Joseph Szigeti
Encyclopedia
Joseph Szigeti (September 5, 1892 February 19, 1973) was a Hungarian
violin
ist.
Born into a musical family, he spent his early childhood in a small town in Transylvania
. He quickly proved himself to be a child prodigy on the violin, and moved to Budapest
with his father to study with the renowned pedagogue Jenő Hubay
. After completing his studies with Hubay in his early teens, Szigeti began his international concert career. His performances at that time were primarily limited to salon-style recitals and the more overtly virtuosic repertoire; however, after making the acquaintance of pianist Ferruccio Busoni
, he began to develop a much more thoughtful and intellectual approach to music that eventually earned him the nickname "The Scholarly Virtuoso".
Following a bout of tuberculosis
which required a stay in a sanatorium
in Switzerland
, Szigeti settled in Geneva
, where he became Professor of Violin at the local conservatory in 1917. It was in Geneva that he met his future wife, Wanda Ostrowska, and at roughly the same time he became friends with the composer Béla Bartók
. Both relationships were to be lifelong.
From the 1920s until 1960, Szigeti performed regularly around the world and recorded extensively. He also distinguished himself as a strong advocate of new music, and was the dedicatee of many new works by contemporary composers. Among the more notable pieces written for him are Ernest Bloch
's Violin Concerto, Bartók's Rhapsody No. 1
, and Eugène Ysaÿe
's Solo Sonata No. 1. After retiring from the concert stage in 1960, he worked at teaching and writing until his death in 1973, at the age of 80.
Szigeti was born Joseph "Jóska" Singer to a Jewish family in Budapest
, Austria-Hungary
. His mother died when he was three years old, and soon thereafter the boy was sent to live with his grandparents in the little Carpathian
town of Máramaros-Sziget
(hence the name Szigeti). He grew up surrounded by music, as the town band was composed almost entirely of his uncles. After a few informal lessons on the cimbalom from his aunt, he received his first lessons on the violin from his Uncle Bernat at the age of six.
Szigeti quickly showed a talent for the violin. Several years later, his father took him to Budapest to receive proper training at the conservatory. After a brief stint with an inadequate teacher, Szigeti auditioned at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music
and was admitted directly into the class of Jenő Hubay
, without the usual delays and formalities.
Hubay, who had been a student of Joseph Joachim
in Berlin
, had by that time established himself as one of the preeminent teachers in Europe and a fountainhead of the Hungarian violin tradition. Szigeti joined such violinists as Franz von Vecsey
, Emil Telmányi
, Jelly d'Arányi
and Stefi Geyer
in Hubay’s studio.
In those days, Europe produced a great many child prodigies
, inspired by the phenomenal success of the young Czech virtuoso Jan Kubelík
and formed by rigorous teaching and enthusiastic parents. The Hubay studio was no exception; Szigeti and his fellow wunderkinder
performed extensively in special recitals and salon concerts during their study at the Liszt Academy.
In 1905, at the age of thirteen, Szigeti made his Berlin debut playing Bach's
Chaconne in D minor, Ernst's
Concerto
in F-sharp minor, and Paganini's
Witches Dance. Despite the formidable program, the event received mention only via a photograph in the Sunday supplement of the Berliner Tageblatt
captioned: "A Musical Prodigy: Josef Szigeti".
Szigeti spent the next few months with a summer theater company in a small Hungarian resort town, playing mini-recitals in between acts of folk operetta
. In that same vein, the next year he played at a circus in Frankfurt
, where he appeared under the pseudonym "Jóska Szulagi". Also in 1906, Hubay took Szigeti to play for Joseph Joachim in Berlin. Joachim was impressed, and suggested that Szigeti should finish his studies with him. Szigeti declined the offer, both out of loyalty to Hubay and a perceived aloofness and lack of rapport between Joachim and his students.
, he met a music-loving couple who effectively adopted him, extending an invitation to stay with them for an indefinite length of time.
Throughout England, he gave many successful concerts, including the premiere of the first work dedicated to him: Hamilton Harty
's Violin Concerto. Also during this time, Szigeti toured with an all-star ensemble including legendary singer Dame Nellie Melba
and pianists Ferruccio Busoni
and Wilhelm Backhaus
. Philippe Gaubert
, a famous French flutist of the day, as well as the young singer John McCormack, were also part of these tours.
The most significant of the new contacts was Busoni. The great pianist and composer became Szigeti's mentor during these formative years, and the two would remain close friends until Busoni's death in 1924. By Szigeti's own admission, before meeting Busoni his life was characterized by a certain laziness and indifference brought on by the then-typical life of a young prodigy violinist. He had grown accustomed to playing crowd-pleasing salon miniatures and dazzling virtuosic encores without much thought. He knew little of the works of the great masters; he could play them, but not fully understand them. As Szigeti put it, Busoni—particularly through their careful study of Bach's
Chaconne—"shook me once and for all out of my adolescent complacency".
and was sent to a sanatorium
in Davos
, Switzerland
to recover, interrupting his concert career. During his stay at the sanatorium, he became re-acquainted with the composer Béla Bartók
, who was recovering from pneumonia
. The two had known each other only in passing during their conservatory days, but now they began a friendship that would last until Bartók’s death in 1945.
In 1917, having by then made a full recovery, at age 25 Szigeti was appointed Professor of Violin at the Geneva Conservatory of Music
. Szigeti said that this job, although generally satisfying, was often frustrating due to the mediocre quality of many of his students. The years teaching in Geneva provided an opportunity for Szigeti to deepen his understanding of music as an art, along with other aspects such as chamber music, orchestral performance, music theory and composition. Also during that time, Szigeti met and fell in love with Wanda Ostrowska, a young woman of Russian parentage who had been stranded in Geneva by the Russian Revolution of 1917. They married in 1919.
and played the Bach Chaconne in D minor for him. Less than two weeks later, Szigeti received a telegram from Stokowski’s manager in Philadelphia inviting him to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra
later that year: it was to be his American debut. Szigeti had never played with an American orchestra before, nor heard one, and later he wrote of suffering stage fright
. He was taken aback by the American concert scene, and the way that its publicity- and popularity-driven agents and managers determined much of what was heard in American concert halls. He believed they were not interested in works by the great masters, but preferred the popular light salon pieces which Szigeti had left behind in his prodigy days. (To the end of his life, Szigeti loved to quote one memorable, cigar-chewing impresario who told him, with regard to Beethoven
's Kreutzer Sonata
, “Well, let me tell you, Mister Dzigedy—and I know what I’m talking about—your Krewtzer Sonata bores the pants off my audiences!")
In 1939, to escape the war and Nazi persecution of the Jews, Szigeti emigrated with his wife to the United States, where they settled in California
. (A year later, Bartók also fled to America, and just two days after his arrival, he and Szigeti played a sonata recital at the Library of Congress
in Washington, D.C.
)
During the 1930s, '40s and into the '50s, Szigeti recorded extensively, leaving a significant legacy. Notable recordings include the above-mentioned Library of Congress sonata recital; the studio recording of Bartók's Contrasts
with Benny Goodman
on clarinet and the composer at the piano; the violin concertos of Beethoven
, Brahms
, Mendelssohn
, Prokofiev
(No. 1) and Bloch
under the batons of such conductors as Bruno Walter
, Hamilton Harty
and Sir Thomas Beecham
; and various works by J.S. Bach, Busoni, Corelli
, Handel
and Mozart
. One of his last recordings was of the Six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin by Bach; although his technique had deteriorated noticeably by that time, the recording is prized for Szigeti's insight and depth of interpretation.
In 1950, Szigeti was detained at Ellis Island
upon returning from a European concert tour and was held for several days, officially "temporarily excluded" from the country. The reasons for his detention remain unclear. The following year, he became a naturalized American citizen.
During the 1950s, Szigeti began to develop arthritis
in his hands and his playing deteriorated. Despite his weakened technical mastery, his intellect and musical expression were still strong, and he continued to draw large audiences to his concerts. In Naples
, Italy, in November 1956, just after the Soviets crushed the Hungarian revolution, as soon as he walked onto the stage the audience burst into wild applause and shouts of Viva l’Ungheria! (Italian for "Long live Hungary!"), delaying the concert for nearly fifteen minutes.
In 1960 Szigeti officially retired from performing, and returned to Switzerland
with his wife. There he devoted himself primarily to teaching, although he still traveled regularly to judge international violin competitions. Top-class students from all over Europe and the United States came to study under him. One of these students was Arnold Steinhardt
, who spent the summer of 1962 with Szigeti. He came to the conclusion that "Joseph Szigeti was a template for the musician I would like to become: inquisitive, innovative, sensitive, feeling, informed".
Toward the end of his life, Szigeti suffered from frail health. He was put on strict diets and had several stays in hospital, but his friends asserted that this did nothing to dampen his characteristic cheerfulness. He died in Lucerne
, Switzerland
on February 19, 1973, at the age of 80. The New York Times ran a front-page obituary that ended with this 1966 quote from violinist Yehudi Menuhin
:
Just before the birth of their only child, daughter Irene, Szigeti found himself stuck in Berlin during the Kapp Putsch
of 1920, unable to return to Geneva. The entire city had been paralyzed by a general strike, and the trains were not running. His scheduled concert could not go on as planned, but he was forced to stay in Berlin for "interminable days" while the Putsch ran its course. Szigeti writes: "... the impossibility of communicating by phone or wire with my wife--whose condition I pictured with the somewhat lurid pessimism usual to young prospective fathers--was certainly a greater torment to me than all the other discomforts put together".
By 1940, the outbreak of World War II
forced the Szigetis to leave Europe for the United States. (Irene remained in Switzerland, having married pianist Nikita Magaloff
earlier that year.) They settled in California, where Wanda, always fond of nature, was delighted to be able to raise her own garden. In a letter to a friend, Szigeti describes their California life:
Szigeti narrowly escaped being killed in the plane crash that claimed the life of movie star Carole Lombard
in January, 1942. Szigeti, who was on his way to Los Angeles for a concert, was forced to give up his seat on TWA Flight 3
at a refueling stop in Albuquerque, NM in order to allow the plane to take on 15 soldiers who, being wartime, had priority in travel. The plane, off course at night and with wartime blackout conditions in effect, crashed into a mountain cliff after take off from an intermediate stop in Las Vegas killing everyone on board.
In 1960 the couple returned to Europe and settled near Lake Geneva
in Switzerland, close to the home of their daughter and son-in-law. They remained there for the rest of their lives. Wanda died in 1971, predeceasing her husband by two years.
This comment illustrates well the general nature of Szigeti's reception by both critics and fellow musicians: while his musical insights, intellect, and depth of interpretation were almost universally lauded, the purely technical aspect of his playing was awarded a more mixed reaction. His tone in particular seems to have been occasionally uneven from performance to performance. A 1926 recital review in The New York Times, for example, laments that
wrote that
In his memoirs, published in 2004, cellist János Starker
asserts that
Starker then describes a recital he attended late in Szigeti's career, illustrating both the extent to which Szigeti was suffering from arthritis and his ability to still communicate his musical ideas effectively:
Violinist Yehudi Menuhin
comments at length about Szigeti in his own memoirs, remarking as many others did on Szigeti's intellectual approach to music, but in a somewhat more critical fashion:
Nevertheless, Menuhin too referred to Szigeti as "a violinist whom I much admired and a man of whom I was very fond".
reviewed it favorably: although in their description the book was "constructed along utterly anarchistic lines, with each episode and anecdote left pretty much on its own", they asserted that "It also has the flavor of life in it, and it is marked by an exhilarating revolt against the custom of arranging catastrophes and triumphs under neat chapter headings".
