Fritz Kreisler

Louis Lochner’s biography of Fritz Kreisler is an absolute gem: it not only documents the violinist’s spectacular career in meticulous detail, it brings scenes to life. As a boy in Vienna, Kreisler studied with the eminent pedagogue Joseph “Peppi” Hellmesberger, Jr. who had “a weakness for ballet dancers.” Kreisler also studied with Bruckner, who had "a chubby, fat pug dog named Mops" – which, along with his classmates, Kreisler trained to run away when they played a Wagner motif and to wag its tail when they played Bruckner's Te Deum. His father, who played chess with Freud, discovered hashish in a box of Turkish cigarettes the young Kreisler was given in Constantinople.

Kreisler was an impractical person. He could never find his socks, he was shy around people and about going in the New York City subway. His wife Harriet has been accused of being a domineering presence in his life. But she was practical.

An Austrian citizen who became French and finally American, Kreisler resided in Berlin and NYC. He ate at Del Pezzo’s on W44th St. with Caruso and was a frequent visitor to Rembert Wurlitzer's violin shop on W42nd.

Kreisler studied with Massart, the teacher of Wieniawski, whose style of vibrato he came to share (along with Vieuxtemps and Ysaye). He knew Brahms and championed the Violin Concerto (the manuscript of which he owned at one time), but was not a follower of Joseph Joachim, its dedicatee. He knew Schoenberg, who took interest in his Beethoven cadenzas. He hardly ever practised. He did not take students. He had countless imitators, including the young Jascha Heifetz. He praised Milstein, Menuhin, Francescatti, and Stern. He was generous to a fault. He believed that the violin was a true mirror of a person’s moral compass:

To me, the man who loves justice will “sound” different from the man who is secretly capable of a mean act; the man who is cruel will “sound” different from the man who is humane.
…
Thus one way of perfecting musicianship is to conquer oneself, to rid oneself of meanness, to live the sort of life one can admire.