Igor Ozim is a Slovenian (Yugoslavian) violinist and
teacher born (in Ljubljana) on May 9, 1931.
(Ljubljana – formerly in Yugoslavia - is now in Slovenia and it is its
capital.) He is widely known as a violin
pedagogue rather than as a touring concert violinist, although that is how he
began his career. He started violin
lessons in his native city with Leon Pfeifer (a student of Otakar Sevcik) at
the Academy of Music at age 8. However,
by that time, he had already been studying violin for three years but with
someone I don’t know anything about. When
he was 18, after graduating from the academy, he traveled to England to study
with Albert Sammons at the Royal College of Music (commonly referred to as the
RCM.) He followed that up with two years
of study with Max Rostal, either as a private student or at the Guildhall
School of Music where Rostal was a teacher.
Ozim was now 20 years old. In
1951, he won the Carl Flesch International Violin Competition. After that, Ozim made his formal debut in
England – first in a recital at the Wigmore Hall in London and then in
Liverpool, playing the Mendelssohn e minor concerto with the Liverpool
Philharmonic. In 1953, he won another
violin competition (the ARD Competition, in Munich, in its second year of
existence. The name ARD in German is a
very long name but translates to something like “German Consortium of Public
Broadcasters.” Technically, every German
household is a member of the ARD since fees charged by and paid to the ARD are
not optional; they are mandatory.) He
was 22 years old. Ozim then embarked on
a concertizing career which eventually took him to the Far East, Australia, the
U.S., Europe, and Russia. He has
appeared with top orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the London
Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the Warsaw Philharmonic, and many
others. His repertory ranges from early
Baroque to contemporary and includes approximately 60 concertos. Understandably, he has premiered many works
by Slovenian composers. His recordings
are few but cover some of the standard repertoire as well as many contemporary,
modern works. He continues to tour as a much-respected
violin pedagogue, holding master classes in several countries. Ozim has held teaching posts at the Advanced
Music School in Cologne (Germany), the Advanced School of the Arts in Bern
(Switzerland), and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. He plays a modern violin by Andreas Hudelmayer. Ozim's most famous pupils are probably Richard
Tognetti, Sophia Herbig, and Lea Birringer. Here is a
YouTube audio file of the Mozart Rondo in C with Ozim and the Ljubljana
Symphony Orchestra.
Peter
Rybar was a Czech violinist and teacher born (in Vienna, Austria) on August 29,
1913. His playing style was not showy
and flashy but he was very well regarded as a soloist and concertmaster -
Rybar’s recordings (mostly produced prior to 1960) are now collector’s
items. (His recording of the Bach Double
Concerto (for two violins) with Henryk Szeryng is probably the best I have ever
heard.) Nonetheless, as were so many
other artists of the time, he was eclipsed by the likes of Heifetz, Ricci, Oistrakh,
Menuhin, Milstein, Francescatti, Kogan, Grumiaux, and a few other soloists who
performed in the limelight during the same period. Like Szeryng, he became fluent in seven
languages, although (ironically) English was his mother tongue. His first teacher (a pupil of both Otakar
Sevcik and Cesar Thomson) was his mother.
He then studied in Geneva and Leipzig with teachers whom I don’t know
anything about. He eventually (in 1929,
at age 16) ended up at the Prague Conservatory where he spent three years
(perhaps more.) One of his teachers there
was Josef Suk - the elder Josef Suk (1874-1935.) (There are three Josef Suk: the grandfather (composer
and son-in-law of Antonin Dvorak); the father (an engineer but also an
accomplished amateur violinist); and the son (the well-known concert violinist.) Rybar also later (from 1934 onward) studied
with Carl Flesch in Paris. By then, he
had already begun his concertizing career (at age 19) and been playing
professionally for at least two years. He
toured Europe many times and became known for playing the Bach Sonatas and
Partitas for unaccompanied violin to which he had dedicated more than a year of
study during a sabbatical in Portugal. Although
he did not premiere the piece (Samuel Dushkin did in Berlin), Rybar was the
first to play the Stravinsky violin concerto (composed in 1931) in Prague and
in Paris. He was also the first to
record the Goldmark and the Viotti (number 22 in a minor) concertos. In 1937 (some sources say 1938), he was hired
as violin professor at the Winterthur Conservatory (one of the oldest in
Europe) and as concertmaster of the Winterthur Symphony in Switzerland. He was 25 years old. (Winterthur can almost be considered a suburb
of Zurich.) In 1952, he formed a duo
with his wife who was a pianist. He
retired from his posts (as well as first violinist in the orchestra’s string
quartet) after about 30 years. In 1970,
he was persuaded to abandon his retirement to become concertmaster of the
Orchestra of the Suisse Romande in Geneva.
