Who is there among contemporary masters of the violin whose name stands
for more at the present time than that of the great Belgian artist, his
"extraordinary temperamental power as an interpreter" enhanced by a
hundred and one special gifts of tone and technic, gifts often alluded
to by his admiring colleagues? For Ysaye is the greatest exponent of
that wonderful Belgian school of violin playing which is rooted in his
teachers Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski, and which as Ysaye himself says,
"during a period covering seventy years reigned supreme at the
_Conservatoire_ in Paris in the persons of Massart, Remi, Marsick, and
others of its great interpreters."
What most impresses one who meets Ysaye and talks with him for the
first time is the mental breadth and vision of the man; his kindness and
amiability; his utter lack of small vanity. When the writer first called
on him in New York with a note of introductio from his friend and
admirer Adolfo Betti, and later at Scarsdale where, in company with his
friend Thibaud, he was dividing his time between music and tennis, Ysaye
made him entirely at home, and willingly talked of his art and its
ideals. In reply to some questions anent his own study years, he said:
"Strange to say, my father was my very first teacher--it is not often
the case. I studied with him until I went to the Liège Conservatory in
1867, where I won a second prize, sharing it with Ovide Musin, for
playing Viotti's 22d Concerto. Then I had lessons from Wieniawski in
Brussels and studied two years with Vieuxtemps in Paris. Vieuxtemps was
a paralytic when I came to him; yet a wonderful teacher, though he could
no longer play. And I was already a concertizing artist when I met him.
He was a very great man, the grandeur of whose tradition lives in the
whole 'romantic school' of violin playing. Look at his seven
concertos--of course they are written with an eye to effect, from the
virtuoso's standpoint, yet how firmly and solidly they are built up!
How interesting is their working-out: and the orchestral score is far
more than a mere accompaniment. As regards virtuose effect only
Paganini's music compares with his, and Paganini, of course, did not
play it as it is now played. In wealth of technical development, in true
musical expressiveness Vieuxtemps is a master. A proof is the fact that
his works have endured forty to fifty years, a long life for
compositions.
"Joachim, Léonard, Sivori, Wieniawski--all admired Vieuxtemps. In
Paganini's and Locatelli's works the effect, comparatively speaking,
lies in the mechanics; but Vieuxtemps is the great artist who made the
instrument take the road of romanticism which Hugo, Balzac and Gauthier
trod in literature. And before all the violin was made to charm, to
move, and Vieuxtemps knew it. Like Rubinstein, he held that the artist
must first of all have ideas, emotional power--his technic must be so
perfected that he does not have to think of it! Incidentally, speaking
of schools of violin playing, I find that there is a great tendency to
confuse the Belgian and French. This should not be. They are distinct,
though the latter has undoubtedly been formed and influenced by the
former. Many of the great violin names, in fact,--Vieuxtemps, Léonard*,
Marsick, Remi, Parent, de Broux, Musin, Thomson,--are all Belgian."
*Transcriber's note: Original text read "Leonard".