Desmond Bradley

Desmond Bradley (William Desmond Bradley) was an Australian violinist, concertmaster, teacher, and composer, born (in Melbourne) on October 12, 1934.  He is known for having enjoyed a very successful career which encompassed many different activities in the field of music – orchestral playing, solo performance, composition, recording studio work, and violin pedagogy.  Although his is not now a household name, he was then widely respected as a serious artist and violinist by his peers.  For someone who composed almost exclusively in his spare time (his violin concerto took him 10 years to complete), he left a considerable number of compositions.  By all accounts, he was a child prodigy.  His violin studies began as a child and his first teacher was probably his father, who was a professional violinist.  (His mother was a concert pianist.)  Evidently, he learned very quickly and began performing publicly at age four.  At age 7, he gave his first recital at the Albert Conservatory of Music in Melbourne.  After that, he appeared as soloist with the Melbourne Symphony playing Charles De Beriot’s concerto number 7 (one of his most popular.).  At age 8, he played the (e minor) Mendelssohn concerto with the same orchestra.  At age 11 (1945), he played the Beethoven concerto, again with the Melbourne Symphony, in a venue northeast of Melbourne, with 11,000 people in attendance.  He won the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Radio Competition at age 12 (1946.)  He then toured Australia, giving close to 100 concerts at just age 15.  Money donated by everyday Australians (what is now known as crowd funding) enabled Bradley to travel to Paris in 1950 to study with George Enescu at a music academy there.  He studied with Enescu for approximately three years.  In 1951, he made his Paris debut.  On December 1, 1953, he made his London debut at Wigmore Hall.  He was 19 years old.  The following year, he soloed with the London Philharmonic at the Royal Albert Hall.  Periodically, Bradley made solo appearances with orchestra and in recital but eventually settled into a career as concertmaster (between 1960 and 1975, approximately) with various orchestras, including the Tonhalle Orchestra (Switzerland), the Royal Philharmonic, and the New Philharmonia Orchestra (the debut of his violin concerto’s final version was with this orchestra in the Royal Festival Hall on October 4, 1973. Adrian Boult was on the podium.)  Some of his major works (such as the violin concerto with himself as soloist, and the second and third symphonies, which he conducted) have been recorded but I don’t know if they are currently available to the general public.  It is telling that just as his studies with Enescu were crowd-funded, his recording of Paganini’s 24 Caprices was self-funded, although the recording was later released by EMI Classics.  Here is an audio file from YouTube wherein he plays the famous Chausson Poeme.  His violin can also be heard in film scores and soundtracks for British recording artists.  Bradley published his book on scale studies titled The Art of the Violin in 1981; however, copies are hard to come by given that it was self-published and only a limited number were printed.  As far as I know, Bradley didn’t play a famous brand violin, such as a Guadagnini, Vuillaume, Amati, Stradivarius, or Guarneri.  Besides the violin concerto and three symphonies, his compositional output included many chamber music works, music for violin and piano, a few transcriptions, and cadenzas for the Beethoven and Brahms violin concertos.  Bradley died on November 6, 1992, at age 58 – the age at which Leonid Kogan and Nicolo Paganini also died.

Eda Kersey

Eda Kersey was an English violinist and teacher born (in Goodmayes, a district of London) on May 15, 1904.  She was a very accomplished musician whose career was mostly spent in England.  She was also one of quite a few female violinists who died young – Maud Powell, Johanna Martzy, Ginette Neveu, Edith Volkaert, Alma Rose, Alma Moodie, and Arma Senkrah are among them.  Several sources speak very highly of her and emphasize that she would have left a great legacy if only she had lived long enough to record the great works of the violin repertoire.  She is also known to have stated that practicing seven hours a day (which she routinely did) should be sufficient for any violinist.  Her musical education began on the piano at age four.  She took up the violin at age six when she actually began studying at the Trinity College of Music in London.  Two years later, she was awarded a certificate from the college with very high marks.  She was eight years old.  After that, she began studying with Edgar Mouncher (a pupil of Otakar Sevcik.)  After only two years, at age ten, she played Wieniawski’s second concerto (first movement only) in Southampton, a city which is 65 miles from London.  That concert (in 1915) was a great success.  At age 13, she moved to London to live with an aunt and uncle in London and began studying with Margaret Holloway, a pupil of Leopold Auer.  Her first London recital took place three years later at the Aeolian Hall when she was sixteen years old.  (New York City also had its own Aeolian Hall.)  Along the way, she premiered the concertos of Arnold Bax, Erno Dohnanyi, and Stanley Wilson, as well as works by other contemporary composers.  She also gave the first English performance of the Barber concerto at a Proms concert in 1943.  Her first Proms concert had been in 1930 playing the Beethoven concerto with the famous Henry Wood conducting.  She was 26 years old.  That performance was the first of several appearances she made at the popular Proms concerts.  In 1931, she formed a piano trio which was simply named The Trio Players.  Her last concert took place in June, 1944, at the Albert Hall in London.  Kersey played a Nicolo Amati, a J.B. Vuillaume, and a Guarnerius del Gesu (which she acquired from Belgian violinist Alfred De Reyghere in 1942), among other violins.  Eda Kersey died on July 13, 1944, at age 40.  Negotiations for many recordings of the standard repertoire had nearly been concluded before her sudden death but she never got to actually record anything other than some small pieces (with piano accompaniment) and the Bax concerto (with orchestral accompaniment) several months earlier. 