At the same time, he began teaching at the Geneva Conservatory. He was 57 years old by then. In 1980, he left the orchestra but I don’t
know if he left the conservatory as well.
He often gave recitals with pianists Wilhelm Backhaus, Edwin Fischer, and
Helene Boschi. He also sometimes
partnered with Clara Haskil as well (who often accompanied Arthur Grumiaux) in
recitals and recordings. Rybar last
played in public in 1986. His
discography is not extensive but it fills at least two dozen CDs and includes
the standard concertos as well as some not-often-heard works like the Tartini d
minor concerto and the Schumann concerto.
A few of his hard-to-find recordings are priced at over one thousand
dollars. Here is a YouTube audio file of
the Tartini concerto. Rybar died in
Lugano, Switzerland, on October 4, 2002 at age 89.
Dorothy
DeLay was an American violinist and teacher born (in Medicine Lodge, Kansas) on
March 31, 1917. She is well-known as the
teacher of many world famous violinists and as a pedagogue as accomplished as
Peter Stolyarski, Leopold Auer, Carl Flesch, Ivan Galamian, Otakar Sevcik,
Joseph Gingold, and Zakhar Bron. She
easily taught more than a thousand students during her career. A story is told of how when DeLay was two
years old, she had opportunity to hug and kiss the King of Belgium – just as
the child prodigy Mozart hugged and kissed Marie Antoinette. She began her violin studies at age 4. She first played in public at age 5. By age 14, she was the leader of her high
school orchestra, which numbered about one hundred players. At 16, she entered Oberlin College (Ohio)
where she studied with Raymond Cerf, an obscure violinist who had been a pupil
of Eugene Ysaye. At 17, she entered
Michigan State University, from which she graduated at age 20. Her violin teacher there was another obscure
violinist and conductor named Michael Press.
From there, she went (in 1937) to New York to study with Louis Persinger
at Juilliard. She was still only 20
years old. She also later studied with
Hans Letz and Felix Salmond at the same school.
DeLay earned a living while at Juilliard by doing odd jobs and playing
wherever and whenever she could. It was
during this time that she founded the Stuyvesant Trio which was active from
1939 to 1942. She also became a member
of Leopold Stokowski’s All-American Youth Orchestra which toured South America
and the U.S. in 1940 and 1941. She
graduated from Juilliard in 1941 but also got married that year. She subsequently traveled with her husband due
to his military service during the war but also occasionally performed as a soloist
and with the trio. In 1946, DeLay
decided to take a break from performing and returned to Juilliard for further
study. She was 29 years old. Her teacher then was Ivan Galamian. In 1948 (one source says 1947), she became
Galamian’s teaching assistant. The rest
is history. She was 31 years old. DeLay had also considered studying medicine
during this time but decided against it.
(Interestingly, Austrian violinist Fritz Kreisler did study medicine and
actually became a doctor, though, as far as I know, he never actually practiced.) She also concurrently began teaching at the
Henry Street Settlement School and Sarah Lawrence College (1947-1987.) In 1970, she finally established her own
teaching studio at Juilliard. She was 53
years old and had already been teaching at Juilliard for more than 20 years,
although under Galamian’s shadow. One
fine day, after it had become quite obvious that her teaching style and methods
were incompatible with Galamian’s, Delay let Galamian know that she would not
be teaching at Meadowmount (Galamian’s summer music camp) that summer (in 1970)
but would be at the Aspen Music camp instead; the relationship ruptured and
Galamian (1903-1981) never spoke to her again.
