Franz Vecsey

Franz von Vecsey (Ferenc Vecsey) was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, and composer born (in Budapest) on March 23, 1893.  He was a child prodigy in the early part of the last century but is for the most part now forgotten.  There are a few YouTube audio files which attest to his unbelievable artistry at a very young age.  Bela Bartok served as his piano accompanist for a time.  The Sibelius violin concerto was dedicated to him (in 1905) when he was only 12 years old.  Although he did not premiere the concerto, he first played the Sibelius concerto one year later.  His first teacher was his father, Lajos Vecsey.  He studied with Jeno Hubay from age 8.  It has been said that he became Hubay’s favorite pupil.  (Eugene Ormandy and Joseph Szigeti also studied with Hubay.)  His debut took place on May 17, 1903 in Berlin.  He was ten years old and on that occasion played the Beethoven concerto while Joseph Joachim conducted the orchestra.  Afterward, he studied with Leopold Auer in St Petersburg, Russia.  Jeno Hubay dedicated his third violin concerto (probably his best-known among the four he composed) to Vecsey.  Later, after concertizing for about ten years, Vecsey married into an aristocratic family, as did four or five other famous violinists (Teresina Tua, Johanna Martzy, Cesar Thomson, and Georges Enesco come to mind.)   He managed his career from a palace in Venice.  It has been suggested that he became psychologically scarred after serving in the Austrian army during World War One and that his career suffered as a result.  He was very interested in a conducting career in the mid-1930s but became seriously ill just about then and died after an unsuccessful operation in Rome.  Vecsey’s compositional output consisted mainly of miniature violin works, one of which is Le Vent (Caprice number 1), a rather difficult work which is still very popular today.  A 1716 Stradivarius instrument was among the violins he played.  It is now owned by an Italian philanthropic foundation, which also owns other great and valuable string instruments.  Here is a YouTube audio file where Vecsey plays a Paganini caprice.  Vecsey died on April 5, 1935, at age 42.  

Teresina Tua

Teresina Tua (Maria Felicita Tua, aka Maddalena Maria Teresa Tua) was an Italian violinist born (in Turin) on May 22, 1867.  Her date of birth is somewhat vague – she may also have been born on April 23, 1866.  For a time, she was called the “violin fairy” for her angelic face and good looks.  However, her fame did not last into the twentieth century.  She studied at the Paris Conservatory with Joseph Lambert Massart, taking a first prize in violin at the age of thirteen.  In 1882, she toured Germany.  She played in London, England for the first time on May 5, 1883.  It has been said that in Europe, everywhere she played, she created a sensation.  She very successfully toured all of Europe and Russia.  One source states that in Russia, in the fall of 1885, her accompanist was none other than Sergei Rachmaninoff.  He was not impressed with her playing but shared the stage with her for three months.  Stating that she did not play particularly well, he went on to say that "as an artist, she is not serious, but she has talent."  Soon after touring the U.S. – in 1887 – she gave up her public stage life altogether.  A review of one of her performances in New York (New York Times, October 18, 1887) was fairly typical of the reception she received in this country.  After her debut performance in New York on October 17, 1887, the reviewer pointed out (among other shortcomings) that “Her enunciation of rapid passages is often unfinished and at times absolutely unintelligible, and her double stopping is frequently distressing to the acute ear.”  The reviewer also noted that Tua seemed to want to beguile her listeners with her looks rather than with her playing.  After she returned to Europe, Tua seemed to gradually lose interest in concertizing further but devoted some of her time to teaching.  It also didn’t help that in 1889, she married a wealthy member of the nobility – Giuseppe Franchi Verney.  When he died, she married another aristocrat – Emilio Quadrigo.  Her economic incentive to keep playing– if there had ever been one – was thus destroyed.  A similar thing happened to Johanna Martzy.  Another now-obscure violinist (and Tua's contemporary), Arma Senkrah, also gave up playing in public after marrying an attorney in Weimar.   Senkrah's ultimate fate, however, was very dissimilar.  According to a usually reliable source, from 1885 until about 1935, Tua played a Stradivarius constructed in 1708.  From 1909 forward, she owned and played a 1709 Stradivarius – now in a museum in Turin – given to her by a British friend and patron (Ludwig Mond) via his will.  In 1940, she entered a convent and was obliged to give this violin up.  She was 74 years old.  Tua died on October 29, 1956, at age 90, largely forgotten. 

Georges Enesco

Georges Enesco was a virtuoso Romanian violinist, composer, conductor, and teacher. He was born on August 19, 1881 (Brahms was 48 years old.) He is best remembered for his two Romanian Rhapsodies for orchestra (1901-1902), although there are piano versions of these works as well. He composed quite a number of other pieces (symphonies and a lot of chamber music but no violin concertos) which are now seldom performed by anyone. He entered the Vienna Conservatory at age 7 where he studied with Robert Fuchs, among others. In 1895, he traveled to Paris to continue his studies. As a teacher, he is famous for having taught Ivry Gitlis, Yehudi Menuhin, Christian Ferras, Ida Haendel, and Arthur Grumiaux, among many others. His conducting debut came in 1923 with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Although he continued to conduct until very late in his life, he retired from playing at age sixty nine, due to physical ailments. In the U.S., he spent a season as conductor of the New York Philharmonic (1936-37), gave innumerable concerts, and taught (in New York) for about five years. He famously said that he was not so much interested in perfection as in emotionally reaching his audience. In 1939, he married a princess, a friend of Queen Marie of Romania. His recording legacy extends to not only conducting, but to recording on the violin and piano. He may very well have been the first to record the complete violin solo works of Bach. That recording was not treated kindly by some critics. In Enesco's case, he had the bad luck to reach his violinistic prime when recording technology was virtually nonexistent and to reach old age just as the recording industry was beginning to make progress (1950). An interesting story about Enesco has been told many times though I'm not certain if it is factual or not.  It is said that Enesco once arranged a recital at the Salle Gaveau in Paris, as a favor to a good friend, who was the father of a young violin student who was not terribly gifted and who was not quite ready to play in public.  However, nobody bought a ticket to the recital because the young violinist was completely unknown.  The young boy's father persuaded Enesco to accompany the student on the piano so that the concert would sell out. Reluctantly, Enesco agreed and the concert was sold out quickly - Enesco was an accomplished pianist, as was Arthur Grumiaux. An excited audience gathered on the night of the concert. From the stage, before the concert began, Enesco asked the audience if someone might not volunteer to come up and turn pages for him.  Alfred Cortot, the famous pianist, was in the audience and came up to turn pages for Enesco. The soloist was of a low quality so the following morning the critic of Le Figaro wrote: "There was a strange concert at the Salle Gaveau last night. The man whom we adore when he plays the violin played the piano. Another man whom we adore when he plays the piano turned the pages. But the man who should have turned the pages played the violin."  Enesco died on May 4, 1955, at the age of 74.