Replying to a question as to the value of the Bach violin sonatas,
Professor Auer said: "My pupils always have to play Bach. I have
published my own revision of them with a New York house. The most
impressive thing about these Bach solo sonatas is they do not need an
accompaniment: one feels it would be superfluous. Bach composed so
rapidly, he wrote with such ease, that it would have been no trouble for
him to supply one had he felt it necessary. But he did not, and he was
right. And they still must be played as he has written them. We have the
'modern' orchestra, the 'modern' piano, but, thank heaven, no 'modern'
violin! Such indications as I have made in my edition with regard to
bowing, fingering, _nuances_ of expression, are more or less in accord
with the spirit of the times; but not a single note that Bach has
written has been changed. The sonatas are technically among the most
difficult things written for the violin, excepting Ernst and Paganini.
Not that they are hard in a modern way: Bach knew nothing of harmonics,
_pizzicati_, scales in octaves and tenths. But his counterpoint, his
fugues--to play them well when the principal theme is sometimes in the
outer voices, sometimes in the inner voices, or moving from one to the
other--is supremely difficult! In the last sonatas there is a larger
number of small movements--- but this does not make them any easier to
play.
"I have also edited the Beethoven sonatas together with Rudolph Ganz. He
worked at the piano parts in New York, while I studied and revised the
violin parts in Petrograd and Norway, where I spent my summers during
the war. There was not so much to do," said Professor Auer modestly, "a
little fingering, some bowing indications and not much else. No reviser
needs to put any indications for _nuance_ and shading in Beethoven. He
was quite able to attend to all that himself. There is no composer who
shows such refinement of _nuance_. You need only to take his quartets
or these same sonatas to convince yourself of the fact. In my Brahms
revisions I have supplied really needed fingerings, bowings, and other
indications! Important compositions on which I am now at work include
Ernst's fine Concerto, Op. 23, the Mozart violin concertos, and
Tartini's _Trille du diable_, with a special cadenza for my pupil,
Toscha Seidel.