Sauret began his public career at the age of eight. He was born at Dun-le-Roi, in the department of Cher, in France, in 1852, and at the age of six entered the conservatory at Strasburg, after some preliminary instruction at home. In two years he began his travels, and for several years he divided his time between study and travel.
As a boy he was taken up by De Bériot, who was much interested in his welfare. He studied under Vieuxtemps in Paris, and in 1872 was one of the artists engaged for the tour organised by the President of the French Republic for the relief of the sufferers by the Franco-German war.
In 1879 ne was appointed teacher at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, a post which he relinquished on being offered the position made vacant in the Royal Academy of Music, London, by the death of Sainton.
M. Sauret is pronounced conservative and conscientious to the last degree in handling the classics, and, although he has great individuality, passion, and fire, he would consider it a sacrilege to obtrude his own personality upon the listener. He is distin guished for elegance rather than perfection of technique. He may be considered a representative of the extreme French school.
In temperament he is quick and somewhat impatient. He expects much of his pupils, and is the very opposite of the painstaking, phlegmatic Wilhelmj.
In 1896 M. Sauret again visited the United States, when it was admitted by those who had heard him twenty years before that he had grown to a consummate and astounding virtuoso. His tone was firm, pure, and beautiful, though not large. Marsick and Ondricek had preceded him by a few weeks, but Sauret did not suffer by comparison.
One of the most remarkable violinists of the present day is César Thomson, who was born at Liège in 1857. He entered the conservatory of his native place, after receiving some instruction from his father, and had completed the regular course by the time he was twelve years of age, after which he became a pupil of Leonard.
At the age of eighteen he made a concert tour through Italy, and while there became a member of the private orchestra of the Baron de Derwies. In 1879 he became a member of the Bilse Orchestra, and in 1882, having won distinction at the musical festival at Brussels, he was appointed professor of the violin in the Liège conservatory.
Most of his travelling has been done since that time, and he has acquired an immense reputation in Europe. In Leipzig, at a Gewandhaus concert in 1891, he made a phenomenal success, and in 1898 at Brussels he received five enthusiastic recalls from a cold and critical audience, for his magnificent performance of the Brahms concerto.
M. Thomson's command of all the technical resources of the violin is so great that he can play the most terrific passages without sacrificing his tone or clearness of phras ing, and his octave playing almost equals that of Paganini himself. Yet he is lacking in personal magnetism, and is a player for the musically cultivated rather than for the multitude, though his technique fills the listener with wonder. He visited the United States in 1896, and was, like Marsick, compared with Ysaye, who at that time swept everything before him and carried the country by storm.