"You ask about my compositions? Well, Eddy Brown is going to play my
Second violin concerto, Op. 36 in B flat, which I wrote for the London
Philharmonic Society, next season; Elman the Nardini concerto in A,
which was published only shortly before the outbreak of the war. Thirty
years ago I found, by chance, three old Nardini concertos for violin and
bass in the composer's _original_ ms., in Bologna. The best was the one
in A--a beautiful work! But the bass was not even figured, and the task
of reconstructing the accompaniment for piano, as well as for orchestra,
and reverently doing justice to the composer's original intent and idea;
while at the same time making its beauties clearly and expressively
available from the standpoint of the violinist of to-day, was not easy.
Still, I think I may say I succeeded." And Mr. Nachéz showed me some
letters from famous contemporaries who had made the acquaintance of this
Nardini concerto in A major. Auer, Thibaud, Sir Hubert Parry (who said
that he had "infused the work with new life"), Pollak, Switzerland's
ranking fiddler, Carl Flesch, author of the well-known _Urstudien_--all
expressed their admiration. One we cannot forbear quoting a letter in
part. It was from Ottokar Sevčik. The great Bohemian pedagogue is
usually regarded as the apostle of mechanism in violin playing: as the
inventor of an inexorably logical system of development, which stresses
the technical at the expense of the musical. The following lines show
him in quite a different light:
"I would not be surprised if Nardini, Vivaldi and their
companions were to appear to you at the midnight hour in
order to thank the master for having given new life to
their works, long buried beneath the mold of figured
basses; works whose vital, pulsating possibilities these
old gentlemen probably never suspected. Nardini emerges
from your alchemistic musical laboratory with so fresh
and lively a quality of charm that starving fiddlers will
greet him with the same pleasure with which the bee
greets the first honeyed blossom of spring."