Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 24, 2025
Few violinists succeeded more completely in captivating their audiences than Henri Wieniawski, whose impetuous Slavonic temperament, with its warm and tender feeling, gave a colour to his playing, which placed his hearers entirely under his control, went straight to their hearts, and enlisted their sympathy from the very first note.
For Ysaye is the greatest exponent of that wonderful Belgian school of violin playing which is rooted in his teachers Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski, and which as Ysaye himself says, "during a period covering seventy years reigned supreme at the Conservatoire in Paris in the persons of Massart, Remi, Marsick, and others of its great interpreters."
From that time until they left it, it was the Mecca of musical Europe. Thither came Von Bülow and Rubinstein, then young men; Joachim and Wieniawski; Brahms, on his way to Schumann, who, as the result of this visit from Brahms, wrote the famous article hailing him as the coming Messiah of music; Berlioz, and many, many others. The Altenburg was the headquarters of the Wagner propaganda.
Of Massart’s pupils, three, Camilla, Lotto and Wieniawski have become famous the world over and are among the great artists now living. Besides her regular studies Massart advised Camilla to join a quartette in order to perfect herself in reading music at sight.
In 1876 Vieuxtemps heard him at Antwerp, and through his influence the Belgian government was induced to grant Ysaye a stipend in order to allow him to pursue his studies at Paris. There he was the pupil of Massart, who had also been the teacher of Wieniawski, Ysaye's master at Brussels.
Paganini, Wieniawski, etc., are mainly mediums of display. Most of the great violinists, Ysaye, Thibaud, etc., during recent years are reverting to the violin sonatas. Ysaye, for instance, has recently been playing the Lazzari sonata, a very powerful and beautiful work.
This was and will be a labor of love, for the compositions of Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski especially are so inspiring and yet, as a rule, they are so badly played without grandeur or beauty, with no thought of the traditional interpretation that they seem the piecework of technic factories!
Wieniawski was a man of somewhat enthusiastic nature, and his actions were not always tempered by the most perfect wisdom. It was said that just before his marriage to Miss Hampton he took a run up the Rhine, not, like a wise man, waiting until he had some one to take proper care of him.
"Laroche!" shouted Ivan. "Irresponsible; and too much money." "Um a oh this new man we hear of Monsieur Kashkine, of Moscow." "He's literary, rather than musical. No real time for classes." "Wieniawski, then?" "By nature a virtuoso. It would be rather a pity to waste his technique and pin him down to a teacher's life. With a composer, the thing's different.
He did not possess the warmth and impulsiveness which constituted the charm of Wieniawski, but his performances appealed to his audiences in a different and more legitimate manner. He was even a greater traveller than Remenyi, and visited almost, if not quite, every civilised country. His travels took him throughout Europe, America, Australia, and Asia.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking