I must not omit the name of Ole Bull (1810-1880), for, though I heard him as a boy, I best remember him in 1880, when he gave his last concerts in America. In the fifties, while on a visit to my father's house, he went on his two thumbs around a dining-table, lifting his body clear from the ground. His muscular power was remarkable. It showed in the dynamics of his robust and sentimental playing. Spohr discouraged him as a boy, but later spoke of his "wonderful playing and sureness of his left hand; unfortunately, like Paganini, he sacrifices what is artistic to something that is not quite suitable to the noble instrument. His tone, too, is bad...." For Spohr any one's tone was, naturally enough, bad, as he possessed the most monumental tone that ever came from a violin.
The truth is that Ole Bull was not a classical player; as I remember him, he could not play in strict tempo; like Chopin, he indulged in the rubato and abused the portamento. But he knew his public. America a half-century ago, particularly in the regions he visited, was not in the mood for sonatas or concertos. Old Dan Tucker and the Arkansaw Traveller were the mode. Bull played them both, played jigs and old tunes, roused the echoes with the Star Spangled Banner and Irish melodies. He played such things beautifully, and it would have been musical snobbery to say that you didn't like them. You couldn't help yourself. The grand old fellow bewitched you. He was a handsome Merlin, with a touch of the charlatan and a touch of Liszt in his tall, willowy figure, small waist, and heavy head of hair. Such white hair! It tumbled in masses about his kindly face like one of his native Norwegian cataracts. He was the most picturesque old man I ever saw except Walt Whitman, at that time a steady attendant of the Carl Gaertner String Quartet concerts in Philadelphia. (And what Walt didn't know about music he made up in his love for stray dogs; he was seldom without canine company.)
Those were the days when Prume's La Mélancolie and Wieniawski's Légende were the two favourite, yet remote, peaks of the student's répertoire. How we loved them! Then came Wieniawski with Rubinstein in 1872-1873, and such violin playing America had never before heard—nor has it since, let me hasten to add. This Pole (1835-1880) was a brilliant master. His dash and fire and pathos carried you off your feet. His tone at times was like molten metal. He had a caressing and martial bow. His technique was infallible, his temperament truly Slavic, languorous, subtle, fierce. Wieniawski always reminded me of a red-hot coal. How chivalric is his Polonaise—that old war-horse! How elegiac his Légende! His favourite pupil was Leopold Lichtenberg, the greatest violin talent that has been thus far unearthed in America. Lichtenberg had everything when a youth—temperament, brains, musical feeling, and great technical ability.
After Wieniawski followed Wilhelmj, who did not efface his memory, but plunged one into another atmosphere; that of the calm, profound, untroubled, and classic. No doubt Spohr's tone was larger, yet this is difficult to believe. Wilhelmj drew from his instrument the noblest sounds I ever heard; not Joachim, not Ysaye excelled him in cantabile. He was the first to play Wagner transcriptions—no wonder Wagner made him leader of the strings at Bayreuth in 1876. How he read the Beethoven Concerto, the Bach Chaconne. Or the D flat Nocturne of Chopin—in D. Or the much abused Mendelssohn E Minor Concerto—with Max Vogrich accompanying him at the piano. A giant in physique, when he faced his audience there was something of the majestic, fair-haired god Wotan in his immobile posture. He never appealed to his public as did Wieniawski; there was always something of chilly grandeur and remoteness in Wilhelmj's play. The last time I saw him was at Marienbad, shortly before his death, where, a stooped-shouldered, grey-haired old man, he was taking a Kur. He walked slowly, his hands clasped behind him, in his eyes the vacant look of one busy with memories. He reminded me of Beethoven's pictures.
Joseph Joachim, that mighty Hungarian, was past his prime when I heard him in London. He played out of tune—some of his pupils have imitated his failing—but whether in a Beethoven quartet, concerto, sonata with piano, he always stamped on your consciousness that Joseph Joachim was the greatest violinist that had ever lived. This is, of course, absurd, this unfair comparison of one artist with another. Yet it is human to compare, and if a violinist can evoke such a vision of perfection, then he must be of uncommon powers. Maud Powell, a distinguished pupil of Joachim, has asserted that it took her three years before she could recover herself in the presence of Joachim's overwhelming personality. Yet he struck me as not at all assertive. He seemed an "objective" player, i. e., you thought only of Beethoven, of Brahms, as he calmly delivered himself of their Olympian measures. The grand manner is now out of fashion. We care more for exotic rhetoric than for simple and lofty measures. Sarasate and Dengremont charmed me more; Wieniawski set my blood coursing faster; but in Joachim's presence I felt as if near some old Grecian temple hallowed by the presence of oft-worshipped gods.
