PRACTICE HOURS FOR THE ADVANCED STUDENT
Mr. Kreisler gives no lessons and hence referred this question in the most amiable manner to his boyhood friend and fellow-student Felix Winternitz, the well-known Boston violin teacher, one of the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music, who had come in while we were talking. Mr. Winternitz did not refuse an answer: "The serious student, in my opinion, should not practice less than four hours a day, nor need he practice more than five. Other teachers may demand more. Sevčik, I know, insists that his pupils practice eight and ten hours a day. To do so one must have the constitution of an ox, and the results are often not equal to those produced by four hours of concentrated work. As Mr. Kreisler intimated with regard to technic, practice calls for brain power. Concentration in itself is not enough. There is only one way to work and if the pupil can find it he can cover the labor of weeks in an hour."
And turning to me, Mr. Winternitz added: "You must not take Mr. Kreisler too seriously when he lays no stress on his own practicing. During the concert season he has his violin in hand for an hour or so nearly every day. He does not call it practicing, and you and I would consider it playing and great playing at that. But it is a genuine illustration of what I meant when I said that one who knew how could cover the work of weeks in an hour's time."
AN EXPLANATION BY MR. WINTERNITZ
I tried to draw from the famous violinist some hint as to the secret of the abiding popularity of his own compositions and transcripts but—as those who know him are aware—Kreisler has all the modesty of the truly great. He merely smiled and said: "Frankly, I don't know." But Mr. Winternitz' comment (when a 'phone call had taken Kreisler from the room for a moment) was, "It is the touch given by his accompaniments that adds so much: a harmonic treatment so rich in design and coloring, and so varied that melodies were never more beautifully set off." Mr. Kreisler, as he came in again, remarked: "I don't mind telling you that I enjoyed very much writing my Tambourin Chinois.[A] The idea for it came to me after a visit to the Chinese theater in San Francisco—not that the music there suggested any theme, but it gave me the impulse to write a free fantasy in the Chinese manner."
[A] It is interesting to note that Nikolai Sokoloff, conductor of the San Francisco Philharmonic, returning from a tour of the American and French army camps in France, some time ago, said: "My most popular number was Kreisler's Tambourin Chinois. Invariably I had to repeat that." A strong indorsement of the internationalism of Art by the actual fighter in the trenches.
STYLE, INTERPRETATION AND THE ARTISTIC IDEAL
The question of style now came up. "I am not in favor of 'labeling' the concert artist, of calling him a 'lyric' or a 'dramatic' or some other kind of a player. If he is an artist in the real sense he controls all styles." Then, in answer to another question: "Nothing can express music but music itself. Tradition in interpretation does not mean a cut-and-dried set of rules handed down; it is, or should be, a matter of individual sentiment, of inner conviction. What makes one man an artist and keeps another an amateur is a God-given instinct for the artistically and musically right. It is not a thing to be explained, but to be felt. There is often only a narrow line of demarcation between the artistically right and wrong. Yet nearly every real artist will be found to agree as to when and when not that boundary has been overstepped. Sincerity and personality as well as disinterestedness, an expression of himself in his art that is absolutely honest, these, I believe, are ideals which every artist should cherish and try to realize. I believe, furthermore, that these ideals will come more and more into their own; that after the war there will be a great uplift, and that Art will realize to the full its value as a humanizing factor in life." And as is well known, no great artist of our day has done more toward the actual realization of these ideals he cherishes than Fritz Kreisler himself.