Between 1984 and 2007, I studied with the following teachers:
Maria Kelemen – Private tuition, Cape Town, Dublin, 1984–1988 Ronald Masin – Dublin Institute of Technology, College of Music, 1988–1996
Herman Krebbers – private tuition, Amsterdam, 1990–1996 Igor Ozim – Hochschule der Künste, Berne, 1996–2000
Ana Chumachenco – Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Zurich, 2000–2002
Zakhar Bron – Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Zurich, 2002– 2004
Shmuel Ashkenasi – Musikhochschule, Lübeck, 2004–2006
Thomas Brandis, aconcertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, taught me
at various masterclasses both in Germany and Liechtenstein between 1997 and 1999. Brandis is a student of Rostal. I partook in masterclasses given by Nora Chastain,a student of Ana Chumachenco, in Lenk, Switzerland in August 2007. In 2007 I received a number of private lessons from Boris Mikhailovich Garlitsky at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse in Paris, where he teaches. (Garlitsky was a student of his father, Mikhail Abramovich Garlitsky, who was the founder of a Soviet violin method only available in Russian entitled “Шаг за шагом” (“Step by Step”) and a teacher at the Gnessin School for Gifted Children in Moscow; later a student of Yankelevich at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.) I performed Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto for Franco Gulli (a student of József Szigeti) on the occasion of his masterclasses in Dublin in 1995. I was auditor at lessons given by Boris Kuschnir in the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole in Tuscany in January 2005. Siegmund Nissel was my chamber music teacher at a number of masterclasses, including one at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival. Gerhard
Schulz, second violinist of the Alban Berg Quartet and a student of Shmuel
Ashkenasi, taught me at Prussia Cove in Cornwall in the late 90’s. In 1995, followed two weeks of lessons during the London Masterclasses with Grigori Yefimovich
Heifetz), Erich Höbarth (a student of Végh), György Pauk (a student of Zathureczky), Eduard Schmieder,and Antje Weithaas, were brief but interesting. In this thesis, I will focus on what was relayed to me by my main teachers and will, where relevant or possible, include ideas of many of the violinists listed in this paragraph.
Outside the stated years of study with my teachers, I followed masterclasses that they conducted time and again, as well as receiving private tuition in some cases, both during and after my studies with an individual. Tuition received from other instrumentalists such as the pianists Yefim Bronfman, Peter Frankl, György Sebök, and Maria Tipo, are not directly listed here.
The following list of teachers consists of three categories, bearing direct relevance to the subject of this thesis:
A) Teachers with whom I have studied; B) Many of those who taught my teachers;
C) Teachers whose influence is pervasive, even if they did not directly teach me or one of my teachers.
Shmuel Ashkenasi (b. 1941)
The Hungarian School of teaching was the formative one from the beginning of Shmuel Ashkenasi’s violinistic life. Born in Tel-Aviv in 1941, Ashkenasi was a child prodigy, taught by Hungarian-born Ilona Fehér (1901–1988). She had been a student of Jenö Hubay in Budapest and initially taught Ashkenasi at her home in Holon. Some of the outstanding violinists to come out of her class include Pinchas Zukerman (b.1948) and Shlomo Mintz (b. 1957).
Ashkenasi left Tel-Aviv to become a student at the Philadelphia-based Curtis Institute of Music, where he had been accepted into the class of Efrem Zimbalist as a scholarship holder. In his first year at the Institute, Ashkenasi was primarily taught by Zimbalist’s assistant, Toshiya Eto (1928–2008).
Zimbalist, a student of Leopold Auer and Otakar Ševčík, was not only a violin pedagogue at The Curtis Institute of Music, but had also been appointed as director
in 1941, by the institute’s founder, Mary Louise Curtis Bok (1876–1970). In 1943 she and Zimbalist were married, and he continued as director until 1968.124
Ashkenasi quickly caught the attention of the international music community by capturing prizes at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1962, Belgium’s Queen Elisabeth Competition and the Merriwether Post Competition in Washington. Amongst the works performed at those competitions were sonatas by Johann Sebastian Bach from the Sonatas and Partitas for unaccompanied violin; and to this day, Ashkenasi remains not only a highly-skilled, but also an informed player of baroque music. This might be in part to his teacher Zimbalist, who devoted a lot of time to the research of early literature on the violin. He spoke about this in detail in an interview given to Samuel and Sada Applebaum.125
This award-laden violinist then embarked on a rich and varied solo career, performing with many of Europe’s and America’s best orchestras. He also played duo recitals with such notable pianists as Rudolf and Peter Serkin, Murray Perahia and Menahem Pressler. Ashkenasi recorded a disc of both Paganini Violin Concertos for Deutsche Grammophon with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, as well as both Beethoven Romances and Mozart’s A Major Violin Concerto KV219 for the Tudor label.