In fact, he tried to get her fired but was unsuccessful. DeLay played a 1778 GB Guadagnini (named the
Dorothy Delay Guadagnini) which was sold at auction in October of 2013 – for
$1,390,000. She acquired the violin in
1969. Today, more than a dozen Juilliard
teachers are former pupils of hers. Besides
Juilliard, DeLay also taught at the University of Cincinnati, the New England
Conservatory, and the Royal College of Music in London. It has been said that DeLay once stated that
“talent is just a mood.” Among her
famous pupils are Anastasia Khitruk, Stefan Milenkovich, Anton Barachovsky, Philippe Quint, Itzhak Perlman, Tijana Milosevic, Miranda Cuckson, Nigel
Kennedy, Peter Oundjian, Jaap van Zweden, Shlomo Mintz, David Kim, Robert
McDuffie, Aaron Janse, Cornelia Heard, Mark Kaplan, Midori Goto, Frank Almond, Juliette Kang, Sarah Chang, Angele Dubeau, Paul Kantor, Tamaki Kawakubo, Robert Chen, Gil Shaham, and Akiko Suwanai. Dorothy DeLay died on March 24, 2002, at age
84. Today, Itzhak Perlman teaches in her
place. The photo shows DeLay in her
early twenties.
Wolfgang Schneiderhan (Wolfgang Eduard Schneiderhan) was an Austrian
violinist, conductor, and teacher born (in Vienna) on May 28, 1915. He was well-known for being a concertmaster
as well as a concert violinist. His many
recordings for the German record label, Deutsche Grammophon, are also
well-known and his portrait is easily recognizable in that he almost always
wore horn-rimmed glasses – he even bore a resemblance to an American
diplomat. He spent most of his career in
Europe, though he toured the U.S. in 1958 as part of a chamber orchestra. He was also caught up in political movements
of the time as were most German and Austrian musicians of that era. His first teacher was his mother, beginning
at age 3. He made fast progress and his
first public performance took place at age 5 in Vienna. In 1923, he started studying with Otakar Sevcik
in Pisek (Czechoslovakia) but later returned to Vienna to study with Julius
Winkler because Sevcik was not one to linger long in any one place. In 1926, he played the Mendelssohn concerto
in Copenhagen and subsequently began to tour as a prodigy. He was 11 years old. Between 1929 and 1932, he worked in
England. He was 17 years old when he returned to Austria. He then became concertmaster of
the Vienna Symphony. In 1937, he became
concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic and remained there until 1951 (some
sources say 1949.) All the while, he was
concertizing and recording as a soloist.
He also formed the Schneiderhan Quartet in 1937 (which he disbanded in
1951) with Otto Strassner, Ernest Moravec, and Richard Kroschak. In 1947, he presented Elgar’s violin concerto
in its first performance in Vienna. He
was 32 years old. In 1948, he joined a
piano trio with which he also recorded, though not much. He left the trio in 1956. In that same year, he left the Mozarteum in
Salzburg – where he had been teaching since 1938. He had also taught at the Vienna Academy (Hochschule
Fur Musik) from 1939 to 1950 (one source says 1937 to 1950.) He began teaching at the Lucerne Conservatory
(Switzerland) in 1949 and co-founded the Lucerne Festival Strings in 1956. His first solo appearance with the Berlin
Philharmonic took place on November 3, 1942.
He played Viotti’s concerto number 22 in a minor – he was 27 years old. He soloed with this orchestra many times. His last appearance with them took place on
October 3, 1987. He played Frank
Martin’s violin concerto on that occasion.
He was 72 years old. He founded
the Fritz Kreisler violin competition in Vienna in 1996. His most popular recordings are probably the
Beethoven concerto and the ten Beethoven violin sonatas. Here is a YouTube audio file in which he
plays his cadenza to the Beethoven concerto.
It is actually an arrangement by Schneiderhan of Beethoven’s own revised
cadenza to his piano version of the violin concerto. Schneiderhan does a magnificent job playing
it. The Beethoven concerto probably has
had at least ten cadenzas written for it but the most played are the ones
composed by Joachim and Kreisler. Schneiderhan
took up conducting in the middle 1970s but he did not do too much of that. Among Schneiderhan’s violins was a 1715 Stradivarius
- now known as the Schneiderhan Stradivarius – which had previously been owned
by Martin Marsick – and a 1704 Stradivarius, currently owned by an Austrian
Foundation. Schneiderhan died (in
Vienna) on May 18, 2002, at (almost) age 87.
Oscar Shumsky was a Russian (most people would say American) violinist, violist,
conductor, and teacher born (in Philadelphia) on March 23, 1917. He had a long and busy career during which he
almost completely stopped concertizing in favor of teaching. It has been said that Otokar Sevcik had over
5,000 students over the span of a greater-than sixty-year teaching career. Shumsky had lots of students but I’m pretty
sure it wasn’t more than five thousand.
