All We Want Are The Facts

I have said several times that the list of violinists on my webpage (numbering 500 and growing) is arbitrary.  Similarly, the list on this blog is arbitrary; however, in choosing which violinists to write about on this blog, there are two categories from which I select: (1) the older generation (born 1650-1920) and (2) the contemporary (1920-1995.)  The older ones are easier to pick among: I try to stick to the obviously legendary and the significant, though forgotten, violinists - the more forgotten, the better.  Among the contemporary bunch, I try to search out those whom I think are already brilliant or promising to be.  But, again, I must say that all my choices are totally and completely arbitrary.  The facts presented here are given without reference, though not (of course) without sources.  I double check everything presented as fact and often triple check those facts.  Whenever I find discrepancies or differences, I note them on the blog.  Anything that sounds like an opinion would be mostly my own doing, of course.  I trust that anyone choosing to quote from this blog or use it as a reference will search other sources.  There are certain dates (and facts) that are available in obscure (and old) source material but are there nonetheless, if one will only look diligently.  Orchestral (rank and file) violinists are almost totally absent and for good reason; there is close to zero information available about them, no matter how significant, and, more importantly, their contribution is not individual.  Orchestra players – like studio musicians - are anonymous, except for concert programs.  There are precious few exceptions, mostly coming from the ranks of concertmasters such as William DeFesch, Ferdinand David, Raymond Cohen, Nahan Franko, Steven Staryk, Theo Olof, Frank Almond, Glenn Dicterow, etc.  Neville Marriner was a second violinist in a London orchestra but he became an important conductor so I wrote something about him.  Now that this has been cleared up, it’s time to write a blog about Adele Anthony or Eduard Grach or Fabio Biondi or Vladimir Spivakov, or who knows.... 

Lucien Capet

Lucien Capet (Lucien Louis Capet) was a French violinist, teacher, and composer born on January 8, 1873 (Brahms was 40 years old.)  He is remembered for his book on bow technique, Superior Bowing Technique (1916), and for being the teacher of Ivan Galamian, Jascha Brodsky, Charles Munch, and Mario Dias de Figueiredo.  In fact, thanks to Capet, Galamian emphasized bow technique over most everything else.  I do not know who his teachers were when he was a child but he later studied at the Paris Conservatory where he was a pupil of someone named Morin (J.P. Maurin.)  He appeared as soloist with many French orchestras, but especially the Lamoureux Orchestra, of which he was concertmaster from 1896 to 1899.  Capet had been supporting himself by playing in dance halls and cafes since he was fifteen years old.  From 1899 to 1903, he taught at the Society of Saint Cecilia School.  It has been said that he studied the Brahms concerto for seven years before playing it in public.  With Henri Casadesus on viola and Marcel Casadesus on cello (uncles of pianist Robert Casadesus) he formed the Capet Quartet in 1893.  In 1924, Capet and fellow violinist Suzanne Chaigneau founded the Modern Violin Institute.  Between 1925 and 1930, after several changes in personnel, the Capet Quartet recorded at least 12 quartets – 5 of them by Beethoven and the others by Mozart, Haydn, Ravel, Debussy, Schumann, Franck, and Schubert.  Josef Gingold heard the quartet perform in Brussels in 1928 and many years later said that it was the greatest string quartet concert he had ever heard.  It was an all-Beethoven program.  There is an audio file on YouTube of the Capet Quartet playing Mozart.  Capet also wrote three string quartets which are now completely forgotten.  He died on December 18, 1928, at age 55. 

