 or 60 years old – I don’t know which.  One source claims he was also the conductor at the Dresden Opera.  Perhaps he was one of the conductors, as opera companies seldom – if ever – hire just one conductor.  His compositions include symphonies, quartets, and sonatas.  As far as I know, his music is seldom performed now except perhaps in Germany and Austria.  One of Rappoldi’s best known and most accomplished pupils was Charles Loeffler, a very influential violinist and composer in the U.S. in the first half of the twentieth century.  According to a usually-reliable source, Rappoldi played a 1719 Stradivarius violin now known as the Rappoldi Strad.  Rappoldi died (in Dresden) on May 16, 1903, at age 64.  

Jacob Grun

Jacob Grun (Jakob Maurice Grun) was a Hungarian violinist and teacher born (in Budapest) on March 13, 1837.  When Grun was born, Brahms was 4 years old, Felix Mendelssohn was 28 years old (and already very famous), and Paganini was 54 and would live four more years.  Today, Grun is known as a teacher who had several critically important and famous pupils. He is also known as a very capable concertmaster who spent most of his life and career in Austria.  He first studied with someone named Gustav Ellinger in his hometown.  Later on, his most important teacher was Joseph Bohm at the Vienna Conservatory.  From 1858 to 1861 he played in the Grand Duke’s Royal Band in Weimar.  He was 21 years old.  Then he played in the Royal Band at Hanover (The Queen’s Orchestra) from 1861 to 1865.  Joseph Joachim was the concertmaster of the Hanover orchestra at the time.  Because Grun was not granted a position in the prestigious Court Chamber Orchestra (which would have entitled him to a pension), Joachim resigned his position as concertmaster in protest (together with Grun) in February of 1865.  Grun then embarked on a long concertizing tour of Germany, England, Holland, and Hungary.  Officially, Grun did not qualify for a position in the Chamber Orchestra because he was Jewish.  Joachim, the Chamber Orchestra’s concertmaster, was also Jewish but his situation was viewed somewhat differently because he (like Mendelssohn) had converted to Christianity.  Three years later (1868), Grun was appointed concertmaster of the Vienna Opera Orchestra (aka Vienna Court Opera, very closely tied to the Vienna Philharmonic.)  He was 31 years old.  His Jewishness apparently played no part in that appointment.  In 1877, he began teaching at the Vienna Conservatory, retiring in 1909.  He was 72 years old when he retired from teaching and playing in the Vienna Opera.  It has been said that he was very kind-hearted with his beginning pupils.  Among his students are Carl Flesch, Oskar Back, Oscar Morini, Franz Kneisel, Erica Morini, Peter Stojanovic, and Rosa Hochmann.  He played a 1714 Stradivarius which bears his name and which was later owned by Franz Kneisel.  Grun died in obscurity (in Vienna) on October 1, 1916 at age 79.  The First World War had already begun, Claude Debussy had composed Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Richard Strauss had composed Don Juan, Igor Stravinsky had written his Rite of Spring, and Serge Prokofiev was already 25 years old.  

Ferdinand Laub

Ferdinand Laub was a Czech violinist, teacher, and composer, born (in Prague) on January 19, 1832.  Though he worked closely with Tchaikovsky and other famous musicians, he is almost completely forgotten today.  It has been said that he lived the life of a Romantic (Bohemian) because he had no permanent residence.  Since he gave a public concert at age six, he must have had lessons from infancy, though it is not known with whom he began his violin studies – it may have been his father or mother.  By age nine, he was already being praised by well-known musicians, including the Norwegian violinist, Ole Bull.  In 1843, he entered the Prague Conservatory, where he studied with Moritz Mildner.  He was 11 years old.  Archduke Stephan subsequently gave him an Amati violin and recommendations which helped Laub in Vienna.  Upon leaving the Conservatory in 1846, he played in the Imperial band (Court Orchestra) in Vienna.  He was 14 years old.  Hungarian violinist Joseph Bohm was playing in the same orchestra at that time.  In 1850, he toured Europe as a soloist and was very well received in Paris and London.  From 1853 to 1855, he taught at a music school in Weimar, where Joseph Joachim had previously taught.  From 1855 to 1862, he taught at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin.  He was also concertmaster of the Court Orchestra there (until 1864.)  In 1864, he undertook another European tour with three other musicians.  Musicians with whom he came in contact included Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, Hans Von Bulow, Clara Schumann, Bedrich Smetana, Heinrich Ernst, and Joseph Joachim.  In 1866, at age 34, he became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory.  Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky called him “the best violinist of our time.”  Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky did not write his famous violin concerto for Laub – Laub died before the concerto was even begun.  Perhaps it might have been – we will never know.  Tchaikovsky wrote the concerto for Joseph Kotek (who later refused to play it) but dedicated it to Leopold Auer, a teacher at the St Petersburg Conservatory, who did not particularly like it and did not play its premiere.  However, Laub, as first violinist of a string quartet, did give the first performances of Tchaikovsky’s first and second string quartets.  In 1874, Laub was forced to stop working altogether because of illness.  On March 17, 1875, he died (in Gries, Northern Italy), on his way to a spa, being only 43 years old.  Laub played the Laub Stradivarius of 1722 (or 1727 – sources differ) which later went to violinist Alexander Petschnikoff and later still to Calvin Sieb, concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony.  It is now presumably in the hands of one of the concertmasters of that orchestra, since the violin belongs to the orchestra.  Laub’s compositions include violin and vocal works which are now never performed.