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.  

Richard Burgin

Richard Burgin was a Polish (many would say American) violinist, conductor, and teacher born (in Warsaw) on October 11, 1892 (Stravinsky was ten years old and Joseph Szigeti had been born about a month before in Hungary.)  He is best known for being the concertmaster of the Boston Symphony for many years (1920-1962); easily the longest tenure by a Boston Symphony concertmaster.  Burgin began the study of violin at age 6.  After studying with local teachers and with Isidor Lotto in Poland, Burgin moved to Germany in 1903 to study with Joseph Joachim at the Advanced Academy for Music in Berlin.  Burgin's first public performance was in 1904 with the Warsaw Philharmonic.  He was 11 years old.  From 1908 to 1912, he studied with Leopold Auer at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he graduated in 1912, winning the Silver medal in violin in that year. Mischa Mischakoff took the Gold.   He was never a star pupil of Auer’s, as were Milstein, Elman, Heifetz, Zimbalist, and Seidel.  Burgin became concertmaster of the Warsaw Philharmonic in 1914, at age 22.  (He was not the youngest concertmaster the Warsaw Philharmonic had ever had; Paul Kochanski was, at age 14.)  He was concertmaster of the Oslo (Norway) Symphony in 1915, and of the Stockholm Concert Society (Sweden) from 1916 to 1919.  Some sources list Helsinki (Finland) and Leningrad as other cities where he worked, presumably as concertmaster.  Only Steven Staryk and Mischa Mischakoff have been concertmaster of as many orchestras.  During those years, he played under several famous conductors, including Richard Strauss, Arthur Nikisch, and Jean Sibelius.  Burgin came to the U.S. in 1920 and soon joined the Boston Symphony as concertmaster.  Within a few months after that, he founded the Burgin String Quartet.  According to the Boston Symphony, he used to spend summers in Paris during the 1920s and 30s, probably up until the beginning of World War Two – what he did while there is not known.  From 1927 until he retired, Burgin also served as Assistant Conductor of the orchestra, conducting more than 300 of its concerts in diverse places, including Japan and Australia.  He declared a well-known attitude of concertmasters when he was quoted thus (by TIME Magazine): "I know many virtuosos and I do not envy them. They tell me what it's like to play the same few pieces over and over and know they have to go here and then be there. Not for me. I like the orchestra."  He played under Pierre Monteux, Serge Koussevitzky, and Charles Munch.  He also, of course, played in dozens of recordings under these, and other, conductors.  One of the high points of his career was his playing the U.S. premiere (in Boston under Koussevitzky) of Prokofiev’s first concerto on April 24, 1925 (two years after it was written.)  Coincidentally (or perhaps not), Koussevitzky conducted the world premiere of the concerto with the Paris Opera Orchestra, its concertmaster (Marcel Darrieux) playing the solo part, on October 18, 1923. One obscure source actually states that the world premiere of this concerto was given by Mischa Mischakoff in Russia in 1917, before the work was even published.   Burgin taught violin and conducting (and directed the Conservatory Orchestra from 1953) at the New England Conservatory.  At the Berkshire Music Center he taught conducting.  In 1959, he began teaching at Boston University.  His most famous pupil is probably Sarah Caldwell, Boston organizer and director of operas.  Because all this was (evidently) not enough to keep him totally busy, he conducted the Portland, Maine symphony as well.  I ordinarily don’t touch upon personal details of a violinist’s life but I must report that, in 1940 (July 3), Burgin married Ruth Posselt, about whom I will write something later.  He was 47 and she was 25.  Her concert career (as a violinist) was just beginning to blossom.  As far as I know, Burgin was not a chess player, as are (and were) so many other top violinists, but he was an accomplished Bridge player.  Burgin retired from the Boston Symphony in May, 1962, and moved to south Florida, where he taught at Florida State University and founded the Florestan Quartet.  He was 69 years old.  Burgin also conducted the Florida State Chamber Orchestra.  A great source of very detailed information about him is at this site. Among the several violins he owned and played was a 1744 Guarnerius Del Gesu which is unusual in that it is the only known Guarnerius made entirely of beech wood (instead of spruce and maple.)  It is now somewhere in Europe.  Richard Burgin died (in St. Petersburg, some sources say Gulfport, Florida) on April 29, 1981, at age 88.  His widow died 26 years later. 