Ivan Galamian

Ivan Galamian (Ivan Alexander Galamian) was an Armenian violinist and teacher (some sources say Persian because he was born in Iran) born on January 23, 1903 - some sources say February 25 and others say February 5 - (Heifetz was 2 years old.)  He is remembered as one of the best violin teachers of the 20th Century – an institution at the Juilliard School (New York.)  As a young man, Galamian studied at the School of the Philharmonic Society with Konstantin Mostras, in Moscow, where he resided with his family from infancy.  It is said he also studied with Julius Conus.  Conus taught in Moscow until 1919, so that is entirely possible. Galamian graduated from the school in 1919, at age 16, and began playing in the opera orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre.  In 1922, he moved to France where he studied further with Lucien Capet in Paris (1922-1923.)  He made his Paris debut on May 5, 1924 although he played another recital there on December 24, 1926 which is also called his debut recital.  It has been widely reported that he suffered from an incapacitating but undefined nervous condition (possibly stage fright) and soon gave up his dream of a concertizing career – unlike Ruggiero Ricci who never experienced nervousness when playing.  From 1925 until 1929 he taught at the Russian Conservatory in Paris while still performing occasionally.  Even at this early stage of his teaching career, he produced a special student in the person of Vida Reynolds, the first woman to play with the first violins of the Philadelphia Orchestra.  Galamian came to the U.S. in 1937, where he remained for the rest of his life.  While setting up a private studio in New York City he also taught at the Henry Street Settlement House there.  He was hired by Efrem Zimbalist – via a recommendation by Zino Francescatti - to teach at the Curtis Institute (1944) and then was also offered a similar post at Juilliard (1946 – some sources say 1948.)  In 1944 he founded the Meadowmount Music School (Westport, New York) which operated during summer months – a sort of intense music camp which became very successful.  Galamian had hundreds of students and therefore used more than half a dozen teaching assistants – Dorothy DeLay and Robert Lipsett among them.  (In 1970, he and Dorothy DeLay acrimoniously parted ways because of a difference of opinion regarding teaching approaches and he refused to speak to her for the remainder of his life.  He also tried to get her fired from Juilliard – unsuccessfully.)  It has been said that due to his authoritarian methods all his pupils sound the same – unlike Leopold Auer’s.  In 1962, Galamian published two books on violin technique which are still in print.  He also edited many standard works for violin.  As far as I know, he never recorded anything commercially.  Among Galamian’s famous pupils are Michael Rabin, Pinchas Zukerman, Eugene Fodor, Tigran Vardanyan, Hyman Bress, Simon Standage, Stuart Canin, Linda Rose, and Ani Kavafian.  Galamian taught until the day he died, April 14, 1981, at age 78.

Iso Briselli

Iso Briselli (Isaak Briselli) was a Russian (Ukrainian) violinist born on October 20, 1912 (Heifetz was 11 years old.)  Although he concertized for over two decades, he is remembered (as is Franz Clement) for having commissioned a famous concerto – Samuel Barber’s violin concerto.  He began studies at age 3 and while still a child studied with Peter Stolyarsky before his family moved to Berlin (1922) where he began his studies with Carl Flesch.  Two years later, when Flesch moved to the U.S. to teach at the new Curtis Institute (Philadelphia), he encouraged Briselli to go with him.  He arrived in the U.S. - together with the Flesch family - in December of 1924.  Briselli entered Curtis during the winter of 1925 and thus became part of the very first class, at age 13, to enter Curtis.  After Flesch left Curtis (1928), Briselli studied with Leopold Auer and Efrem Zimbalist, among others.  He graduated in May, 1934.  Soon after Briselli arrived in the U.S., a rich Philadelphian – Samuel Fels - informally adopted Briselli and became his patron as well.  Briselli made his debut in 1926 with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Artur Rodzinski, playing the first Paganini concerto.  He was 14 years old.  In 1939, Fels engaged (for $1000) the unknown Barber – who was a fellow Curtis student, although much older - to write a concerto for Briselli.  The concerto was finished in December of 1939.  The myth about Briselli finding the third movement of the concerto too difficult started with Barber and a writer by the name of Nathan Broder.  It was documented later on by Barbara Heyman, a Samuel Barber biographer (1992), that the story was wholly untrue.  Thousands of historically incorrect concert program notes (and liner notes for albums) have been written since Broder’s false story first came out.  Although Barber knew the true facts, he never did anything to set the record straight.  At the time of the commission, Briselli was already a brilliant violinist who regularly played the works of Paganini, Wieniawski, Sarasate, Vieuxtemps, Ysaye, Bruch, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Dvorak, and all the rest.  It is logical to suppose that the third movement of the Barber would have posed no serious challenges.  Indeed, Briselli never said the movement was too difficult or unplayable.  He objected to the music itself – it did not musically fit the other two movements and it was not an appropriate finale and not grand enough – speaking from a traditional point of view, it was too weak.  It is interesting that critics who first heard the concerto agreed with Briselli’s opinion, though they did not know it at the time.  Briselli never played the concerto in public.  Briselli stopped concertizing in the mid 1940s to devote his time to the various Fels Fund philanthropic projects.  He died on April 9, 2005, at age 92. 