In 1969, he published his treatise on violin playing, Szigeti on the Violin. In it Szigeti presents his opinions about the then-current state of violin playing and the various challenges and issues facing musicians in the modern world, as well as a detailed examination of violin technique as he understood it.
A recurring theme in the first part is the changing nature of violinist’s lives during Szigeti’s later years. In his youth, concert artists relied primarily on recitals to establish themselves and attract critical attention and acclaim; by the time of Szigeti’s writings, the recital had been eclipsed in importance by the competition. Szigeti was dismayed by this trend, especially since he considered the fast-paced and intense preparation necessary for high-level competitions to be “…incompatible with the slow maturing either of the performing artist or of the repertoire.”
Szigeti believed that such accelerated development of a musician led to performances that “lack(ed) the stamp of authenticity, the mark of a personal view evolved through trial and error.” In a similar vein, he was skeptical of the effects produced by the recording industry on the culture of music-making. In Szigeti’s opinion, the allure of the recording contract and the instant “success” that it implied led many young artists to record works before they were musically ready, and thus contributed to the problem of artificially fast development and resulting musical immaturity.
Szigeti also offers a lengthy and detailed explanation of his approach to violin technique. He believed that a violinist should be concerned primarily with musical goals, rather than simply choosing either the easiest or most impressively virtuosic way to play a certain passage. He was particularly concerned with tone color
: he advised that “The player should cultivate a seismograph-like sensitivity to brusque changes of tone colour caused by fingerings based on expediency and comfort rather than the composer’s manifest or probable intentions.” Other topics prominently discussed include the most effective position of a violinist's left hand, the violin works of Béla Bartók
, a cautionary list of widely accepted misprints and editorial inaccuracies in the standard repertoire, and most notably, the vital importance of J.S. Bach's Six Sonatas and Partitas for any violinist's technical and artistic development.
, Ernest Bloch
, and Eugène Ysaÿe
, along with lesser-known composers such as David Diamond
and Hamilton Harty
.
The reason for Szigeti's appeal to composers was articulated by Bloch upon completion of his Violin Concerto: the concerto's premiere would have to be delayed a full year in order for Szigeti to be the soloist, and Bloch agreed, saying that
Szigeti was also the dedicatee of the first of Eugène Ysaÿe
's Six Sonatas for Solo Violin
; in fact, Ysaÿe's inspiration to compose the sonatas came from hearing Szigeti's performances of J.S. Bach
's Six Sonatas and Partitas, to which they are intended as a modern counterpart.
Perhaps Szigeti's most fruitful musical partnership was with his friend Béla Bartók. The first piece Bartók dedicated to him was the First Rhapsody for violin and orchestra
(or piano) of 1928; the rhapsody, based on both Romanian and Hungarian folk tunes, was one of a pair of violin rhapsodies written in 1928 (the other being dedicated to Zoltán Székely
.) In 1938, Szigeti and clarinetist Benny Goodman
teamed up to commission a trio from Bartók: originally intended to be a short work just long enough to fill both sides of a 78 rpm record, the piece soon expanded beyond its modest intent and became the three-movement Contrasts for Piano, Violin and Clarinet
. In 1944, by which time Szigeti and Bartók had both fled to the United States to escape the war in Europe, Bartók's health was failing and he had sunk into depression. He was in dire need of money, but felt no inspiration to compose and was convinced that his works would never sell to an American audience. Szigeti came to his friend's aid by securing donations from the American Society of Composers and Publishers to pay for Bartók's medical treatment, and then, together with conductor and compatriot Fritz Reiner
, persuaded Serge Koussevitzky
to commission from Bartók what eventually became his much-beloved Concerto for Orchestra
. The work's success brought Bartók some measure of financial security and provided him with a much-needed emotional boost.
As well as performing new works dedicated to him, Szigeti also championed the music of other contemporary composers, notably Sergei Prokofiev
and Igor Stravinsky
. He was among the first violinists to make Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto
a standard part of his repertoire, and frequently performed and recorded works of Stravinsky (including the Duo Concertante, recorded with the composer at the piano in 1945.)
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
ist.
Born into a musical family, he spent his early childhood in a small town in Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
. He quickly proved himself to be a child prodigy on the violin, and moved to Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
with his father to study with the renowned pedagogue Jenő Hubay
Jeno Hubay
Eugen Huber , better known by his Hungarian name Jenő Hubay , was a Hungarian violinist, composer and music teacher.-Early life:Eugen Huber was born into a German family of musicians in Pest, Hungary...
. After completing his studies with Hubay in his early teens, Szigeti began his international concert career. His performances at that time were primarily limited to salon-style recitals and the more overtly virtuosic repertoire; however, after making the acquaintance of pianist Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
, he began to develop a much more thoughtful and intellectual approach to music that eventually earned him the nickname "The Scholarly Virtuoso".
Following a bout of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
which required a stay in a sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, Szigeti settled in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, where he became Professor of Violin at the local conservatory in 1917. It was in Geneva that he met his future wife, Wanda Ostrowska, and at roughly the same time he became friends with the composer Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
. Both relationships were to be lifelong.
From the 1920s until 1960, Szigeti performed regularly around the world and recorded extensively. He also distinguished himself as a strong advocate of new music, and was the dedicatee of many new works by contemporary composers. Among the more notable pieces written for him are Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer.-Life:Bloch was born in Geneva and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon afterwards. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe...
's Violin Concerto, Bartók's Rhapsody No. 1
Rhapsody No. 1 (Bartók)
Rhapsody No. 1, Sz. 87, BB 94 is the first of two folk dances for violin and orchestra written by Béla Bartók. It was written in 1928 and dedicated to Hungarian virtuoso violinist Joseph Szigeti, a close friend of Bartók....
, and Eugène Ysaÿe
Eugène Ysaÿe
Eugène Ysaÿe was a Belgian violinist, composer and conductor born in Liège. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tzar"...
