Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday

by Henry Charles Lahee

In 1889 Marie Soldat married a lawyer named Röger, but did not retire from her profession. She is now known as Madame Soldat-Röger.

Gabrielle Wietrowitz was born a few years later, in 1866, at Laibach, and was also a pupil at the Musical Institute at Gratz. Her father was a military bandsman who had some knowledge of the violin, which enabled him to give his daughter elementary instruction on that instrument.

After a few years he left Laibach to settle in Gratz, and Gabrielle took violin lessons from A. Geyer (some accounts say Caspar). On entering the Musical Union she made a sensation by playing brilliantly at a concert before a large audience. She was then eleven years of age, and from that time she made the most rapid progress, taking first prize at the annual trial concert. In consequence of her great promise Count Aichelburg, who was a member of the Directorate of the Musical Union, presented her with a valuable violin, and the Directorate assigned her a yearly salary which enabled her to go to Berlin and enter the high school, where she became a pupil of Joachim in 1882.

At the high school her career was as brilliant as it had been in Gratz, for at the end of her first year she succeeded in capturing the Mendelssohn prize, which brought her 1,500 marks, and at the end of her third year she took it for a second time.

She remained at the high school three years, after which she began a splendid career by playing the concerto by Brahms at the St. Cecilia Festival at Münster. Then followed a series of concert tours, which resulted in securing her a reputation as one of the most brilliant stars amongst women.

Miss Wietrowitz plays with the most consummate ease the greatest works of the modern school. She has a powerful and brilliant tone, with sweet tenderness and sympathy, which appeal to the soul of the listener, and she confines her repertoire to the highest class of musical compositions. She has recently succeeded Miss Emily Shinner as first violin in the quartet which that talented lady established in England.

The most recent star of Europe is Madame Saenger-Sethe, whose appearances are invariably followed by eulogies from the critics. In Berlin, when she appeared at the Singakademie, in November, 1898, where she was assisted by the Philharmonic Orchestra, one critic declared that no violin playing had been heard to compare with it during that season, with the exception of Burmester's performance of the Beethoven concerto. "Such wealth and sensuous beauty of tone, such certainty of technique, such mental grasp of the work, and at the same time such all-conquering temperament have not been heard in Berlin at the hands of a female violinist during several years." After many recalls, she gave, as an encore, a rousing performance of a Bach sarabande.

Mlle. Irma Sethe was born on April 28, 1876, at Brussels, and such was her early aptitude for music that at the age of five she was placed under a violinist of repute, named Jokisch, who in three months from the start taught her to play a Mozart sonata. Five years of hard study enabled her to appear at a concert at Marchiennes, when she played a concerto by De Bériot and the rondo capriccioso by Saint-Saëns. The following year she played at Aix-la-Chapelle, and made such an impression that several offers of concert engagements were made, but were declined by her mother on the score of the child's health, and for three years after this she never appeared at a concert.

One summer, during the holidays, she met August Wilhelmj, who was charmed with her talent, and devoted his mornings for two months to giving her lessons daily. At the end of that time he emphasised his appreciation by making her a present of a valuable violin. She still continued her regular studies with Jokisch, until, acting on the advice of her friends, she obtained a hearing from Ysaye, and played for him Bach's prelude and fugue in G minor.

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. She continued her studies for three more years, and was frequently employed as a substitute for Ysaye, as professor, to teach his classes while he was absent on concert tours.