Camilla Urso

Camilla Urso was an Italian violinist born in France on June 13, 1842 (some sources say 1840) (Brahms was 9 years old.)  She began violin studies at the age of five with Felix Simon, a violinist in the Nantes (France) opera orchestra.  She made her first public appearance at a small concert at age 7.  She is known for having been the youngest child, at the age of eight, ever enrolled at the Paris Conservatory and the first female ever to be admitted to study the violin.  A fellow pupil, though ahead of her in his classes, was Henri Wieniawski with whom she became friends.  After graduating from the Conservatory in 1852, she came to the U.S. after being encouraged by a promoter and gave a very successful debut concert in New York City.  Overcoming considerable difficulties and economic uncertainty for several years, she established a highly lucrative, interesting, and productive worldwide concertizing career.  Inexplicably, she retired from playing in 1855 and did not reappear until 1862.  Those years were spent somewhere in the Southern U.S.  Details of those missing years are probably found in Jennifer Schiller’s 127-page dissertation (2006) on the life of Urso but I didn’t bother with it.  Her concert in Boston on February 14, 1863 marked her return, at age 20, to active concert life.  She returned for concerts in France in the summer of 1865 then came back to the U.S. in September of 1866.  She later repeatedly toured Canada, Europe, Australia, South America, and South Africa as well as the U.S., playing in places where classical music was not well-known.  It has been said that later in life, she even participated in vaudeville shows.  One of the highlights of her career was a seven-month tour of California in the years 1869-1870.  She also organized, during that same tour, a memorable music festival comprised of several concerts given in San Francisco in February of 1870.  Incredibly, she did not perform in England until 1871, at age 29, playing the Mendelssohn concerto in London.  Later on, her main residence was in New York City, where she died on January 20, 1902, after an unsuccessful surgery, at age 59. 

Maud Powell

Maud Powell was an American violinist, writer, and arranger born on August 22, 1867 (Brahms was 34 years old.)  She is remembered for having been a concert violinist at a time when women violinists – even among orchestral players - were a rarity.  Her career was spent almost exclusively in the U.S. Her first violin studies began when she was seven.  At age 9 she became a pupil of William Lewis in Chicago.  She then began playing in and was soon made assistant concertmaster of the Aurora (Illinois) Symphony Orchestra.  Her debut as soloist with this orchestra took place in 1880.  She further studied in Europe with Henry Schradieck in Leipzig (1881-1882) and Charles Dancla in Paris (1882-1883.)  She spent a year intermittently concertizing in London and then studied briefly with Joseph Joachim (1884-1885) who conducted the orchestra when she gave her Berlin debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in March of 1885 playing the Bruch g minor concerto.  Returning to the U.S., she gave her New York debut with the New York Philharmonic on November 14, 1885 again playing Bruch’s first concerto.  She was then eighteen years old.  She soon began including works by contemporary American composers in her programs, including Arthur Foote, Henry Huss, Victor Herbert, and John Carpenter.  She gave the American premieres of the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius concertos.  Her fan club claims she premiered the Dvorak concerto as well but that is not true.  Max Bendix premiered the Dvorak concerto with the Chicago Symphony on October 30, 1891.  Powell gave the first New York performance of the concerto in 1893 but that's all. Mastering a very extensive repertoire, Powell also frequently played the concertos of Saint Saenz, Lalo, Arensky, Conus, and Rimsky Korsakov, among others.  Her premiere of the Sibelius concerto on November 30, 1906 was especially significant although this concerto did not enter the standard violin repertoire until after Jascha Heifetz championed it.  Powell founded a quartet in 1894 and a trio in 1908.  She frequently wrote her own program notes and wrote numerous articles for music journals.  I don’t know if she ever took students.  Among her many violins was a supposed JB Guadagnini (1775) which was later sold to Henry Ford, the car maker.  The Guadagnini was later declared (by Kenneth Warren) to actually be a copy made by New York Luthier George Gemunder on or about 1865.  (She had purchased -  around 1886 - a violin from a dealer named Victor S. Flechter which turned out to be a fake. Powell later sued the dealer because she had paid $500 and the violin was said to be worth only $40. The violin had  supposedly been made by Gaspard Duiffoprugcar in 1515.)  Powell also owned a Guarneri from 1731, the Mayseder Guarneri.  She did a lot of recording for RCA during the industry’s infancy (1904-1907).  YouTube has postings of a few of her recordings.  Maud Powell died (in Uniontown, Pennsylvania) on January 8, 1920, at age 52, while preparing for a concert. 

Eddy Brown

Eddy Brown was an American violinist, teacher, and radio pioneer born on July 15, 1895 (Brahms was 63 years old.)  His father, with whom he had his first lessons, was Austrian and his mother, Russian.  He later studied with Hugh McGibney in Indianapolis while still a child.  He is known for having launched and hugely influenced classical music radio programming in the U.S.  In fact, he gave the first radio performance of all ten Beethoven sonatas.  In 1936, he pioneered radio station WQXR in New York City (devoted exclusively to classical music) which survives to this day.  His first public appearance as a violinist was at age six.  At age nine (1904), he enrolled at the Royal Conservatory in Budapest where he studied with Jeno Hubay, Bela Bartok and others.  Two years later, he took first prize in the Budapest Concerto Competition.  Eugene Ormandy took second.  Brown graduated in 1909 and soon after made his formal debut in Budapest playing the Beethoven concerto.  That same year he made his London debut with the London Philharmonic playing Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto – he was fourteen years old.  His Berlin debut came in 1910 with the Brahms concerto.  He then studied further (until 1916) with Leopold Auer at the St Petersburg Conservatory and concertized world wide for some time after that.  His U.S. debut was at Indianapolis in 1916 with the Beethoven concerto.  He made his New York debut that same week.  He began to record (if one can call it that) in 1916.  He also formed a string quartet (name unknown) and established the Chamber Music Society of America.  After becoming involved in radio in 1930, he essentially stopped touring, though he played for many of the different radio programs which he created and in various venues close to New York.  Ironically, almost none of the hundreds of performances he gave on radio survive.  Brown started to teach at the University of Cincinnati in 1956.  He was named Artist-in-Residence of Butler University (Indianapolis) in 1971.  His only modern recording was of a violin concerto by Mana Zucca, which few people have ever heard.  A complete recording of it is posted on YouTube, if you should be curious, as are other Eddy Brown recordings. Brown died unexpectedly (in Italy) on June 14, 1974, at age 78. 