's Solo Sonata No. 1. After retiring from the concert stage in 1960, he worked at teaching and writing until his death in 1973, at the age of 80.
Early life
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
, Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
. His mother died when he was three years old, and soon thereafter the boy was sent to live with his grandparents in the little Carpathian
Carpathian Mountains
The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe...
town of Máramaros-Sziget
Sighetu Marmatiei
Sighetu Marmației , formerly Sighet, is a city in Maramureş County near the Iza River, in north-western Romania. It administers five villages: Iapa, Lazu Baciului, Șugău, Valea Cufundoasă and Valea Hotarului.-Geography:...
(hence the name Szigeti). He grew up surrounded by music, as the town band was composed almost entirely of his uncles. After a few informal lessons on the cimbalom from his aunt, he received his first lessons on the violin from his Uncle Bernat at the age of six.
Szigeti quickly showed a talent for the violin. Several years later, his father took him to Budapest to receive proper training at the conservatory. After a brief stint with an inadequate teacher, Szigeti auditioned at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music
Franz Liszt Academy of Music
The Franz Liszt Academy of Music is a concert hall and music conservatory in Budapest, Hungary, founded on November 14, 1875...
and was admitted directly into the class of Jenő Hubay
Jeno Hubay
Eugen Huber , better known by his Hungarian name Jenő Hubay , was a Hungarian violinist, composer and music teacher.-Early life:Eugen Huber was born into a German family of musicians in Pest, Hungary...
, without the usual delays and formalities.
Hubay, who had been a student of Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.-Origins:...
in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, had by that time established himself as one of the preeminent teachers in Europe and a fountainhead of the Hungarian violin tradition. Szigeti joined such violinists as Franz von Vecsey
Franz von Vecsey
Franz von Vecsey was a Hungarian violinist and composer.He was born in Budapest and began his violin studies with his father, Lajos Vecsey, and at the age of eight he entered the studio of Jenő Hubay...
, Emil Telmányi
Emil Telmányi
Emil Telmányi, b. 22 June 1892 in Arad, then in the Kingdom of Hungary, d. 13 June 1988 in Holte, Denmark was a Hungarian violinist who invented the Bach bow, designed to play and sustain three or four notes on a violin for Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin...
, Jelly d'Arányi
Jelly d'Arányi
Jelly d'Aranyi, fully Jelly Aranyi de Hunyadvár was a Hungarian violinist who made her home in London.She born in Budapest, the grand-niece of Joseph Joachim, and sister of the violinist Adila Fachiri. She began her studies as a pianist, but switched to violin at the Music Academy in Budapest...
and Stefi Geyer
Stefi Geyer
Stefi Geyer was a Hungarian violinist.She was the daughter of Josef Geyer, a police doctor who played the violin himself. When she was 3 years old she started playing the violin, with remarkable results for someone who had not practiced at all...
in Hubay’s studio.
In those days, Europe produced a great many child prodigies
Child prodigy
A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
, inspired by the phenomenal success of the young Czech virtuoso Jan Kubelík
Jan Kubelík
Jan Kubelík was a Czech violinist and composer.-Biography:He was born in Michle . His father, a gardener by occupation, was an amateur violinist. He taught his two sons the violin and after discovering the talent of Jan, who was aged five at the time, arranged for him to study with Karel Weber and...
and formed by rigorous teaching and enthusiastic parents. The Hubay studio was no exception; Szigeti and his fellow wunderkinder
Child prodigy
A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
performed extensively in special recitals and salon concerts during their study at the Liszt Academy.
In 1905, at the age of thirteen, Szigeti made his Berlin debut playing Bach's
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
Chaconne in D minor, Ernst's
Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst
Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst was a Moravian-Jewish violinist, violist and composer. Ernst was widely seen as the outstanding violinist of his time and one of Paganini's greatest successors....
Concerto
Concerto
A concerto is a musical work usually composed in three parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have originated from the conjunction of the two Latin words...
in F-sharp minor, and Paganini's
Niccolò Paganini
Niccolò Paganini was an Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer. He was one of the most celebrated violin virtuosi of his time, and left his mark as one of the pillars of modern violin technique...
Witches Dance. Despite the formidable program, the event received mention only via a photograph in the Sunday supplement of the Berliner Tageblatt
Berliner Tageblatt
The Berliner Tageblatt or BT was a German language newspaper published in Berlin from 1872-1939. Along with the Frankfurter Zeitung, it became one of the most important liberal German newspapers of its time.-History:...
captioned: "A Musical Prodigy: Josef Szigeti".
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
. In that same vein, the next year he played at a circus in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
, where he appeared under the pseudonym "Jóska Szulagi". Also in 1906, Hubay took Szigeti to play for Joseph Joachim in Berlin. Joachim was impressed, and suggested that Szigeti should finish his studies with him. Szigeti declined the offer, both out of loyalty to Hubay and a perceived aloofness and lack of rapport between Joachim and his students.
Broadening horizons
Soon after the meeting with Joachim, Szigeti embarked on a major concert tour of England. Midway through the tour, in SurreySurrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
, he met a music-loving couple who effectively adopted him, extending an invitation to stay with them for an indefinite length of time.
Throughout England, he gave many successful concerts, including the premiere of the first work dedicated to him: Hamilton Harty
Hamilton Harty
Sir Hamilton Harty was an Irish and British composer, conductor, pianist and organist. In his capacity as a conductor, he was particularly noted as an interpreter of the music of Berlioz and he was much respected as a piano accompanist of exceptional prowess...
's Violin Concerto. Also during this time, Szigeti toured with an all-star ensemble including legendary singer Dame Nellie Melba
Nellie Melba
Dame Nellie Melba GBE , born Helen "Nellie" Porter Mitchell, was an Australian operatic soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian Era and the early 20th century...
and pianists Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
and Wilhelm Backhaus
Wilhelm Backhaus
Wilhelm Backhaus was a German pianist and pedagogue.Born in Leipzig, Backhaus studied at the conservatoire there with Alois Reckendorf until 1899, later taking private piano lessons with Eugen d'Albert in Frankfurt...