Joseph Hassid

Josef Hassid (Michael Jozef Chasyd) was a Polish violinist born on December 28, 1923 (or December 9, 1922) in Koenigsberg, Poland (Heifetz was 22 years old.) He is famous for having had an incredibly short and tragic career (April, 1940 to March, 1941.) It has been said that he only played a total of 5 public concerts. Everyone agrees that he was a phenomenally gifted player - he was greatly admired by Thibaud, Huberman, Szigeti, and Kreisler, among many other musicians. Such was his talent that Kreisler said of him "A Menuhin comes around every 100 years but a Hassid once every 200." He received an honorary diploma at the 1935 Wieniawski competition (Ginette Neveu placed first and David Oistrakh second.) He was only 12 years old but he supposedly did not advance to the second round due to a memory lapse. Prior to Carl Flesch, his teachers were, in chronological order, his father, Alter Gutman, Wilhelm Krysztal, Micczyslaw Michalowitcz, and Irena Dubiska. He began studying with Carl Flesch at age 12. In 1937, while studying with Carl Flesch in Belgium, he fell in love with a young fellow-student, Elizabeth Lockhart. The romance was ended abruptly by the parents when it was discovered that there were religious differences. Hassid and his father moved to England in 1938 where he continued his studies with Flesch. Late in 1939, he made his first recording for EMI in London. It is posted on YouTube. In 1940, he recorded eight more times - he would never get to record again. On April 3, 1940, he played a recital at Wigmore Hall with pieces by Schubert, Corelli, Bach, and Paganini, among others - there were no concertos on the program. The recital was well-received. On April 25, 1940, he played the Tchaikovsky concerto with the London Philharmonic. Gregory Fitelberg was on the podium.  This time, the reviews were rather lukewarm.  He is said to have suffered a memory lapse during the performance. On January 5, 1941, he played the Beethoven concerto with Adrian Boult on the podium.  His next concert was on March 1, 1941, playing the Brahms concerto.  It was reported (in a newspaper review) that the performance was rather uneven. (Violinist Yfrah Neaman, who was present at the concert, reported that Hassid stopped twice during the performance and was actually escorted backstage after the second interruption. The newspapers did not mention that.) His last concert was on March 2, 1941, playing the Brahms concerto again. Louis Cohen was the conductor. Later that year, Hassid experienced a mental breakdown. He was admitted to a hospital on June 19, 1941, treated, and discharged but finally had to be committed to a mental asylum in 1943 due to recurring episodes of erratic behavior. He was 20 years old. He remained institutionalized for about seven years until a lobotomy done in 1950 sealed his fate. The cause of death may have been meningitis. He died on November 7, 1950, at age 26 (or 27.)