Shlomo Mintz

Shlomo Mintz is a Russian violinist, violist, teacher, and conductor born on October 30, 1957 (Heifetz was 56 years old.)  (Mintz was born on the same day as Leonidas Kavakos, although ten years earlier.) He is known for a career which encompasses a very wide range of activities – solo appearances, teaching, chamber music, recording, recitals, judging, philanthropic sponsorships, and conducting.  He began his violin studies in Israel with the famous and beautiful Hungarian violinist Ilona Feher at age two.  He studied with her until 1973.  At age 11 (April 23, 1969), he made his debut with the Israel Philharmonic playing Mendelssohn's concerto (Uri Segal conducting.)  Soon afterwards, as Itzhak Perlman fell ill, he substituted for him (again with the Israel Philharmonic), playing the first concerto of Paganini.  Many concert musicians have launched their careers in exactly this same fashion.  He made his Carnegie Hall debut at the age of sixteen with the Pittsburgh Symphony playing the Bruch g minor concerto.  He then began his studies with Dorothy DeLay at Juilliard although his career was already well on its way.  In 1997, he played Paganini’s famous Cannone violin (Guarneri del Gesu, 1742) - a replica of which I will soon have in my hands (thanks to luthier Daniel Houck) - during a concert in Maastricht (the Netherlands) with the Limburg Symphony.  From the age of eighteen, Shlomo Mintz added the role of conductor to his artistic life and has since conducted many orchestras worldwide, including the Royal Philharmonic (England), the NHK Symphony Orchestra (Japan), the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and the Israel Philharmonic.  On April 6, 1992, Mintz made his New York conducting debut, conducting the Israel Chamber Orchestra on that occasion.  In March 1994 he was named Principal Guest Conductor of the Maastricht Symphony Orchestra (The Netherlands).  In 2008 Mintz was named Principal Guest Conductor of the Zagreb Philharmonic.  Shlomo Mintz gives master classes worldwide and has been a member of the jury of several international violin competitions.  His discography does not include the Tchaikovsky concerto nor the concertos of Bach or Paganini.  Otherwise, it is fairly extensive.  It has been reported that Mintz has recorded all of Vivaldi’s violin concertos in a single collection but I seriously doubt that – Vivaldi wrote about 230 violin concertos.  I would have to see the collection to believe it.  There are many videos of his on YouTube.  As far as I know, Mintz still plays a Guarneri del Gesu (1700) and a Carlo Testore viola built in 1696.

Chevalier de Saint George

Joseph de Bologne (Chevaliere) de Saint George was a French violinist, harpsichordist, composer, conductor, military leader, and champion swordsman, born on December 25, 1745 (Bach was 60 years old.)  He was never what one might call a touring concert violinist.  He is remembered for being part of the French aristocracy and military prior to and during the French Revolution, despite being the son of a slave (his mother.)  As early as age 18 (1764), he obtained the position of Officer of the King's Guard.  He was also one of the first Black Masons in France.  In 1787, he beat Charles De Beaumont (the infamous French spy, diplomat, and transvestite) in a famous fencing duel.  It has been written that he was a highly skilled athlete who excelled as a swimmer, pistol shooter, dancer, ice skater, runner, and horseman.  His first teacher in music was his father.  Later on, after age 8, he may have studied violin and composition with Jean Marie Leclair in Paris.  It is thought that by 1771, he was concertmaster of the orchestra known as the Concert des Amateurs (the title is deceiving.)  It was thought to be the best orchestra in Paris and perhaps all of Europe.  By 1773, at age 28, he was its director.  Mozart was then 17 years old.  He also frequently played his own violin concertos with this orchestra.  Composers of the time, including Antonio Lolli and Carl Stamitz, dedicated works to him.  In 1779, at her request, De Saint George, began performing for and with Queen Marie Antoinette at Versailles.  In 1787, De Saint George, with a different orchestra, premiered Haydn’s six Paris Symphonies (82-87.)  Mozart was in the city between late March, 1778 and late September, 1778 but it is unknown whether he ever met de Bologne or heard any of his music.  (In fact, De Saint George has often been called the Black Mozart.) De Saint George wrote at least 15 violin concertos, 12 string quartets, 9 sonatas for violin, 10 sonatas for harpsichord, 3 symphonies, 8 symphonies concertante, and other works, among them an opera and other works for the theatre.  One of the violin concertos has been recorded by Rachel Barton.  Other than that, his music is now almost never played.  However, YouTube has a six-part biography of him as well as several videos of his music.  Joseph De Saint George died on June 10, 1799, at age 53. (Marie Antoinette was beheaded on October 16, 1793, at age 37.)

