Scan 38
Celebrated violinists, past and present; ("The Strad" library), 1897
8 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. Printed page 26. See the scan on archive.org.
1before: he was in no way forgotten, and with Alard he played in concerts with quite extravagant success.
3To mark their great admiration for Sivori the Parisians presented him with a specially struck medal of honour. To Sivori belongs, it is said, the distinction of having been the first violinist to play the Mendelssohn concerto in an English concert room in 1846. His success over here was quite on a par with that he achieved elsewhere, and there are still living among us people who heard him at his best who declare that he was quite unequalled in his own particular line. His technique knew no difficulties, and his tone is said never to have been equalled, much less surpassed.
5A writer on musical subjects writing in the Musical Standard, of February 24th, 1894, who heard Sivori in England many years ago, says that "without prejudice, I will make an avowal that no player on the violin ever gratified my ear more than the Italian, Sivori. Apart from his executive excellence and genius of a high order, the tone was indescribably fine. The adjective 'silvery' hardly expresses the quality with sufficient force, but let that pass. Sivori might be rated as a virtuoso, but he was classical in respect of taste. Sivori played in London contemporaneously with Ernst, a violinist of exalted merit, but too apt to 'stop out of tune.' On one occasion, when these two fine artists appeared together at a concert in London, some slight friction was excited on a question of precedence; the Prince Albert, it was thought, favoured Ernst as a compatriot, but Sivori stood firm and fully asserted his position. He was a little man in respect of stature, but his face beamed with intellectual expression."
7It has often been said that Sivori was born immediately after his mother returned from a concert, at which she heard Paganini for the first time, and that premature confinement was induced by the excitement attendant upon hearing the greatest violinist the world ever saw. It is quite comprehensible, and the omen was unquestionably a good one for Sivori.
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