Ashkenasi founded the Vermeer Quartet in 1969 and has remained its leader throughout its long history. The quartet has a large discography and was nominated for a Grammy three times: for its interpretation of Haydn’s “The Seven Last Words of Christ” (Alden Productions CD 23042) and for two Naxos label recordings, namely, the complete Bartók string quartets and, on a second disc, the Shostakovich and Schnittke piano quintets with Boris Berman. At the end of 2007, the quartet retired, after a farewell tour that took its members all over the world. To show the vast repertoire and popularity of the quartet, after two acclaimed concerts in Geneva on the 6th and 8th of November 2007, where they performed, amongst other pieces, two of Mozart’s String Quintets together with former member, the violist Nobuko
124 Dates of Zimbalist’s directorship of The Curtis Institute of Music gathered from
http://www.curtis.edu/html/21135.shtml in June 2008.
125 Samuel and Sada Applebaum, The Way They Play, Illustrated Discussions with Famous Artists
Imai, I congratulated Ashkenasi. He told me that, in the two months preceding November, the quartet had played forty difference pieces. The Vermeer Quartet, based as they were in Chicago, were quartet in residence at the Northern Illinois University and Fellows at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England. They also spent many summers on the coast of Maine as the featured ensemble for the Bay Chamber Concerts.
A noted teacher, Ashkenasi held the post of interim professor at the Musikhochschule Lübeck until 2008, is professor of violin at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois, and began working as a violin professor at his alma mater, the The Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, in 2007/2008. His students include Anke Dill (also a student of Chastain), Viviane Hagner, Louise Higgins, Roman Patočka (concertmaster of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin as of 2007), Gerhard Schulz (also a student of Végh), Yvonne Smeulers (also a student of Krebbers and Bron), Jan Talich of the Talich Quartet, Julien Zufferey and members of the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.126
Oskar Back (1879–1963)
Born of Hungarian parents in Vienna, Oskar Back studied violin at first with his father and later with Jakob Grün. On finishing his studies with Grün, Back moved to Brussels aged sixteen where he received lessons from Eugène Ysaÿe and César Thomson. When Thomson was unable to teach because of his own concerts, Back would take Thomson’s place, thereby starting his pedagogical experiences at an early age. In 1898 he was named an official teacher at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique de Bruxelles which, at the time, enjoyed a very good international reputation for its violin teaching.
In 1919 he left Belgium for Amsterdam, largely because during and after the World War I, as a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Back had not felt appreciated in Belgium. After having coached members of the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest, in 1921 he was offered a position as violin pedagogue at the newly-created
126 Biographical information gathered from conversations with Shmuel Ashkenasi. He read and
Muzieklyceum in Amsterdam, an institute he would remain faithful to until his death. Back would establish himself in the Netherlands as one of the country’s most influential pedagogues and was naturalised there in 1935.127 His students included Theo Olof, Herman Krebbers, Alma Moodie, Wim Noske, Davina van Wely en Emmy Verhey. According to accounts by both Krebbers (via direct conversation with me) and Olof (via his writings), it is said that Back was very strict with his pupils, had a formidable insight into psychology, was passionate, short-tempered, extremely industrious, generous and charming. He treated all his students equally whether they were professionals or amateurs, the only difference in approach being that, “the amateurs were subjected to slightly less heartfelt scolding.128”
Olof, who shared the position of concertmaster of the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest in Amsterdam with Krebbers, noted in several of his books129 that the only thing that stood between Back being what could have been “een der grote podiumfiguren van zijn tijd”,130 or “one of the great podium figures of his time” was Back’s stage fright. It was primarily his students that had the privilege of hearing Back play. On one occasion he took to the stage during the colourfully festive jubilee celebrations of the Amsterdam Muzieklyceum. Together with Ferdinand Helman (a teaching colleague of Back) and ten students each from each from Back’s and Helman’s classes, twenty-two violinists played the Preludium of the third Partita BWV 1006 for violin solo by J.S. Bach. This was the only time that Olof, who knew Back for over thirty years, experienced a stage performance by Back. Olof writes,131 “het Preludium duurt drie minuten, en in deze drie minuten ging Oskar Back door drieduizend hellen. Dat was na afloop duidelijk.” (“the Preludium lasts three minutes, and in these three minutes Oskar Back went through three-thousand hells. That was clear afterwards.”)