New Russian Quartet

The New Russian Quartet is the resident string quartet of the Moscow Conservatory.  Established in January, 2008, it is already one of the world's best string quartets. Its members are also all graduates of the Conservatory.  It is more or less the equivalent of the Juilliard Quartet in the U.S.  Julia Igonina is the quartet's first violinist, Elena Kharitonova plays second violin, Alexander Galkovsky is the violist, and Alexey Steblev is the cellist.  Except for Julia Igonina, who is actually a brilliant concert violinist, they are all seasoned chamber music players.  As their website indicates, the name of the ensemble implies that the musicians  remain faithful to the Russian performing tradition as they also explore uncharted areas in chamber music.   Their core repertoire consists of the standard literature by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Bartok and all the rest but they also perform contemporary works composed specifically for them.  They have collaborated with such outstanding artists as Jessie Norman, Vladimir Spivakov, Alexander Rudin, Yuri Bashmet, and Shlomo Mintz (playing viola.)  The New Russian Quartet frequently performs in Russia’s best concert venues and participates in music festivals throughout Europe and Asia.  As far as I know, they have not yet toured the U.S.  The members of the quartet perform on Italian instruments from the Russian State's collection.  They also have many superlative videos on YouTube. 

List of Violinists part four

S-Z: Julia Sakharova, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Emanuel Salvador, Emile Sauret, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Pieter Schoeman, Julius Schulman, Erik Schumann, Robin Scott, Lynnette Seah, Toscha Seidel, Berl Senofsky, Gil Shaham, Hagai Shaham, Sayaka Shoji, Oscar Shumsky, Calvin Sieb, Joseph Silverstein, Alexander Sitkovetsky, Baiba Skride, Alexander Skwortsow, Felix Slatkin, Joel Smirnoff, Tamara Smirnova, Robert Soetens, Livia Sohn, Denise Soriano, Evgeny Sorkin, Josef Spacek, Nils-Erik Sparf, Vladimir Spivakov, Daniel Stabrawa, Simon Standage, Steven Staryk, Eva Stegeman, Arabella Steinbacher, Mark Steinberg, Oliver Steiner, Arnold Steinhardt, Isaac Stern, Malcolm Stewart, Lara St John, Petar Stojanovic, Emmy Storms, Josef Suk, Harold Sumberg, Akiko Suwanai, Christian Svarfvar, Joseph Swensen, Vilmos Szabadi, Antal Szalai, Henryk Szeryng, Joseph Szigeti, Kyoko Takezawa, Gerhard Taschner, David Taylor, Christian Tetzlaff, Jeff Thayer, Jacques Thibaud, Anna Tifu, Richard Tognetti, Ertan Torgul, Roman Totenberg, Caitlin Tully, Eleonora Turovsky, Uto Ughi, Eugene Ugorski, Elena Urioste, Elina Vahala, Mary VanOsdale, Adrian Varela, Tibor Varga, Sandor Vegh, Alexander Velinson, Maxim Vengerov, Zino Vinnikov, Kai Vogler, Ion Voicu, Edith Volckaert, Olena Vrublevska, Elizabeth Wallfisch, Reiko Watanabe, Camilla Wicks, Wanda Wilkomirska, Jasper Wood, Eric Wyrick, Toru Yasunaga, David Yonan, Eugene Ysaye, Thomas Zehetmair, Wang Zhijiong, Isaak Zhuk, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Yulia Ziskel, Nicolaj Znaider, Pinchas Zukerman, Jaap van Zweden.

