The Art of Violin

"The Art Of the Violin"

Yehudi Menuhin, Berlin, 1963 Mozart, Concerto in G major

With the passing away on March 12, 1999

of the last true legendary violinist, Yehudi Menuhin

The final page of the history of violin and 20th century was turned

Fabulous enriched era came to a close.

Part 1 - The Devil's Instrument

David Oistrakh, Moscow, 1958 Mendelssohn, Concerto in E minor

If you compare violinists of today

and violinists of, let's say, the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s

In my mind, or into my ear

I don't feel that one of them sounded like the other

I feel they were all individuals.

Let's talk about Kreisler,

Elman

Heifetz

Francescatti

Milstein

Menuhin

Oistrakh

Stern, Everybody sounded different.

Isaac Stern, Paris, 1967

Christian Ferras, Paris, 1963

Fritz Kreisler, 1927 Recording 1935

Nathan Milstein, Stockholm, 1966

Yehudi, Heifetz, Huberman, Francescatti...

Szigeti... Enescu...

With them, each piece Seemed a different work.

When someone says, "Now that's the benchmark performance!..

0r.."That's how it should be played"

It's an insult to music.

It implies that the music is very poor indeed,

if there is only one way to play it.

Yehudi Menuhin, Monte Carlo, 1979

Yehudi Menuhin, Hollywood, 1947 Conducted by Antal Dorati

No one can say what makes one sound differ from another

This is, in my opinion, the individuality of the person:

The strength of the pressure, the pressure of the bow on the strings

the pressure of the actual fingers on the violin, the whole position...

Arthur Grumiaux, Nice, 1961

Jascha Heifetz, 1952

Boston Symphony orchestra Conducted by Charles Muench

Recording 1959

Mischa Elman, London, 1962

The problem really is the difficulty of playing the violin

It's very very difficult

it's very difficult, and you can tell the difficulty because

How long does it take for a beginner, average beginner,

to make a decent sound on the fiddle

and how long does it take for a average beginner to make a decent sound on the piano

no comparison

you know, you play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the piano right away

It will sound decent, can't do that on a violin, unless of course you are some sort of genius.

The genius of Paganini, his satanic image

and his demonic virtuosity light of source of contempoary art of violin

Paganini, Caprice No, 24 Alexander Markov

All the giants of the 20th century

We will not deal here with chamber music, jazz, or the Gypsy violin

are in a one way or another, decendents of Paganini

Paganini, Concerto No, 2, "Campanella" Ivry Gitlis, Paris, 1966

I think there is "before Paganini" and "after Paganini"

and I think the whole music, the whole writing of music

has been changed through Paganini

Paganini to me, was not a development

In the sense

Viotti, Correli, Tatini, Then Paganini, then on

I think there was all these, and then...

There was Paganini

Paganini, Variations on "God Save the King" Ruggiero Ricci, 1973

The evolution in the style...

of playing between contempoary violinists and

violinists of in the 40s

It has to do with what they did with the music

Something to do with shifting or slides, if you wanna call it

there were different slides

they were, some of these old fiddle players,

would slide back and forth, back and forth

and these days, you know, it is taboo

you don't slide back and forth

cause you will be called "old fashioned"

and, I wish I had more of those "old fashioned" things...

Josef Szigeti, Hollywood, 1 944 Drdla, "Souvenir"

You know, when you listen to somebody like Szigeti

you know for me...

was the most contempoary sounding fiddle player musically...

He actually didn't sound like what we were talking about old

You know, the old fashion...

He was, what makes him so amazing, he was actually if you were to hear him today

You would not feel that...

his musicianship and the way he perform the Beethoven sonata

has aged at all

Now Szigeti, Who was a kind of long noodle,

a kind 0f Spaghetti...

I can't stand up with all your equipment around...

He was very tall, he had very long arms.

Seeing him play, people would say

that he looked as if he was playing in a phone box...

But when you hear his recordings, are they dated? No!

He was criticized sometimes for the

very wide vibrato that he had

but it was so focused...

I would say he was the Aristocrates of the violinsts...

Mr. Joseph Szigeti

We are going to play the "Bee" by Franz Schubet

Josef Szigeti, Hollywood, 1 944 Franz Schubert,The Bee,

Some of the older players

were very aware what's going on around them

and others on the clip that I saw

were not doing anything to help the orchestra whatsoever

They would just play with their playing

and hope the orchestra, not even hope,

just assume the orchestra will be with him, and they don't need to show anything at all

and they were just distant themselve from everything around

and just play

We have...when I say we I mean the old generation

we have the right to think the way we think

I wouldn't say that...the old generation are better, but

let's be very frank

if the young generation are as good as they are

I think they owe us a kind of gratitude

Mischa Elman, Hollywood Bowl, 1 932 Tchaikovsky, Concerto in D major

What impressed me about Elman

and I remember seeing a video of him play among other things

Humoresque of Dvorak, was his incredible bow division

that everything was in such order, and of course

now comes the great debate about the "Elman sound"

and what made the Elman sound

Mischa Elman, 1926 Dvorak, "Humoresque"

If you look at Elman, he's a really really small guy

With very thick fingers

And..he plays...he puts his fingers in a way I've never seen other people play with their fingers

Like, he has nails on his left hand

It looks like a guitarist hand, you know

So he has...he sort of glued his nails to give him some support

So when he put his fingers down flat

His fingers have a lot of meat anyway, I couldn't do it but

You know, he can put it down flat and get a full vibrato swing

It's really interesting to see that

Because he plays with the violin up, his fingers flat and he's really short

So his arms are very short, so he plays like this

And he has to lower the scroll just to get the high position

Elman was so incredibly concerned with the way his violin sounded

Becaus he was so sensitive to the sound

That he would actually go, I don't know, once or twice a week to the violin adjuster

And move the sound post

I think I probably do practise every morning with my pianist Mr. Seiger

But two hours, two and a half hours

And one of the stories go like this

upon their rehearsing

Mischa told Joseph, "Joseph"

I can see that, "Joseph, you're not playing in time!"

"Let's do it again!"

So they do it again. He stops him again and he says "You're not playing in time"

But "I'm playing in time". He says, "Maybe you're playing in time, but not in my time"

The plague of his life was Heifetz

Because OK, Heifetz was younger, that's OK

And before Heifetz he was, you know, sold more records than anybody else

Elman suffered from Heifetz disease, that was his problem

And, fortunately or unfortunately, when Heifetz came into the scene, everybody suffered from the same kind of disease

There is Heifetz

You know, all of a sudden, everybody had to compare themselves to this incredible... phenomenon

Jascha Heifetz, 1952 Paganini, Caprice No, 24

I remember listening to him and I couldn't close my mouth for like a week

I couldn't believe what I was listening to

It was...and he of course looked very cool on the stage

You know, he didn't move much He just moved what was necessary

And that was, in my estimation, the reason that people called him very cold

And people say for example for Heifetz, he was cold

Close your eyes and listen

What you heard, from me I could describe it like a tornado

Moving in one place, just staying with the most incredible heat coming out

The thing was in the playing