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MUSIC By LEILAH WADDELL.
Published in the International New York, New York, U.S.A. (page 128)
To-day was a red letter day in the lives of all violin students who happened to be in New York, and from 2 o'clock until 2:30 there was a constant stream of fiddlers into Carnegie Hall; tall and thin, short and fat, fiddlers of all sizes and all ages who had come to hear the celebrated veteran violinist Leopold Auer. So many had brought their violins with them, one wondered if they imagined the instruments should also listen to this wonderful master. Pour moi, I took my field glass in my great excitement instead of my opera glasses, maybe it seemed almost too good to be true that Leopold Auer was really giving a recital in New York, and in the subconscious I still thought my glasses might enable me to see him in Petrograd. The atmosphere was tense with excitement and great expectations, and as the great master stepped on to the platform an ovation great and prolonged greeted him, which he acknowledged with all the dignity of his seventy-two years. His programme of the old masters included Handel's A Major Sonata, Andante C Major and Gavotte E Major of Bach, Concerto Nardini, Sonata in G of Locatelli, Serenade and Vivace, Haydn-Auer, and the Chaconne of Vitali. There was not one moment during this very interesting programme which did not prove instructive to all violin students present. His famous pupils, Heifetz, Toscha Seidel, Rosen, Eddy Brown, and others, listened to their great and respected master with rapt attention. One could conceive of the incomparable Heifetz as a perfect musical Avatar of Auer, so closely does his youthful brilliance reproduce his master's Mystery.
The Nardini Concerto showed the exquisitely beautiful singing tone we have all admired so much in the Auer pupils. Also, we were astounded by the very remarkable vigor of his bow arm, and the manipulation of his wrist was of especial interest—one might say simplicity to be the key-note of the Auer method; no mannerisms, no striving after individual effect, just the sheer joy of playing the violin and just the interpretation of the sheer beauty of the music itself! One felt an absolute reverence for the very beautiful playing of Leopold Auer, as did his admirable accompanist and niece, Mme. Wanda Bogutzka-Stein. The name of Leopold Auer can never die; for he has found and produced in violin playing an indefinable something which will continue to delight all lovers of the violin in his famous pupils, especially in Jascha Heifetz and Toscha Seidel, the two marvellous eighteen-year-old artists of whom a great man hath said: "These are the two greatest violinists of this century. |