. Philippe Gaubert
Philippe Gaubert
Philippe Gaubert was a French musician who was a distinguished performer on the flute, a respected conductor, and a composer, primarily for the flute....
, a famous French flutist of the day, as well as the young singer John McCormack, were also part of these tours.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
Chaconne—"shook me once and for all out of my adolescent complacency".
Illness and new beginnings
In 1913, Szigeti was diagnosed with tuberculosisTuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
and was sent to a sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
in Davos
Davos
Davos is a municipality in the district of Prättigau/Davos in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland. It has a permanent population of 11,248 . Davos is located on the Landwasser River, in the Swiss Alps, between the Plessur and Albula Range...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
to recover, interrupting his concert career. During his stay at the sanatorium, he became re-acquainted with the composer Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
, who was recovering from pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
. The two had known each other only in passing during their conservatory days, but now they began a friendship that would last until Bartók’s death in 1945.
In 1917, having by then made a full recovery, at age 25 Szigeti was appointed Professor of Violin at the Geneva Conservatory of Music
Conservatoire de musique de Genève
The Conservatoire de musique de Genève is a music school in Geneva, Switzerland.Founded by François Bartholoni in 1835. This conservatory is the oldest music education institution in Switzerland and one of the oldest conservatory in Europe. Franz Liszt has taught at this conservatory during the...
. Szigeti said that this job, although generally satisfying, was often frustrating due to the mediocre quality of many of his students. The years teaching in Geneva provided an opportunity for Szigeti to deepen his understanding of music as an art, along with other aspects such as chamber music, orchestral performance, music theory and composition. Also during that time, Szigeti met and fell in love with Wanda Ostrowska, a young woman of Russian parentage who had been stranded in Geneva by the Russian Revolution of 1917. They married in 1919.
American debut
In 1925, Szigeti met Leopold StokowskiLeopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
and played the Bach Chaconne in D minor for him. Less than two weeks later, Szigeti received a telegram from Stokowski’s manager in Philadelphia inviting him to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...
later that year: it was to be his American debut. Szigeti had never played with an American orchestra before, nor heard one, and later he wrote of suffering stage fright
Stage fright
Stage fright or performance anxiety is the anxiety, fear, or persistent phobia which may be aroused in an individual by the requirement to perform in front of an audience, whether actually or potentially . In the context of public speaking, this fear is termed glossophobia, one of the most common...
. He was taken aback by the American concert scene, and the way that its publicity- and popularity-driven agents and managers determined much of what was heard in American concert halls. He believed they were not interested in works by the great masters, but preferred the popular light salon pieces which Szigeti had left behind in his prodigy days. (To the end of his life, Szigeti loved to quote one memorable, cigar-chewing impresario who told him, with regard to Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
's Kreutzer Sonata
Violin Sonata No. 9 (Beethoven)
Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major, commonly known as the Kreutzer Sonata, is a violin sonata which Ludwig van Beethoven published as his Opus 47...
, “Well, let me tell you, Mister Dzigedy—and I know what I’m talking about—your Krewtzer Sonata bores the pants off my audiences!")
Maturity
By 1930, Szigeti was established as a major international concert violinist. He performed extensively in Europe, the United States and Asia, and made the acquaintance of many of the era’s leading instrumentalists, conductors and composers.California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. (A year later, Bartók also fled to America, and just two days after his arrival, he and Szigeti played a sonata recital at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
)
During the 1930s, '40s and into the '50s, Szigeti recorded extensively, leaving a significant legacy. Notable recordings include the above-mentioned Library of Congress sonata recital; the studio recording of Bartók's Contrasts
Contrasts (Bartók)
Contrasts is a 1938 composition scored for clarinet-violin-piano trio by Béla Bartók . It is based on Hungarian and Romanian dance melodies and has three movements with a combined duration of 17-20 minutes. Bartók wrote the work in response to a letter from violinist Joseph Szigeti, although it...
with Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
on clarinet and the composer at the piano; the violin concertos of Beethoven
Violin Concerto (Beethoven)
Ludwig van Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, was written in 1806.The work was premiered on 23 December 1806 in the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. Beethoven wrote the concerto for his colleague Franz Clement, a leading violinist of the day, who had earlier given him helpful advice on...
, Brahms
Violin Concerto (Brahms)
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 is a violin concerto in three movements composed by Johannes Brahms in 1878 and dedicated to his friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim...
, Mendelssohn
Violin Concerto (Mendelssohn)
Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 is his last large orchestral work. It forms an important part of the violin repertoire and is one of the most popular and most frequently performed violin concertos of all time...
, Prokofiev
Violin Concerto No. 1 (Prokofiev)
Sergei Prokofiev began his Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, opus 19, as a concertino in 1915 but soon abandoned it to work on his opera The Gambler. He returned to the concerto in the summer of 1917. It premiered on October 18, 1923 at the Paris Opera with Marcel Darrieux playing the violin part...
(No. 1) and Bloch
Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer.-Life:Bloch was born in Geneva and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon afterwards. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe...
under the batons of such conductors as Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor. He is considered one of the best known conductors of the 20th century. Walter was born in Berlin, but is known to have lived in several countries between 1933 and 1939, before finally settling in the United States in 1939...
, Hamilton Harty
Hamilton Harty
Sir Hamilton Harty was an Irish and British composer, conductor, pianist and organist. In his capacity as a conductor, he was particularly noted as an interpreter of the music of Berlioz and he was much respected as a piano accompanist of exceptional prowess...
and Sir Thomas Beecham
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
; and various works by J.S. Bach, Busoni, Corelli
Arcangelo Corelli
Arcangelo Corelli was an Italian violinist and composer of Baroque music.-Biography:Corelli was born at Fusignano, in the current-day province of Ravenna, although at the time it was in the province of Ferrara. Little is known about his early life...
, Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
and Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
. One of his last recordings was of the Six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin by Bach; although his technique had deteriorated noticeably by that time, the recording is prized for Szigeti's insight and depth of interpretation.
In 1950, Szigeti was detained at Ellis Island
Ellis Island
Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. It was the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with landfill between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the...
upon returning from a European concert tour and was held for several days, officially "temporarily excluded" from the country. The reasons for his detention remain unclear. The following year, he became a naturalized American citizen.
Later years
Arthritis
Arthritis is a form of joint disorder that involves inflammation of one or more joints....
in his hands and his playing deteriorated. Despite his weakened technical mastery, his intellect and musical expression were still strong, and he continued to draw large audiences to his concerts. In Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, Italy, in November 1956, just after the Soviets crushed the Hungarian revolution, as soon as he walked onto the stage the audience burst into wild applause and shouts of Viva l’Ungheria! (Italian for "Long live Hungary!"), delaying the concert for nearly fifteen minutes.
In 1960 Szigeti officially retired from performing, and returned to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
with his wife. There he devoted himself primarily to teaching, although he still traveled regularly to judge international violin competitions. Top-class students from all over Europe and the United States came to study under him. One of these students was Arnold Steinhardt
Arnold Steinhardt
Arnold Steinhardt , is an American violinist, best known as the first violinist of the Guarneri String Quartet....
, who spent the summer of 1962 with Szigeti. He came to the conclusion that "Joseph Szigeti was a template for the musician I would like to become: inquisitive, innovative, sensitive, feeling, informed".
Toward the end of his life, Szigeti suffered from frail health. He was put on strict diets and had several stays in hospital, but his friends asserted that this did nothing to dampen his characteristic cheerfulness. He died in Lucerne
Lucerne
Lucerne is a city in north-central Switzerland, in the German-speaking portion of that country. Lucerne is the capital of the Canton of Lucerne and the capital of the district of the same name. With a population of about 76,200 people, Lucerne is the most populous city in Central Switzerland, and...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
on February 19, 1973, at the age of 80. The New York Times ran a front-page obituary that ended with this 1966 quote from violinist Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE was a Russian Jewish American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Russian Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985...
:
We must be humbly grateful that the breed of cultured and chivalrous violin virtuosos, aristocrats as human beings and as musicians, has survived into our hostile age in the person of Joseph Szigeti.
Family life
In 1918, while teaching in Geneva, Szigeti met and fell in love with Wanda Ostrowska. She was born in Russia and had been stranded by the Russian Revolution of 1917 with her sister at a finishing school in Geneva. In 1919 Szigeti and Ostrowska decided to get married, but due to the turbulent political situation in Europe, many unexpected bureaucratic obstacles were thrown up in their path. The first problem was the impossibility of contacting Ostrowska's family, and the couple were forced to go ahead without parental consent, with the permission only of Ostrowska's sister and the headmistress of the finishing school. Further bureaucratic entanglements threatened the young couple's hopes, but eventually the officials responsible granted them a dispensation to marry. Szigeti recalls in his memoirs the words of Consul General Baron de Montlong at the critical moment:Let us not, if we can avoid it, fall victim to the dead letter of the law. I don't want to postpone the happiness of these two youngsters if we can help it. All laws have been twisted and tortured out of semblance of law, what with war and revolutions. For once let's twist and turn one for a good cause, yes?
Kapp Putsch
The Kapp Putsch — or more accurately the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch — was a 1920 coup attempt during the German Revolution of 1918–1919 aimed at overthrowing the Weimar Republic...
of 1920, unable to return to Geneva. The entire city had been paralyzed by a general strike, and the trains were not running. His scheduled concert could not go on as planned, but he was forced to stay in Berlin for "interminable days" while the Putsch ran its course. Szigeti writes: "... the impossibility of communicating by phone or wire with my wife--whose condition I pictured with the somewhat lurid pessimism usual to young prospective fathers--was certainly a greater torment to me than all the other discomforts put together".
By 1940, the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
forced the Szigetis to leave Europe for the United States. (Irene remained in Switzerland, having married pianist Nikita Magaloff
Nikita Magaloff
Nikita Magaloff was a Georgian-Russian pianist.He was born in Saint Petersburg to a Georgian noble family named Maghalashvili. Magaloff and his family left Russia in 1918 for Finland and then Paris, where he studied with Isidor Philipp, chair of the piano department at the Paris Conservatory...
earlier that year.) They settled in California, where Wanda, always fond of nature, was delighted to be able to raise her own garden. In a letter to a friend, Szigeti describes their California life:
Wanda is happy, doing wonders with her gardening, chicken and rabbit raising, preserve and pâté de foie making. She doesn't budge from our place, doesn't want to come back to New York even for a visit, which I, for one, can well understand! Two dogs, an aviary full of exotic birds, tomatoes, grapes, strawberries, asparagus, artichokes, lovely flowers (camellias too!), right in our own little world.
Szigeti narrowly escaped being killed in the plane crash that claimed the life of movie star Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard was an American actress. She was particularly noted for her comedic roles in the screwball comedies of the 1930s...
in January, 1942. Szigeti, who was on his way to Los Angeles for a concert, was forced to give up his seat on TWA Flight 3
TWA Flight 3
TWA Flight 3 was a twin-engine Douglas DC-3-382 propliner, registration NC1946, operated by Transcontinental and Western Air as a scheduled domestic passenger flight from New York, New York, to Burbank, California, via Indianapolis, Indiana; St. Louis, Missouri; Albuquerque, New Mexico and Las...
at a refueling stop in Albuquerque, NM in order to allow the plane to take on 15 soldiers who, being wartime, had priority in travel. The plane, off course at night and with wartime blackout conditions in effect, crashed into a mountain cliff after take off from an intermediate stop in Las Vegas killing everyone on board.
