"No, Léonard was not my first teacher. I took up violin work when a boy
of five years of age, and for seven years practiced from eight to ten
hours a day, studying with Sabathiel, the leader of the Royal Orchestra
in Budapest, where I was born, though England, the land of my adoption,
in which I have lived these last twenty-six years, is the land where I
have found all my happiness, and much gratifying honor, and of which I
have been a devoted, ardent and loyal naturalized citizen for more than
a quarter of a century. Sabathiel was an excellent routine teacher, and
grounded me well in the fundamentals--good tone production and
technical control. Later I had far greater teachers, and they taught me
much, but--in the last analysis, most of the little I have achieved I
owe to myself, to hard, untiring work: I had determined to be a
violinist and I trust I became one. No serious student of the instrument
should ever forget that, no matter who his teacher may be, he himself
must supply the determination, the continued energy and devotion which
will lead him to success.
"Playing with Liszt--he was an intimate friend of my father--is my most
precious musical recollection of Budapest. I enjoyed it a great deal
more than my regular lesson work. He would condescend to play with me
some evenings and you can imagine what rare musical enjoyment, what
happiness there was in playing with such a genius! I was still a boy
when with him I played the Grieg F major sonata, which had just come
fresh from the press. He played with me the D minor sonata of Schumann
and introduced me to the mystic beauties of the Beethoven sonatas. I can
still recall how in the Beethoven C minor sonata, in the first movement,
Liszt would bring out a certain broken chromatic passage in the left
hand, with a mighty _crescendo_, an effect of melodious thunder, of
enormous depth of tone, and yet with the most exquisite regard for the
balance between the violin and his own instrument. And there was not a
trace of condescension in his attitude toward me; but always
encouragement, a tender affectionate and paternal interest in a young
boy, who at _that moment_ was a brother artist.
"Through Liszt I came to know the great men of Hungarian music of that
time: Erkel, Hans Richter, Robert Volkmann, Count Geza Zichy, and
eventually I secured a scholarship, which the King had founded for
music, to study with Joachim in Berlin, where I remained nearly three
years. Hubay was my companion there; but afterward we separated, he
going to Vieuxtemps, while I went to Léonard.