Remenyi was a puzzle. He could play divinely, and scratch diabolically. He belonged to that old romantic school in which pose and gesture, contortion and grimace occupied a prominent place. I had an opportunity to study Remenyi (whose Austrian name was Hoffman) (1830-1898), at close quarters. He brought to my father's house in the early eighties his favourite instruments, and such a wild night of music I never heard. He played hour after hour, everything from Bach to Brahms—and incidentally scolded Brahms for "stealing" some of his, Remenyi's, Hungarian dances! (Which is a joke, as Brahms only followed the examples of Liszt and Joachim in avowedly employing Hungarian folk melodies). He did such tricks as dashing off in impeccable tune his arrangement of the D Flat Valse of Chopin in double notes at a terrific tempo. Violinists will understand the feat when I tell them that the key was the original one—D flat. He made the walls shiver when he struck his bow clangorously in the opening chords of the Rackoczy March. What a hero then seemed this stout, little, prancing, baldheaded man with the face of an unfrocked priest. How he could talk in a half-dozen different languages; he had travelled enough and encountered enough celebrated people to fill a dozen volumes with his recollections. He was a violinist of unquestionable power; that he deteriorated in his later years was to have been expected. Liszt understood and appreciated Remenyi from the first; he nicknamed him "the Kossuth of the Fiddle."
To recall all the celebrities of the violin I have heard since 1870 would be hardly possible. I've forgotten most of them, though I do remember that wonderful boy, Maurice Dengremont, who ended his life, so rich in possibilities, it is said as a billiard marker. He was spoiled by women, for he was a comely lad. Another wonder-child kept his head, and to-day fascinating Fritz Kreisler is a master of masters and a favourite in America without peer. He first appeared at Boston and in 1888. In Paris I recall Marsick and his polished style; the gallant Sauret, Johannes Wolf, and the brilliant and elegant Timothée Adamowski. And in 1880, Marie Tayau and her woman quartet, a member of which was Jeanne Franko, the sister of the conductors and violinists, Sam Franko and Nahan Franko; Cæsar Thomson, the miraculous; C. M. Loeffler—subtle player, subtle composer; Sarasate with his sweet tone; Brodsky and his masculine manner; Willy Burmester and his pallid pyrotechnics; the learned Schradieck, the Bohemian Ondricek, the dashing Ovide Musin, Bernhard Listemann, Carl Halir; Gregorowitsch, the languid; brilliant Marteau; Alexander Petschinikoff, the Russian; the musicianly Max Bendix; the astonishing John Rhodes, the wonder-worker Kubelik and his icy perfections; Kocian, Willy Hess, Efrem Zimbalist, Albert Spalding, Arthur Hartman, and a myriad of spoiled youths, Von Veczsey, Horszowski—all have crossed the map of my memory. And Franz Kneisel and the Kneisel Quartet, dispensers of musical joys for decades, but alas! no more. Alas! I would not barter memories of their music-making for a wilderness of virtuosi. I must not forget Joseph White, the Cuban violinist, who was with Theodore Thomas one season. His style was finished and Parisian. He was a mulatto and a handsome man. The night I heard him he played the Mendelssohn concerto, and at the beginning of the slow movement his chanterelle broke. Calmly he took concert master Richard Arnold's proffered instrument and triumphantly finished the composition.
Three violinists abide clear in my recollection: Wieniawski, Wilhelmj, and Ysaye. The last named is dearer because nearer, contrary to the supposed rule that the older the thing the worse it is. Ysaye is the magician of the violin. He holds us in a spell with that elastic, curving bow of his, with those many coloured tones, tender, silky, sardonic, amorous, rich, and ductile. He interprets the classics as well as the romantics; Bach, Beethoven, Brahms; Vieuxtemps as well as Sibelius. Above all else, his mastery of the violin's technical mysteries, looms his musical temperament. He has imagination.
I have reserved the women for the last. A goodly, artistic company. It is not necessary to go back to the Milanolla sisters. We still cherish remembrances of Camilla Urso and her broad musicianly manner; the finished style of Normann-Neruda, Maris Soldat, the gifted and unhappy Arma Senkrah, Nettie Carpenter, Teresina Tua—who did not become a "Fiddle Fairy" when she visited us in 1887—Leonora Jackson, Dora Becker, Olive Mead, and Maud Powell. In Europe many years ago, I heard Marcella Sembrich, who, after playing the E Flat Polonaise of Chopin on the piano, picked up a violin and dashed off the Wieniawski Polonaise; these feats were followed by songs, one being Viardot-Garcia's arrangement of Chopin's D Major Mazourka. Sembrich is the blue rose among great singers. Gericke, Paur, Nikisch were at first violinists; so was Fritz Scheel, late conductor of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. Franz Kneisel is a conductor of great skill; so is Frederick Stock, who followed Theodore Thomas as conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Theodore Spiering formerly concert-master of the Philharmonic orchestra proved himself an excellent conductor. But that a little Polish woman could handle with ease two instruments and sing like an angel besides, borders on the fantastic. Geraldine Morgan is an admirable violin artiste who plays solo as well as quartet with equal authority.
Maud Powell has fulfilled her early promise. She is a mature artiste, one who will never be finished because she will always study, always improve. A Joachim pupil, she is, nevertheless, a pupil of Maud Powell, and her playing reveals breadth, musicianship, beauty of tone and phrasing. She is our greatest American violin virtuosa.