In 1960 the couple returned to Europe and settled near Lake Geneva
Lake Geneva
Lake Geneva or Lake Léman is a lake in Switzerland and France. It is one of the largest lakes in Western Europe. 59.53 % of it comes under the jurisdiction of Switzerland , and 40.47 % under France...
in Switzerland, close to the home of their daughter and son-in-law. They remained there for the rest of their lives. Wanda died in 1971, predeceasing her husband by two years.
Critics
Writing in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Boris Schwarz commented:Szigeti's performing technique was not always flawless and his tone lacked sensuous beauty, although it acquired a spiritual quality in moments of inspiration ... Szigeti held the bow in an old-fashioned way, with the elbow close to the body, and produced much emphatic power, but not without extraneous sounds. Minor reservations, however, were swept aside by the force of his musical personality.
This comment illustrates well the general nature of Szigeti's reception by both critics and fellow musicians: while his musical insights, intellect, and depth of interpretation were almost universally lauded, the purely technical aspect of his playing was awarded a more mixed reaction. His tone in particular seems to have been occasionally uneven from performance to performance. A 1926 recital review in The New York Times, for example, laments that
... his performance was stiff and dry in its observance of letter and its absence of spirit ... Mr. Szigeti was not only inclined to dryness of tone and angularity of phrase, but there were also passages of poor intonation.In contrast, a review from the previous year in the same journal remarked after a performance of the Beethoven concerto that
Mr. Szigeti has a rather small but beautiful tone, elegance, finish. He played with a quiet sincerity which grew upon the audience, though not with the virility and sweep that other violinists find ... it is clear that Mr. Szigeti is a player to command esteem and respect for his musicianship, for the genuineness of his interpretations, and his artistic style.
Musicians
Among his fellow musicians, Szigeti was widely admired and respected. Violinist Nathan MilsteinNathan Milstein
Nathan Mironovich Milstein was a Russian-born American virtuoso violinist.Widely considered one of the finest violinists of the 20th century, Milstein was known for his interpretations of Bach's solo violin works and for works from the Romantic period...
wrote that
Szigeti... was an incredibly cultured musician. Actually his talent grew out of his culture ... I always admired him, and he was respected by musicians ... in his late years, he finally got the appreciation he deserved from the general public as well.
In his memoirs, published in 2004, cellist János Starker
János Starker
János Starker |Kingdom of Hungary]]) is a Hungarian-American cellist. Since 1958 he has taught at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he holds the title of Distinguished Professor.- Child prodigy :...
asserts that
Szigeti was one of the giants among the violinists I had heard from childhood on, and my admiration for him is undiminished up to this day.
Starker then describes a recital he attended late in Szigeti's career, illustrating both the extent to which Szigeti was suffering from arthritis and his ability to still communicate his musical ideas effectively:
"He invited me to his recital in Town Hall ... the first few minutes were excruciating: as I saw later, his fingers had deteriorated to the point that he had almost no flesh on them. But once he loosened up a bit he produced heart-rending beauty.
Violinist Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE was a Russian Jewish American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Russian Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985...
comments at length about Szigeti in his own memoirs, remarking as many others did on Szigeti's intellectual approach to music, but in a somewhat more critical fashion:
Apart from EnescoGeorge EnescuGeorge Enescu was a Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conductor and teacher.-Biography:Enescu was born in the village of Liveni , Dorohoi County at the time, today Botoşani County. He showed musical talent from early in his childhood. A child prodigy, Enescu created his first musical...
, he was the most cultivated violinist I have ever known but while Enesco was a force of nature, Szigeti, slender, small, anxious, was a beautifully fashioned piece of porcelain, a priceless Sèvres vase. Curiously for a Hungarian, from whom one expects wild, energetic, spontaneous qualities, Szigeti travelled even farther up a one-way road of deliberate intellectualism. A young accompanist who worked with Szigeti told me that two hours concentration wouldn't get them beyond the first three bars of a sonata--so much analysis and ratiocination went into his practice ... A similar persnicketiness marked his adjudication. Shortly before he died in 1973, he was a member of our jury at the City of London Carl Flesch Concours ... I was struck not only by the sharpness of his intellect but also by what seemed to me the perversity of his opinions. Some particular aspect of a competitor's playing would hold his attention, and he would take violent issue with it, to the exclusion of everything else. For him a violinist was made or broken, a prize awarded or withheld, on details that to me scarcely mattered.
Nevertheless, Menuhin too referred to Szigeti as "a violinist whom I much admired and a man of whom I was very fond".
The writer
During his time in America, Szigeti took to writing; his memoirs, With Strings Attached: Reminiscences and Reflections were published in 1947. The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
reviewed it favorably: although in their description the book was "constructed along utterly anarchistic lines, with each episode and anecdote left pretty much on its own", they asserted that "It also has the flavor of life in it, and it is marked by an exhilarating revolt against the custom of arranging catastrophes and triumphs under neat chapter headings".
In 1969, he published his treatise on violin playing, Szigeti on the Violin. In it Szigeti presents his opinions about the then-current state of violin playing and the various challenges and issues facing musicians in the modern world, as well as a detailed examination of violin technique as he understood it.
A recurring theme in the first part is the changing nature of violinist’s lives during Szigeti’s later years. In his youth, concert artists relied primarily on recitals to establish themselves and attract critical attention and acclaim; by the time of Szigeti’s writings, the recital had been eclipsed in importance by the competition. Szigeti was dismayed by this trend, especially since he considered the fast-paced and intense preparation necessary for high-level competitions to be “…incompatible with the slow maturing either of the performing artist or of the repertoire.”
Szigeti believed that such accelerated development of a musician led to performances that “lack(ed) the stamp of authenticity, the mark of a personal view evolved through trial and error.” In a similar vein, he was skeptical of the effects produced by the recording industry on the culture of music-making. In Szigeti’s opinion, the allure of the recording contract and the instant “success” that it implied led many young artists to record works before they were musically ready, and thus contributed to the problem of artificially fast development and resulting musical immaturity.