List of Violinists part three

M-R: Nicolai Madoyev, Ara Malikian, Bracha Malkin, Robert Mann, Andrew Manze, Alexander Markov, Henri Marteau, Neville Marriner, Mihaela Martin, Johanna Martzy, Ralph Matson, Petri Mattson, Edouard Matzener, David McCarroll, Yuri Medianik, Tymur Melnyk, Yehudi Menuhin, Joseph Meyer, Anne Akiko Meyers, Stefan Milenkovich, Nathan Milstein, Shlomo Mintz, Steven Moeckel, Alma Moodie, Barennie Moon, Erica Morini, Victoria Mullova, Irina Muresanu, Anne Sophie Mutter, David Nadien, Ginette Neveu, Piotr Nikiforoff, Kurt Nikkanen, Gordan Nikolitch, Takako Nishizaki, Siegmund Nissel, Domenico Nordio, Mark O'Connor, David Oistrakh, Igor Oistrakh, Valery Oistrakh, Raphael Oleg, Elmar Oliveira, Theo Olof, Sergey Ostrovsky, Michaela Paetsch, Rusanda Panfili, Susie Park, Gyorgy Pauk, Marek Pavelec, Elisa Pegreffi, Adela Pena, Myvanwy Penny, Itzhak Perlman, Louis Persinger, Anna Petrova, Johanna Pichlmair, Christine Pichlmeir, Igor Pikaysen, Elizabeth Pitcairn, Rachel Podger, Alina Pogostkina, Anton Polezhayev, Hristo Popov, Maud Powell, Andrej Power, Hubert Pralitz, William Preucil, Vasa Prihoda, Liviu Prunaru, William Pu, Rodrigo Puskas, Anastasia Pylatyuk, Riele Queling, Philip Quint, Julian Rachlin, Manuel Ramos, Nazrin Rashidova, Helena Rathbone, Henry Raudales, Jonathan Rees, Jesus Reina, Ossy Renardi, Vadim Repin, Yuri Revich, Gerardo Ribeiro, Ruggiero Ricci, Nate Robinson, Aaron Rosand, David Rubinoff, Peter Rybar.

List of Violinists part two

F-L: Hector Falcon, Isabelle Faust, Maxim Fedotov, Michael Fernandez, Christian Ferras, Liza Ferschtman, Mark Fewer, Julia Fischer, Jorja Fleezanis, Carl Flesch, Eugene Fodor, Annar Folleso, Ann Fontanella, Zino Francescatti, Vilde Frang, Pamela Frank, Nahan Franko, Sam Franko, Erick Friedman, Rodney Friend, Roger Frisch, Joseph Fuchs, Mayumi Fujikawa, Angela Fuller, Ivan Galamian, Simin Ganatra, Michael Gantvarg, David Garrett, Enrico Gatti, Ilmar Gavilan, Theodora Geraets, Andre Gertler, Laurence Gibson, Alexander Gilman, Ivry Gitlis, Thelma Given, Matan Givol, Vadim Gluzman, Michael Goldman, Karen Gomyo, Ruben Gonzales, Midori Gotoh, Thomas Gould, Caroline Goulding, Eduard Grach, Philippe Graffin, Salvatore Greco, David Grimal, Ilya Gringolts, Ilya Grubert, Arthur Grumiaux, Franco Gulli, Augustin Hadelich, Viviane Hagner, Hilary Hahn, David Halen, Eric Halen, Chloe Hanslip, Sidney Harth, Josef Hassid, Andrew Haveron, Jascha Heifetz, Willy Hess, Jonathan Hill, Philippe Hirshorn, Sabrina Hopcker, Daniel Hope, Lei Hou, Bin Huang, Vaclav Hudecek, Bronislaw Huberman, Monica Huggett, Yumi Hwang, Alina Ibragimova, Kikuei Ikeda, Pavel Ilyashov, Kanako Ito, Stefan Jackiw, Andreas Janke, Aaron Janse, Janine Jansen, Dylana Jenson, Leila Josefowicz, Ilya Kaler, Mayuko Kamio, Suna Kan, Juliette Kang, Jean Kantorow, Mark Kaplan, Michael Karlson, Daishin Kashimoto, Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, Leonidas Kavakos, Tamaki Kawakubo, Barnabas Kelemen, Nigel Kennedy, Alexander Kerr, Misha Keylin, David Kim, Nicolas Koeckert, Rudolf Koelman, Leonid Kogan, Jennifer Koh, Elissa Koljonen, Laurent Korcia, Berent Korfker, Sasha Korobkina, Natasha Korsakova, Henning Kraggerud, Louis Krasner, Fritz Kreisler, Gidon Kremer, Jan Kubelik, Rainer Kuehl, Sigiswald Kuijken, Georg Kulenkampff, Daniel Kurganov, Boris Kuschnir, Rainer Kussmaul, Sarah Kwak, Joan Kwuon, Fredell Lack, Simone Lamska, Jaime Laredo, Maria Larionoff, Rachel Lee, Shannon Lee, Timothy Lees, Geza Legocky, Elina Lev, Cho-Liang Lin, Tasmin Little, Bing Liu, Malcolm Lowe, Sergiu Luca, Calin Lupano.