127 Biographical information gathered from an article by A.W.J. de Jonge, Back, Oskar (1879-1963)
(Den Haag: Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland, 1994).
128
Theo Olof, Daar sta je dan opnieuw (Nieuwkoop: Uitgeverij Heuff, 1973), p. 111. The original excerpt reads: “Ter completering van dit misschien wel wat eenzijdige beeld, moet ik hier
onmiddellijk aan toevoegen, dat Oskar Back zich áltijd gaf, met hart en ziel, bij élke leerling, ook de niet-beroeps. Misschien werden die iets minder hartstochtelijk uitgescholden, maar dat was dan ook het enige verschil.”
129 Theo Olof, Daar sta je dan opnieuw (Nieuwkoop: Uitgeverij Heuff, 1973), p. 109–116 and Theo
Olof, divertimento van en over theo olof (Den Haag: Bert Bakker Daamen NV, 1968), p. 127–133.
130 Theo Olof, Daar sta je dan opnieuw (Nieuwkoop: Uitgeverij Heuff, 1973), p. 109. 131
Back dedicated his life to teaching and to his students on a very fundamental level, urging his students to play for and gain opinions from distinguished contemporaries such as the violinists Adolf Busch (1891–1952), Nathan Milstein (1904–1992) and Jacques Thibaud (1880–1953), the conductor, Pierre Monteux (1875–1964), and even Queen Elisabeth of Belgium (1876–1965, a renowned music-lover and patron of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Brussels, one of the most well-regarded competitions in the world), who was a student of Back’s.
His only vice seems to have been smoking and a penchant for playing bridge. However, it cannot be the second that affected his health; Back was not only strict with his students, he was strict with himself – he was never ill and expected the same from his pupils. However, when nature finally did hit, it did so tragically. The last ten years of his life were spent teaching, being a much-respected jury member and even driving albeit with an artificial leg.
May 1951. The Chapelle de la Reine Elisabeth. The Concours is over and Her Majesty is receiving all the participants and jury members. All are standing in the beautiful sunshine, on the bordes, David Oistrakh, [Leonid] Kogan, [Yehudi] Menuhin, [Jacques] Thibaud, [George] Enesco, and many more. A car stops, with difficulty the last jury member to have arrived steps out. Leaning heavily on his walking-stick, he shuffles, foot by foot, those few meters to the bordes. He does not want to be supported by anyone. His face is wet from the strain and pain. Oskar Back never allowed himself to not attend due to illness…132
Shortly after his eightieth birthday Back had to stop teaching for health reasons and died in a hospital in Belgium.
In later life one of his deepest wishes was realised, initially aided by donations from his own students — the establishment of a foundation that would allow young,
132 Theo Olof, Daar sta je dan opnieuw (Nieuwkoop: Uitgeverij Heuff, 1973), p. 114–115. The
original excerpt reads: “Mei 1951. De Chapelle de la Reine Elisabeth. Het Concours is beëindigd en Hare Majesteit ontvangt alle mededingers en juryleden. Allen staan in de stralende zon op het bordes, David Oistrach, Kogan, Menuhin, Thibaud, Enesco en nog vele anderen. Een auto stopt, moeizaam stapt het laatst aangekomen jurylid uit. Zwaar leunend op zijn stok, schuifelt hij voetje voor voetje de paar meters naar het bordes. Hij wil door niemand ondersteund worden. Zijn gezicht is nat van inspanning en pijn. Oskar Back liet geen verstek gaan…”
talented, impecunious violinists to receive financial support. The Stichting Studiefonds Oskar Back led to another initiative: in 1967 the first Nationaal Vioolconcours Oskar Back, a bi-annual national violin competition, was held in the Netherlands, its prizes taking the form of bursaries. Since then the competition has helped to bring forth such formidable players as Emmy Verhey (in its inaugural year), Vera Beths (1969), Jaap van Zweden (1977), Saskia Viersen (1991), Sonja van Beek (1993), Liza Ferschtman (1997) and third-prize winner Janine Jansen (1993).133
Zakhar Bron (b. 1947)
Zakhar Bron was born in the city of Oral (Uralsk) in 1947. His mother was a concert pianist, his father an amateur violinist. Noting that the child was gifted, Bron’s first teacher Alexei Bolotin, who taught in Bron’s native city, advised that the young violinist be sent to Odessa. Bron was admitted to the Stolyarsky School of Music in Odessa (Pyotr Solomonovich Stolyarsky, 1871–1944, had been the teacher of David Oistrakh and Nathan Milstein), in the class of Arthur Zisserman. After two years in Odessa, he moved to Moscow where he stayed for twenty years, first studying under the guidance of Boris Goldstein at the Gnessin School, a music school for exceptional talent that he attended for six years, and later in the class of Igor Oistrakh (b. 1931, the son of David Oistrakh) at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory.134
Bron participated in various violin competitions, becoming a laureate of the Soviet “All-Union” competition in 1969, the Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition in Poznan in 1977 and the twelfth prize-winner in 1971 of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Brussels, in which year he finished his studies.
