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.
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.
Vasa Prihoda was a Czech violinist born on August 24 (or 22nd), 1900 (Stravinsky was 18 years old.) His father, Alois Prihoda, was his first teacher and remained so for ten years. Afterward, Prihoda attended the Prague Conservatory, where he studied with Marak (who himself studied with Otakar Sevcik.) He graduated in 1912 and gave his first public performance playing Mozart’s fourth violin concerto (D Major.) Most violinists choose Brahms, Mendelssohn, or Paganini for a debut, but not Prihoda. It has been said that Toscanini discovered him playing in a Café (Grande Italia) in Milan, Italy, on December 27, 1919. Prihoda is remembered for his prodigious technique (which included exceptionally clear articulation), his ease in playing Paganini showpieces, and his 1930 marriage to (and 1935 divorce from) violinist Alma Rose (Gustav Mahler’s niece.) [In 1944, Alma, whose father had been concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic for 50 years, died in a concentration camp.] After the war, Prihoda was censured by the Czech government because he did not boycott any of the German-occupied territories during the war. Prihoda concertized extensively all over the world and made a number of recordings when the industry was in its infancy. Unfortunately, some of his recordings were not well-produced so the sound quality is poor. He played in the U.S. many times and was greatly admired for his style, dazzling technique, and finesse. Critics have suggested that Heifetz was jealous of him. Vienna was his base of operations for many years though he taught in Prague, Munich, and Salzburg as well. After 1950, he dedicated most of his time to teaching and he also composed small chamber works which are no longer played. Prihoda also composed his own cadenzas to all the concertos he played. He gave his last concerts in April, 1960 and died (of heart disease) on July 26, 1960, at age 59 - Heifetz would live another 27 years. There are many amazing sound files and videos of his posted on YouTube.