List of Violinists part one

A-E: Salvatore Accardo, Joseph Achron, Philippe Aiche, Khachatur Almazian, Frank Almond, Janine Andrade, Adele Anthony, Gilles Apap, Matthieu Arama, Cecylia Arzewski, Michele Auclair, Maja Avramovic, Felix Ayo, David Ballesteros, Alexander Barantschik, Dale Barltrop, Elisa Barston, Rachel Barton, Lisa Batiashvili, Remy Baudet, Corina Belcea, Monte Belknap, Joshua Bell, Nicola Benedetti, Margareta Benkova, Dmitry Berlinsky, Vera Beths, Fabio Biondi, Kolja Blacher, Lola Bobesco, Emmanuelle Boisvert, Hakan Borjeson, Emanuel Borok, Hugues Borsarello, Norbert Brainin, Guy Braunstein, Raphael Bronstein, Iona Brown, Stephen Bryant, Adolf Busch, Guila Bustabo, James Buswell, Enrico Cacciato, Alfredo Campoli, Roberto Cani, Serena Canin, Renaud Capucon, Andres Cardenes, Giuliano Carmignola, Jonathan Carney, Sebastian Casteanu, Corey Cerovsek, Martin Chalifour, Sarah Chang, Stephanie Chase, Robert Chen, Ray Chen, Marina Chiche, Daniel Ching, Kyung Wha Chung, Lenuta Ciulei, James Clark, Franz Clement, Raymond Cohen, Manuel Compinsky, David Coucheron, Miranda Cuckson, Lucy van Dael, Emily Daggett, John Dalley, Carlos Damas, Elmira Darvarova, Roland Daugareil, Wolfgang David, Michael Davis, Andrew Dawes, Francesco De Angelis, Dorothy DeLay, Ellen De Pasquale, Zach De Pue, Philippe Descamps, Alma Deutscher, Lindsay Deutsch, Gioconda DeVito, Glenn Dicterow, Erika Dobosiewicz, Jacob Dont, Rafael Druian, Alfred Dubois, Augustin Dumay, Edward Dusinberre, Christiane Edinger, James Ehnes, Mischa Elman, Evgenia Epshtein, Vesko Eschkenazy.

Mischa Elman

Mischa Elman (Mikhail Saulovich Elman) was a Russian (Ukrainian) violinist born on January 20, 1891 (Stravinsky was 9 years old.) He was known for his short stature, unusual vibrato technique, soulful style, and beautiful tone. He auditioned for Leopold Auer at age 11, playing Wieniawski's concerto in d minor and Paganini's 24th Caprice. Auer then had Elman admitted to the St Petersburg Conservatory, where he (Auer) was a violin instructor. (An amusing song later composed by the Gershwin brothers mentioned Mischa (Elman), Jascha (Heifetz), Toscha (Seidel), and a few other students of Leopold Auer.) In 1903, Elman began to play concerts in the homes of wealthy patrons and, in 1904, made his debut in Berlin. In 1905, he made his London debut with Glazunov's concerto. In 1908, he came to the U.S. and played in Carnegie Hall. He recorded extensively but not nearly as much as other violinists of his time (such as Heifetz, Menuhin, Gitlis, Francescatti, and Ricci.) Elman died on April 5, 1967, at age 76.

Nathan Milstein

Nathan Milstein (Nathan Mironovich Milstein) was a Russian violinist born on December 31, 1903 - some sources say December 31, 1904 and others say January 13, 1904 (Heifetz was 2 years old.) He was often called the "prince of the violin." He started studying the violin at age 4 (some say age 7) with Peter Stolyarsky, a popular teacher in Odessa (Russia) who also taught David Oistrakh around the same time. At age 10 (1914), he left studying with Stolyarsky and entered the Odessa Conservatory. By age 12, he had entered the St Petersburg Conservatory where Leopold Auer was teaching. His fellow students were Elman, Heifetz, Seidel, and Zimbalist, among many others. He studied with Auer until the summer of 1917 and had no additional instruction thereafter. He is said to have premiered the first concerto by Prokofiev in 1923 in Russia.  The concerto had already been played for the first time in Paris that same year.  In 1925, he left Russia to play a few concerts in Europe and never returned. In 1926, he studied with Eugene Ysaye (in Belgium) for a few weeks but later said he learned nothing from him - it was actually Ysaye who told him he had no need of any further lessons. In that same year, Milstein made his Paris debut. On October 17, 1929 (some sources say November 29, 1929) he made his American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra playing Glazunov's concerto and thereafter concertized non-stop until July, 1986. He is remembered for a very clean and precise technique and very appealing tone. He is also remembered for his Paganiniana - a dazzling arrangement of different tunes written by Nicolo Paganini. Between 1930 and 1986, he recorded most of the violin repertory. Of the Brahms concerto alone there are no fewer than five studio recordings available - each with a different orchestra. Although he made seven (studio) recordings of the Mendelssohn concerto, he didn't record the Sibelius or the Stravinsky concertos even once. Those works were probably not in his repertoire. There are also many superb videos of his playing on YouTube - all of them professionally produced. Milstein died in London on December 21, 1992, at age 88. (Of that era, only Ruggiero Ricci, Albert Markov, Zvi Zeitlin, David Nadien, Camilla Wicks, Ida Haendel, and Ivry Gitlis remain.)