Robert Soetens

Robert Soetens was a French violinist born (in Montlucon, France) on July 19, 1897 (Stravinsky was 15 years old.) He is remembered for his association with Prokofiev's second concerto, for having lived a very long life, and for being a world-touring concert violinist almost all his life. As a child, he studied with his father, who had studied with Ysaye. His first public appearance was at age 7. By age 11, he was studying with Ysaye and was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire two years later. There, he studied with Lucien Capet, among others. Soon after the beginning of World War One, he left school to join the army (1915.)  Prior to this sudden departure, he had played the premiere of Milhaud’s first string quartet. Upon returning, he played in various orchestras in France for a number of years. In 1925, having successfully premiered Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane, he toured Scandinavia with him. In that same year, he became concertmaster of the Oslo Philharmonic but continued his solo career as well.  He was 28 years old.  With Samuel Dushkin he premiered Prokofiev’s sonata for two violins in 1932. Afterward, Prokofiev was motivated (through a commission) to write his second violin concerto for Soetens, which was premiered by Soetens in Madrid on December 1, 1935, with the Madrid Symphony. It is not surprising that Prokofiev, being accustomed to travel, then undertook a 40-concert tour with Soetens, covering North Africa and Europe. In 1936, Soetens played the first performances of the concerto in England.  Interestingly, he did not play the concerto with Prokofiev conducting until 1938. Except for the intervening war years (which were - due to an unusual circumstance - mostly spent in Spain), Soetens continued to concertize and teach for almost the rest of his life; however, little is known of his discography. 1967 found him teaching at Oberlin College (Ohio, USA) for one year.  He also taught in England and Japan for extended periods. Soetens’ last public appearance was in 1992.   He was 95 years old.  It is believed that no other violinist has performed publicly at that age.  He died (in Paris) on October 22, 1997, at age 100.  

Henryk Wieniawski

Henryk Wieniawski (Henryk Helman) was a Polish violin virtuoso, composer, and teacher born on July 10, 1835 (Paganini was 53 years old and Joseph Joachim was 4 years old.) Among violinists, he is most famous for his Scherzo Tarantelle and his second violin concerto (d minor – 1862 – dedicated to Sarasate), which all violinists – without exception – have in their repertoire (it’s the one Heifetz played on his U.S. debut.) He began his violin studies at age 5 and at age 8 (1843 - some sources say age 9), Wieniawski entered the Paris Conservatoire. Upon graduation, he concertized all over Europe. By all accounts, he was an extremely busy artist, presenting hundreds of concerts every year. His first published composition was the Caprice Fantastique (1847.) From 1860 to 1872, Wieniawski lived and taught in St Petersburg. He toured the U.S from 1872 to 1874. In 1875, he lived and worked (in the Royal Conservatory) in Brussels, Belgium. Among his pupils is Spanish violinist Achille Rivarde.  Wieniawski also composed, among many other works, Etudes (Caprices) for violin (dedicated to Ferdinand David), Caprices for 2 violins (1862), cadenzas for the Beethoven, Vieuxtemps (#5), and Mendelssohn (!!) violin concertos, and a third (unpublished) violin concerto in a minor (1878.) Few violinists – if any - have ever had their image engraved on a coin but he has (Poland - 1979.) No fewer than three Guarneri and two Stradivari violins still bear his name. He died in Moscow on March 31, 1880, at age 44. 

Christian Ferras

Christian Ferras was a French violinist born on June 17, 1933 (Heifetz was 32 years old.) He began studying with his father while still very young and by age 8 (1941), had entered the Nice Conservatory. Three years later (1944), he entered the Paris Conservatory, winning First Prize in Violin in 1946. One of his teachers there was the well-known violinist Rene Benedetti.  He then worked and studied with George Enesco. After an engagement with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1951, his career as a violin virtuoso became established. He was only 18 years old. He was fond of premiering new works for violin and began recording in earnest in 1954, mostly for EMI. He was (and is) highly regarded for his recordings of Beethoven’s and Tchaikovsky’s works under the DG label. From 1964 onward, he played the Milanollo Stradivarius.  He stopped playing altogether in 1975 (at age 42) but returned to the concert stage seven years later (March of 1982.) He gave his last concert on August 25, 1982. Shortly thereafter, he committed suicide (September 14, 1982.) He was 49 years old. There are numerous videos of his playing (all professionally produced) on YouTube. 

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. 

Nico Richter

Nico Richter was a Dutch violinist, composer, and conductor born on this day (December 2) in 1915. He began his violin studies at age 5, though I’m not sure about that – it could have been age 4. He entered medical school in Amsterdam and graduated in 1941, though he always worked hard at composition and violin. He was 26 years old.  Fritz Kreisler was another violinist who studied Medicine. Between 1929 and 1934, Richter composed many works – most of them short – including a violin concerto (1933) and four symphonies. He studied conducting with Herman Scherchen in Belgium and wrote an award winning cello concerto (1935) which was premiered in Brussels’ Palace of Fine Arts with Emanuel Feuermann as soloist. Richter died at age 29 (August 16, 1945) as a result of frail health. Some of his chamber music has been recorded.