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He said very much what Ysaye said in London, and Joachim when I was little and played my first piece to him standing on the dining-room table in Eccleston Square and staring fascinated, while I played, at the hairs of his beard, because I'd never been as close as that to a beard before. So I've been walking on clouds with my chin well in the air, as who wouldn't?
He must be a violinist, a thinker, a poet, a human being, he must have known hope, love, passion and despair, he must have run the gamut of the emotions in order to express them all in his playing. He must play his violin as Pan played his flute!" In conclusion Ysaye sounded a note of warning for the too ambitious young student and player.
And if to these we add the pupils in the organ classes, who also came under his influence, we have, among others, Samuel Rousseau, Gabriel Pierné, Auguste Chapuis, Paul Vidal, and Georges Marty; and also the virtuosi who were for some time intimate with him, such as Armand Parent and Eugène Ysaye, to whom Franck dedicated his violin sonata.
Every recital given by such masters offers the earnest violin student priceless opportunities for study and comparison. My special leaning toward Ysaye is due, aside from his wonderful personality, to the fact that I feel music in the same way that he does.
Then there is a trinity of mechanical perfection, composed of Locatelli, Tartini and Paganini or, a more modern equivalent, César Thomson, Kubelik and Burmeister. And, finally, what I might call in the order of lyric expression, a quartet comprising Ysaye, Thibaud, Mischa Elman and Sametini of Chicago, the last-named a wonderfully fine artist of the lyric or singing type.
Ysaye, that great apostle of the truly musical, is a shining example. It is sad to see certain young artists of genuine talent disregard the remarkable work of their great contemporary, and secure easily gained triumphs with compositions whose musical value is nil. "Sometimes the wish to educate the public, to give it a high standard* of appreciation, leads an artist astray.
All his admirers in the Quarter stuck to it that he was in the rank of Kreisler and Ysaye; at the same time they were annoyed with him inasmuch as he did not force the world to acknowledge the prophetic good taste of the Quarter. And Musa made mistakes.
Have we quite realised in our own minds the extent to which technique must go to the making of an artist, and the point at which something else must be superadded? That is a matter which I often doubt, and the old doubt came back to my mind the other afternoon, as I listened to Ysaye and Busoni, and next day, as I turned over the newspapers.
"Then, when he first came here, I heard and saw Ysaye play, and I noticed how greatly his bowing differed from that of Joachim, the point being that his first finger was always in a position to press naturally without the least stiffness. This led me to try to find a less constrained bowing for myself, working along perfectly natural lines.
He was born in Roumania, of German parents, in 1865, and gained his musical education at Bucharest and at Vienna, where he studied under Grün and Hellmesberger. He then received the appointment of concert-master of the Hofburg Theatre Orchestra, after which he went to Berlin to fill the same position in Bilse's orchestra, following Halir, Ysaye, and César Thomson.
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