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Updated: June 14, 2025
What most impresses one who meets Ysaye and talks with him for the first time is the mental breadth and vision of the man; his kindness and amiability; his utter lack of small vanity.
Had it not been for the fervor and faithfulness with which Ysaye labored to spread his renown, practically cramming down the throats of an unwilling public the violin sonata and the quartet, the man would not have known any success at all even during the very last years of his career. As it was, his reputation spread only after he was dead.
Each of these artists is so different that no one seems altogether to replace the other. Ysaye with his unique personality, the immense breadth and sweep of his interpretation, his dramatic strength, stands alone. Kreisler has a certain sparkling scintillance in his playing that is his only.
I read, in the first paper I happen to take up, that the violinist and the pianist are "a perfectly matched pair"; the applause, at the concert, was even more enthusiastic for Busoni than for Ysaye.
"When there are all the autumn exhibitions, and Ysaye playing in the afternoon! Not to mention people." "The truth is, I am a little tired. First came the wedding, and then Paul went off, and, instead of resting yesterday, I paid a round of calls." "A wedding?" "Yes; Charles, my elder son, is married." "Indeed!"
Technique and the artist: that is a question, of interest to the student of every art, which was brought home to me with unusual emphasis the other afternoon, as I sat in the Queen's Hall, and listened to Ysaye and Busoni. Are we always quite certain what we mean when we speak of an artist?
Ysaye at once recognised her immense ability, and advised her to enter the conservatoire at Brussels, which she did, with the result that in eight months she carried off the first prize, being then only fifteen years of age.
It is so difficult, in fact, that it should not be played! "My violin? I am a Stradivarius player, and possess two fine Strads, though I also have a beautiful Joseph Guarnerius. Ysaye, Thibaud and Caressa, when they lunched with me not long ago, were enthusiastic about them. My favorite Strad is a 1716 instrument I have used it for twenty-five years.
These pieces were an absolute find for me, with the exception of the lovely Chant d'hiver, which I have already played in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Berlin, and expect to make a feature of my programs this winter. You see, Ysaye is so modest about his own compositions that he does not attempt to 'push' them, even with his friends, hence they are not nearly as well known as they should be.
That tour brought me one of my best friends and one of my happiest associations. It was on it that I met Mackenzie Murdoch. I'll always swear by Murdoch as the best violinist Scotland ever produced. Maybe Ysaye and some of the boys with the unpronounceable Russian names can play better than he. I'll no be saying as to that.
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