Boris Goldstein

Boris Goldstein was a Russian violinist and teacher born on December 25, 1922 (Heifetz was 21 years old.) Today, he is largely forgotten. He was a child prodigy who studied with Peter Stolyarsky. He made his debut in Moscow at age 10 playing Mendessohn's concerto (e minor.) He was highly regarded by Kreisler, Heifetz, Menuhin, and Prokofiev. He received prizes at the 1935 Wieniawski and the 1937 Ysaye (Queen Elizabeth) competitions, though neither a first or second prize. It has been said that although he was a top violinist in Russia, he was too outspoken against the Communist government and his career was therefore stifled. He moved to Germany in 1974, where he taught at the University of Wuerzburg for many years. Two of his many students are Zakhar Bron and Alexander Skwortsow. He also toured Europe with his daughter Julia in the 1980s. While in Russia, he made many recordings for the Melodya label but they have never been re-issued. Lately, his fans have posted several videos of his on YouTube. He was truly a brilliant and serious artist. Goldstein died in Germany on November 8, 1987, at age 64.

Erick Friedman

Erick Friedman (Eric Friedman) was an American violinist and teacher born on August 16, 1939 (Heifetz was 38 years old.) He is mostly remembered for being Jascha Heifetz' favorite pupil. He began to study violin at age 6 with his father, an amateur violinist. A little later on, he studied with Samuel Applebaum. At age 10, he enrolled at the Juilliard School of Music (New York) where he studied with Ivan Galamian for six years. From age 14, he also studied with Nathan Milstein. It was also at age 14 that he made his New York debut. In 1959 (some sources say 1957), against the advice of his concert manager (Arthur Judson), he interrupted his concertizing career to study with Jascha Heifetz at the University of Southern California. After three years with Heifetz, he successfully re-started his world-wide concert career. By then, he had already made his most famous recording - the Bach Double Violin Concerto, with Heifetz as collaborator (1961.) It has been said that this is the only recording Heifetz ever shared with any other violinist. Some say that he developed a sound very similar to Heifetz' sound. You can judge for yourself here.  It is a recording of the Mendelssohn concerto.  Without any real need to boost his career and against the advice of Heifetz (but with plenty of prompting from David Oistrakh), Friedman entered the 1966 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Although he came in SIXTH place, his career did not seem to suffer from this apparently orchestrated setback - Friedman continued to concertize and record for the next 20 years or so. It has been said that Oistrakh engineered Friedman's low placement so as to embarrass Heifetz (who was still considered a defector from Russia), and to advance his own son's career - Igor Oistrakh's concert career, that is. Due to an auto accident in the late 1980s, which injured his left arm, Friedman gave up playing in public. After a long five-year recuperation, he returned to the stage five years later.  He took a permanent teaching position at Yale University in 1989, although he had also taught at the Manhattan School of Music, at Southern Methodist University, and at the North Carolina School of the Arts prior to this. Among many other works, he recorded the Tchaikovsky concerto three times - 1962, 1978, and 1997. He also regularly conducted various chamber groups and adjudicated at several international violin competitions. Among other violins, he played the Ludwig Stradivarius (1724.) Friedman taught at Yale up until one week before he died, March 30, 2004, at age 64.

Chloe Hanslip

Chloe Hanslip (Chloë Elise Hanslip) is an English violinist born on September 28, 1987 (Perlman was 41 years old.) She began violin lessons at age 2. She first played in public at age 4 and at age 5 was encouraged (by Yehudi Menuhin himself) to enroll at the Yehudi Menuhin School. By age 10, she had played in some of the most prestigious venues in the U.S. and Europe. She also studied with Russian violinist Zakhar Bron in Germany (1995.) At 13, she was the youngest recording artist ever to be signed to Warner Classics (England); however, she is not the youngest violinist to be professionally recorded – that honor goes to Sarah Chang (and EMI Classics.) Hanslip has won numerous awards and scholarships and played privately for English royalty since July, 2001 – the most recent such recital in 2008. She recorded Jeno Hubay’s long-neglected first and second violin concertos in June, 2008 – Naxos will release the CD tomorrow, September 29, 2009.

Vasa Prihoda

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.