In an interview given to Ralf Noltensmeier in 1997,135
133 Information concerning the Nationaal Vioolconcours Oskar Back and part of Oskar Back’s
biography gathered from the Dutch website,http://www.oskarback.nl/content/view/31/47/ in January 2008.
Bron explains that he did not set up his own class immediately. He reasons that due to the presence of such violinists as David Oistrakh, Yuri Yankelevich and Leonid Kogan, the
134 Information communicated to the author by Nadezhda Korshakova, assistant to Bron since
December 2003 at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Zurich.
135
aforementioned men belonging to “the golden age of the Russian school”136, Moscow had an abundance of great pedagogues in the 70’s. Further to this he tells the interviewer that in Germany, on completion of the Bachelor of Music, there exists the possibility of extending one’s studies by doing a postgraduate study entitled “Konzertexamen” or “Concert Exam”. Bron calls the Russian equivalent of the Concert Exam “Aspirantur” (in Russian, аспирантура, which describes a postgraduate study). Bron goes on to say that during “Aspirantur” in Russia, a music student is expected to act as assistant to his or her teacher. Bron’s first forays into teaching were undertaken in this manner, as Igor Oistrakh’s assistant. However, on finishing his studies, he did not attempt to set up his own class in Moscow, believing that he could not have realised his pedagogical ideas there, “ new ideas would have called for a stronger protagonist [than I thought I was]; or one would have had to show an accordant amount of achievements [via one’s students], which is, of course, not possible in the beginning.”137
On engagement as a teacher in 1974 at the Special Music School for Children, part of the Novosibirsk Conservatory in Siberia, he began to gain a strong reputation as an accomplished pedagogue. This is the school where violinists of worldwide repute were trained, often on a daily basis by Bron. Bron’s Glinka Conservatory class includes names such as Maxim Vengerov (b. 1974, soloist, teacher and conductor), Vadim Repin (b. 1971, soloist), Nikolai Madoyev (b. 1973, soloist) and Natalia Prischepenko (b. 1973, leader of the Artemis Quartet). After fourteen years in Novosibirsk two things happened: perestroika, and international recognition via Vengerov and Repin winning the top prizes in various international competitions including the Carl Flesch Competition (Vengerov) and the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition (Repin).
Bron began receiving invitations to Western Europe; through contact with the pianist, conductor and founder of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Justus
136 Ralf Noltensmeier, Große Geigenpädagogen im Interview (Kiel: Peter Götzelmann Verlag, 1997),
p. 11–12. Bron’s quote originally reads: „Schließlich lebten in dieser Zeit in Moskau noch sehr berühmte Lehrer, etwa David Oistrakh, Jurij Jankelewitsch oder Leonid Kogan; es war noch die goldene Periode der russischen Schule.“
137 Ralf Noltensmeier, Große Geigenpädagogen im Interview (Kiel: Peter Götzelmann Verlag, 1997),
p. 12. Bron’s original quote reads: „Neue Ideen hätten dort eines starken Protagonisten bedurft; oder aber man hätte entsprechende Erfolge nachweisen müssen — was natürlich am Anfang nicht möglich ist.“
Franz, negotiations to gain a permanent teaching position were initiated with the Musikhochschule in Lübeck. He was invited to become Professor at the Royal Academy in London, the Conservatory in Rotterdam, the Musikhochschule in Lübeck and the Escuela Superior de Musica in Madrid, all of which he accepted. However, he concentrated his effort on the latter two schools and especially his class in Lübeck gained international fame, where Vengerov, Repin, Madoyev and Prischepenko finished their studies, having moved from Novosibirsk to Lübeck to be with their professor. In 1997 he moved from the Musikhochschule in Lübeck to the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne and in 2002 took up a position as violin professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Zurich.
Bron is also prolific when it comes to published material. Amongst these, there is a four-hour DVD focusing on how Bron teaches Henryk Wieniawski’s second Violin Concerto in D minor. It has appeared in AMA-Verlag’s 2001–2005 catalogue