Joseph Bohm

Joseph Böhm (Josef Bohm) was a Hungarian violinist and composer born (in Budapest) on March 4, 1795.  He is best known for having been the Director of the Vienna Conservatory and the teacher of famous violinists; Joseph Joachim, Jeno Hubay, Jacob Grun, Heinrich Ernst, Eduard Remenyi, and Jacob Dont among them.  He is also considered the founder of something called the Viennese School of violin playing, whatever that means.  His first teacher was his father, concertmaster of the Pest Theatre Orchestra.  Later, he studied with Pierre Rode.  Bohm made his public debut in Vienna in 1816.  He was 21 years old.  He toured Europe as a soloist for several years.  In 1819, he became the first violin professor at the Vienna Conservatory.  Vienna was the musical capital of Europe at the time.  In 1821, Bohm established a string quartet.  He also became a member of the Court Orchestra - the Imperial band.  He continued to tour but retired from concertizing in 1827.  He retired from the Conservatory in 1848, but only because the Revolution caused it to close its doors.  He was 53 years old.  He continued to play in the Court Orchestra until 1868.  He was 73 years old by then.  He worked with Beethoven but how much time he spent in his company is unknown.  Beethoven never dedicated any works to him.  Bohm’s quartet sort of premiered Beethoven’s string quartet number 12 (opus 127, written in 1825), which turned out to be the first of Beethoven’s late quartets.  The actual premiere took place on March 6, 1825, under the direction of violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh.  That performance was a flop and Beethoven was very displeased.  Beethoven then asked Bohm to take charge of a second premiere which took place in late April, 1825.  That second premiere was, by all accounts, an unqualified success.  Beethoven was by this time completely and irrevocably deaf but he could tell how things went by watching the movement of the performers.  Bohm played none other than the Prince Khevenhuller Stradivarius of 1733 (from 1820 until the day he died – 56 years he had it.)  Upon his death, the violin went to his nephew (Louis Bohm) and eventually (in 1930) ended up in the hands of another famous violinist – Yehudi Menuhin.  Bohm died (in Vienna) on March 28, 1876, at age 81.  Beethoven had been dead 49 years.

Joseph Joachim

Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, teacher, conductor, and composer born on June 28, 1831 (Mendelssohn was 22 years old.) Because he was associated with so many important musicians (and pupils) during his lifetime, he is still regarded as one of the most influential violinists of all time. One of his early teachers was Stanislaus Serwaczynski, concertmaster of the opera orchestra in Pest, who also taught Henri Wieniawski. At age 8, he began studies at the Vienna Conservatory where he studied with Joseph Bohm, among others. After studying in Leipzig for a while, he made his London debut with the Beethoven violin concerto in 1844 (at age 13) which concert Mendelssohn conducted. Returning to Leipzig, he became assistant concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra - Ferdinand David was concertmaster. He was most likely playing in the orchestra when David premiered the Mendelssohn concerto on March 13, 1845. In 1848, he left Leipzig to join Franz Lizst in his new music endeavors (and his Weimar orchestra), serving as concertmaster. In 1852 (at age 21), he left Weimar (and Liszt’s New German School ideals) to work in Hanover (as concertmaster of the Hanover Court Orchestra), rejoining the old guard, which included Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, and Brahms. Fourteen years later, in 1866, Joachim moved to Berlin, where he founded the Royal Academy of Music and, in 1869, the Joachim String Quartet. He left the Hanover orchestra (at age 35) over a dispute concerning another player, Jacob Grun. On January 1, 1879, he premiered the Brahms concerto in Leipzig, with the composer conducting. On the same program was the Beethoven concerto. On January 13, 1883, he made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, again playing the Beethoven concerto.  He was 51 years old.  One source states that Joachim made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic on March 17, 1899.  That is probably quite incorrect because Joachim would have been 67 years old by then.  Brahms himself related how, after Joachim played his concerto in Vienna on January 14, 1879, the audience applauded right after Joachim finished the cadenza.  The same thing happened years later (1896) when Bronislaw Huberman played it in Vienna - Brahms was again present at that performance.  It was probably a coincidence.  In 1903 (at age 72), he became one of the first violinists to record. Joachim composed a number of works (including 3 violin concertos) which today remain obscure. His best known work is probably the Hungarian concerto in d minor. Though he inspired at least two concertos in the standard violin repertory – the Dvorak and the Schumann – he never played them in public. Thanks partly to his criticism of the work, the Schumann concerto (written in 1853) was not premiered until 1937. A number of cadenzas which he composed for several violin concertos are still in use. Joachim died on August 15, 1907, at age 76. Heifetz was about six years old. Among Joachim's many pupils is Max Pilzer. 

Yehudi Menuhin

Yehudi Menuhin, was a Russian violinist and conductor born on April 22, 1916 (Heifetz was 15 years old.) He began his career as a child prodigy, having started on the violin at age 3. His teachers were Sigmund Anker, Louis Persinger, Eugene Ysaye, Adolf Busch, and Georges Enesco, among others. He made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony in 1923 – at age 7. It is after a concert of his in 1929 that Einstein made the comment after hearing him play "Now I know that there is a God!" All I know is that he played the Paganini Moto Perpetuo faster than anyone else I’ve heard. He was one of four concert violinists to play three concerti in one concert (1929 - Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.) Raymond Cohen, Szymon Goldberg, and Henryk Szeryng were the other three. He was also the first Jewish musician to play in Germany after the Holocaust (1947.) His recording contract with EMI set a record for longevity (70 years.) Menuhin played the Prince Khevenhuller Stradivarius (1733), among other fine violins. In the midst of his career he developed arm problems for which he consulted Theodore Pashkus and his wife (Alice), well-known violin pedagogues at the time. He died on March 12, 1999, at age 82.