Scan 11
Violin master works and their interpretation, 1925
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1certain work; while another, playing the self-same composition, will leave them quite cold; and yet, both may be absolutely competent, technically speaking. Is this because in the second instance the conductor or player presents the work along the lines laid down by tradition, while in the first case the artist seeks to express the composer's meaning through the medium of his own feelings, his own emotions? I believe this last to be true. I believe in talent, in genius, in sensitive reaction to the beautiful, in aesthetic sensibility—for aesthetic sensibility is the law of the beautiful—and not in tradition.
3When I was a young man Joachim was accounted the greatest interpreter of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, Bach's Chaconne, and Tartini's sonata "The Devil's Trill." Whenever and wherever Joachim played for the first time one of these works was listed on his programme. Does this mean to imply that Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski or Wilhelmj did not play the same works just as well? The three violinists last mentioned were also great artists, endowed with a perfected technique. Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski were also distinguished violin composers; while Wilhelmj, perhaps, possessed the largest and most evenly beautiful violin tone of his time and yet. . . .
5It is true that Joachim never played compositions by Vieuxtemps or Wieniawski, nor did he play Bach's "Air on the G String" in the transcription which Wilhelmj has made so popular. In this particular field Joachim either could not or would not compete with his colleagues aforementioned though they, as distinguished virtuosos, also included the classic repertoire in their programmes. This proves that Joachim possessed the true feeling and perception, the right sense of style where Bach, Beethoven and the older Italian composers were concerned. He made a deep impression on his auditors; and he amply gratified their sense of beauty when he played the works of these masters and those of Schumann, Spohr and Viotti. Later he included the masterly transcriptions he had made of the Brahms' "Hungarian Dances," (originally composed for the piano, four-hands) in his repertoire since, himself by birth a Hungarian, these dances were dear to his heart. It is seldom, in the course of the past twenty years, that I have heard other artists play these dances "in character," and in the manner that this uniquely original music demands. In most cases the rapid
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