It has also been said of Shumsky that he had an un-compromising,
opinionated personality – in the style of Berl Senofsky. Shumsky began to study the violin at age
three - one source says age 4 - with Albert Meiff. He first appeared with orchestra
at age seven with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski on the
podium, playing Mozart’s fifth concerto – known as the Turkish concerto. At age 8 he began to study privately with
Leopold Auer in New York. Three years
later (1928) he entered the Curtis Institute where he continued to study with
Auer and later on (beginning in 1930) with Efrem Zimbalist. He made his New York debut in 1934. He was 17 years old. He graduated from Curtis in 1936 but continued to study privately with Zimbalist until 1938. He joined the NBC Symphony under the
ill-tempered conductor Arturo Toscanini in 1939. He was the youngest member of the orchestra
and sat in the second stand of the first violins. That same year, he also joined the Primrose
Quartet as first violinist – William Primrose was also a member of the NBC
Symphony. At the time, many top-flight
New York musicians had become members of either the NBC Symphony or the New
York Philharmonic because solo work was scarce.
From 1941, he served in the Navy, playing as one of the orchestral
soloists and playing in the Navy string quartet with cellist Bernard
Greenhouse, violist Emanuel Vardi, and David Stone (please see comments below). After the war, Shumsky was featured on weekly
radio programs on NBC, as were a few other violinists of the time. However, a very reliable source says that this broadcast activity actually occurred in 1939, before the war. It may have been both, before and after. Whether any of those programs survive in
recordings is anybody’s guess. Shumsky
also worked as a studio musician, leading the RCA and the Columbia Symphonies
as concertmaster on various occasions. Shumsky
taught at the Curtis Institute (1961 to 1965), the Peabody Conservatory (from
1942), Yale University (from 1975), and the Juilliard School (from 1953.) I do not know how long he taught at each particular school. On December 15, 1956, he appeared with the New York Philharmonic playing the Beethoven concerto. Leonard Bernstein was on the podium. Shumsky made his conducting debut in 1959. As far as I know, he never conducted any
major orchestras. His commercial
discography includes Rode’s 24 Caprices, Beethoven’s concerto, Brahms’
concerto, two Mozart concertos (4 and 5), three Bach concertos, the Glazunov
concerto, the complete Mozart Sonatas, the complete Brahms Hungarian Dances, and
the Bach solo Partitas and Sonatas. He
also recorded with the Primrose Quartet and those recordings are still
available. Here is a YouTube video of one
of his recorded performances. It is the
famous Richard Strauss sonata – the one responsible for the attack on Jascha
Heifetz (which resulted in his broken arm.) Glenn Gould is the accompanist. Shumsky’s students include Steven Staryk, Stanley Ritchie, Guillermo Figueroa, and Ida
Kavafian. Among many other violins,
Shumsky played (and owned) the 1715 Stradivarius known as the Pierre Rode
Stradivarius. The violin was inherited
by Shumsky’s two sons who sold it to Tokuji Munetsugu in 2004. According to at least one source, this violin
was subsequently played (at least for a while) by Ryu Goto, brother of the
famous violinist, Midori. Shumsky died
(in New York) on July 24, 2000, at age 83.
Antonin Bennewitz (Antonin Benevic) was a Czech violinist, teacher, and
conductor born (in Privrat, Bohemia) on March 26, 1833. Johannes Brahms was born the same year, about
a month later. Bennewitz is one of those
violinists who, despite significant achievements and the advantages that accrue
to a very long life, somehow manage to get overlooked by historians. He is mostly mentioned in connection with three
or four famous pupils he had. The most
famous of these are probably Otakar Sevcik, Josef Suk, and Karl Halir. From the age of 12, from 1846 to 1852, he
studied at the Prague Conservatory with another obscure violinist, Moritz
Mildner (teacher also – at about the same time - of Ferdinand Laub, one of
Tchaikovsky’s favorite violinists.) In
1852, he became concertmaster of the Estates Theatre orchestra. He was 19 years old. He stayed for nine years. The Estates Theatre was a very important
concert venue in Europe. As part (since
1920) of the present-day Czech National Theatre, it still is. Mozart’s Don Giovanni had its world premiere
there in 1787. Paganini gave concerts
there. Gustav Mahler and Karl Goldmark
also conducted concerts there. Bennewitz
undertook short concert tours during his years at the Estates Theatre and
subsequently played in orchestras in Stuttgart and Salzburg. He participated in various premieres of
chamber music and orchestral works by Czech composers, as violinist or
conductor – Bedrich Smetana was one of them.
In 1866, he became violin teacher at the Prague Conservatory. He was 33 years old. He became first violinist of the Bennewitz
String Quartet in 1876. In 1882, he was
made Director of the Prague Conservatory.
He remained for nineteen years – Antonin Dvorak took over in November of
1901. After 1901, Bennewitz seems to
have disappeared. He died on May 29,
1926, at age 93. Brahms was long dead by
then and Richard Wagner, Claude Debussy, Jean Sibelius, Richard Strauss, and
Igor Stravinsky had already revolutionized the musical landscape. I am sure Bennewitz played a superlative
violin, though I could not find a single source which mentioned any specific
instrument. The Bennewitz Quartet is
alive and well, having been resurrected in 1998.
Marie Hall (Marie Pauline Hall) was an English violinist born on April 8, 1884 (Brahms was 51 years old.) Her claim to fame rests on the fact that Vaughan Williams wrote and dedicated his best known work, The Lark Ascending, for her. She also (briefly) took lessons from Edward Elgar (1894.) Her playing was once described as being emotionless. Her first teacher was her father, a harpist in the Carl Rosa Opera Company (which is still active today.) It may be (or perhaps not) that a certain Hildegarde Werner also taught her as a very young child. Other teachers she had included August Wilhelmj (1896) Max Mossel (1898), Johan Kruse (1900), and Otakar Sevcik (1901.) Early on, being barely nine years old, she had missed an opportunity to study with Emile Sauret because her family did not have enough money to pay her tuition at the Royal Academy (London.) It has been reported that as a child, she played her violin in the street, in Malvern, England, accompanied by her mother, to help out with family expenses - Lucien Capet did the same thing, playing in theaters, cafes, and cabarets as well. Her subsequent music education was financed through scholarships. Her first concert took place in Prague (where Sevcik taught) in 1902. She was 18 years old and later said that she had been extremely nervous before her performance. In January, 1903, she made her Vienna debut and a month later, her London debut. Physically, she was very petite but possessed great stamina. She appeared in New York (Carnegie Hall) for the first time on November 8, 1905. On that occasion, she played the Tchaikovsky concerto and an arrangement of the first Paganini concerto, among other things. After 1909, she toured far and wide fairly regularly and even recorded, though not nearly as much as most of her contemporaries. With Elgar conducting, she recorded an abridged version of his concerto in 1916 for the HMV record company. (Fritz Kreisler, to whom the concerto is dedicated, never recorded it.) A few of her recordings can be found on YouTube. She is inextricably linked to The Lark Ascending, which she first performed in 1921, the same way that Franz Clement is linked to the Beethoven concerto, Ferdinand David to the Mendelssohn concerto, Joseph Joachim to the Brahms concerto, Leopold Auer to the Tchaikovsky concerto, and Rodolphe Kreutzer to the Kreutzer Sonata. In each case, the composition eclipsed the violinist by far. From 1905 onwards, Hall played what is now known as the ex-Viotti Marie Hall Stradivarius (constructed in 1709 - not to be confused with the ex-Bruce Viotti Stradivarius from 1709 as well, now housed at London’s Royal Academy of Music.) I do not know how she acquired it. About thirty years after her death, it was sold at auction for a large sum (more than $800,000.) She died in Cheltenham on November 11, 1956, at age 72, in hazy obscurity.
Otakar Sevcik was a Czech violinist and teacher born on March 22, 1852 (Brahms was 19 years old.) (Emile Sauret – French violinist - was born exactly two months after Sevcik.) He lived long enough to witness the transition from the old school of violin playing (Paganini, Lipinski, Spohr, Viotti, Kreutzer, Vieuxtemps, Ernst, Enesco, Wieniawski, Remenyi, Sarasate, Joachim, De Beriot, Ysaye, etc.) to the modern era (Thibaud, Elman, Milstein, Heifetz, Kogan, Ferras, Francescatti, Grumiaux, Szerying, Stern, Schneiderhan, Campoli, Haendel, Ricci, Oistrakh, etc.) which to us is now the old school. When he reached old age, it was said that during the course of his career he had had well over five thousand pupils. Of those five thousand, about seven are well known. As far as I know, he taught in more conservatories (and more cities) than any other pedagogue; Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, Kiev, Pisek, Kharkiv, London, Chicago, Boston, and New York among them. He, like Henryk Szerying, spoke seven languages fluently. At age 7, he took his first lessons from his father, though his father never intended for little Sevcik to become a violinist. His first public appearance he made at age 9. Even though he failed the entrance exam twice, he entered the Prague Conservatory at age 14 (1866) where one of his teachers was Antonin Bennewitz, Director of the Conservatory who later on became his bitter enemy. While he was there, Sevcik made his living singing in the choir in a convent. (I don’t know which convent.) At age 18 (1870), he graduated from the conservatory and made his debut soon thereafter playing Beethoven’s violin concerto. He then took a job as concertmaster (and professor) of the Mozarteum orchestra in Salzburg. In 1873, he was appointed concertmaster of the Provisional Theatre in Prague (playing under composer and conductor Bedrich Smetana) and (apparently simultaneously) conductor of the Comic Opera in the Ring Theatre in Vienna. Only two years later (1875), he took a job as professor of violin in Kiev (Ukraine) at the music school of the Russian Music Society where he remained until 1892. All the while, he had been touring as a soloist in Poland, Austria, and Russia. He had by then developed a violin method which he used in his classes (published 1880-1893.) In 1892, at age 40, he took the position of violin professor at his old school, the Prague Conservatory. He was, however, forbidden (by the Director - Bennewitz) from using his violin method at the conservatory; nevertheless, he secretly used his method using manuscript copies which students made from printed ones. He remained at the conservatory until 1906. Between 1906 and 1909, he taught privately in Pisek, a small town in Southern Bohemia. He took a position at the Vienna Music Academy in 1909 and was there until 1918 (some sources say 1919.) He left to go back to the Prague Conservatory and this time stayed until 1921. After that, he traveled in the U.S. and England, teaching as he went. It has been said that he insisted that his pupils practice eight hours a day. Some say that what he actually said was that it did not matter how long they practiced as long as they achieved the results he asked for. Among his famous pupils are Jan Kubelik, Efrem Zimbalist, Marie Hall (for whom Vaughan Williams wrote The Lark Ascending), Victor Kolar (conductor of the Detroit Symphony), Jaroslav Kocian (teacher of Josef Suk), Erica Morini, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Julius Singer, and Josef Karbulka (teacher of Peter Stolyarsky.) His various method books are still being used today. Otakar Sevcik died on January 18, 1934, at age 81, in Pisek.
Daisy Kennedy was an Australian violinist born on January 16, 1893 (Stravinsky was 11 years old.) She studied with Otakar Sevcik in Vienna in 1909, appeared in London in 1911, and toured widely in Europe and the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. She was also violinist Nigel Kennedy's second cousin. She made several recordings in 1919 and 1920. I don't know if she recorded after that. Daisy Kennedy died on October 12, 1981, at age 88.
Erica Morini (Erika Morini) was an Austrian violinist born on January 5, 1904 (Heifetz was 3 years old.) Morini was known for a refined, silken tone and for being one of the few female concert violinists of the early twentieth century. She received her first instruction from her father (Oskar Morini, student of Joseph Joachim) and mother and completed her studies under the famous pedagogue Otakar Sevcik although she also studied with Jakob Grun, Alma Rose, and Adolf Busch. In 1916, she made her orchestral debut in Vienna, playing Mozart's A major concerto. In 1917, she made her debut in Berlin under Arthur Nikisch. Her U.S. debut in New York on January 26, 1921 (in Carnegie Hall) was a phenomenal success. She was 17 years old. Soon afterward, Maud Powell's Guadagnini violin was presented to her, though most likely only as a loan, since the instrument was later sold to Henry Ford, the car maker. She made her first visit to London in 1923. When she was 21, her father purchased the Davidoff Strad from a Paris dealer for her and that's the instrument she used for the remainder of her career. After 1938, Morini lived in New York City. She concertized far and wide until her retirement in 1976. She was 72 years old. It has been said that she taught Jascha Heifetz the bowing technique known as staccato. There are numerous recordings of hers still available and at least one video on YouTube. Some time in 1994 or 1995, her Stradivarius was stolen from her Fifth Avenue apartment but (according to one source), Morini was never told about the theft. It has not been heard from since. Whether the instrument was insured or not is unknown to me. Erica Morini died on October 31, 1995, in relative obscurity, at age 91.
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.