Szigeti also offers a lengthy and detailed explanation of his approach to violin technique. He believed that a violinist should be concerned primarily with musical goals, rather than simply choosing either the easiest or most impressively virtuosic way to play a certain passage. He was particularly concerned with tone color
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
: he advised that “The player should cultivate a seismograph-like sensitivity to brusque changes of tone colour caused by fingerings based on expediency and comfort rather than the composer’s manifest or probable intentions.” Other topics prominently discussed include the most effective position of a violinist's left hand, the violin works of Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
, a cautionary list of widely accepted misprints and editorial inaccuracies in the standard repertoire, and most notably, the vital importance of J.S. Bach's Six Sonatas and Partitas for any violinist's technical and artistic development.
New music
Szigeti was an avid champion of new music, and frequently planned his recitals to include new or little-known works alongside the classics. Many composers wrote new works for him, notably Béla BartókBéla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
, Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer.-Life:Bloch was born in Geneva and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon afterwards. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe...
, and Eugène Ysaÿe
Eugène Ysaÿe
Eugène Ysaÿe was a Belgian violinist, composer and conductor born in Liège. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tzar"...
, along with lesser-known composers such as David Diamond
David Diamond (composer)
David Leo Diamond was an American composer of classical music.-Life and career:He was born in Rochester, New York and studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Eastman School of Music under Bernard Rogers, also receiving lessons from Roger Sessions in New York City and Nadia Boulanger in...
and Hamilton Harty
Hamilton Harty
Sir Hamilton Harty was an Irish and British composer, conductor, pianist and organist. In his capacity as a conductor, he was particularly noted as an interpreter of the music of Berlioz and he was much respected as a piano accompanist of exceptional prowess...
.
The reason for Szigeti's appeal to composers was articulated by Bloch upon completion of his Violin Concerto: the concerto's premiere would have to be delayed a full year in order for Szigeti to be the soloist, and Bloch agreed, saying that
Modern composers realize that when Szigeti plays their music, their inmost fancy, their slightest intentions become fully realized, and their music is not exploited for the glorification of the artist and his technique, but that artist and technique become the humble servant of the music.
Eugène Ysaÿe
Eugène Ysaÿe was a Belgian violinist, composer and conductor born in Liège. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tzar"...
's Six Sonatas for Solo Violin
Six Sonatas for solo violin (Ysaÿe)
Eugène Ysaÿe's Six sonatas for solo violin, Op. 27, is a set of sonatas for unaccompanied violin written in July 1923. Each sonata was dedicated to one of Ysaÿe’s contemporary violinists: Joseph Szigeti , Jacques Thibaud , George Enescu , Fritz Kreisler , Mathieu Crickboom , and Manuel Quiroga...
; in fact, Ysaÿe's inspiration to compose the sonatas came from hearing Szigeti's performances of J.S. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
's Six Sonatas and Partitas, to which they are intended as a modern counterpart.
Perhaps Szigeti's most fruitful musical partnership was with his friend Béla Bartók. The first piece Bartók dedicated to him was the First Rhapsody for violin and orchestra
Rhapsody No. 1 (Bartók)
Rhapsody No. 1, Sz. 87, BB 94 is the first of two folk dances for violin and orchestra written by Béla Bartók. It was written in 1928 and dedicated to Hungarian virtuoso violinist Joseph Szigeti, a close friend of Bartók....
(or piano) of 1928; the rhapsody, based on both Romanian and Hungarian folk tunes, was one of a pair of violin rhapsodies written in 1928 (the other being dedicated to Zoltán Székely
Zoltán Székely
Zoltán Székely was a violinist and composer.Székely studied violin with Jenő Hubay and composition with Zoltán Kodály at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. He composed mainly chamber music...
.) In 1938, Szigeti and clarinetist Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
teamed up to commission a trio from Bartók: originally intended to be a short work just long enough to fill both sides of a 78 rpm record, the piece soon expanded beyond its modest intent and became the three-movement Contrasts for Piano, Violin and Clarinet
Contrasts (Bartók)
Contrasts is a 1938 composition scored for clarinet-violin-piano trio by Béla Bartók . It is based on Hungarian and Romanian dance melodies and has three movements with a combined duration of 17-20 minutes. Bartók wrote the work in response to a letter from violinist Joseph Szigeti, although it...
. In 1944, by which time Szigeti and Bartók had both fled to the United States to escape the war in Europe, Bartók's health was failing and he had sunk into depression. He was in dire need of money, but felt no inspiration to compose and was convinced that his works would never sell to an American audience. Szigeti came to his friend's aid by securing donations from the American Society of Composers and Publishers to pay for Bartók's medical treatment, and then, together with conductor and compatriot Fritz Reiner
Fritz Reiner
Frederick Martin “Fritz” Reiner was a prominent conductor of opera and symphonic music in the twentieth century.-Biography:...
, persuaded Serge Koussevitzky
Serge Koussevitzky
Serge Koussevitzky , was a Russian-born Jewish conductor, composer and double-bassist, known for his long tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949.-Early career:...
to commission from Bartók what eventually became his much-beloved Concerto for Orchestra
Concerto for Orchestra (Bartók)
Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116, BB 123, is a five-movement musical work for orchestra composed by Béla Bartók in 1943. It is one of his best-known, most popular and most accessible works. The score is inscribed "15 August – 8 October 1943", and it premiered on December 1, 1944 in Boston Symphony...
. The work's success brought Bartók some measure of financial security and provided him with a much-needed emotional boost.
As well as performing new works dedicated to him, Szigeti also championed the music of other contemporary composers, notably Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
and Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
. He was among the first violinists to make Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto
Violin Concerto No. 1 (Prokofiev)
Sergei Prokofiev began his Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, opus 19, as a concertino in 1915 but soon abandoned it to work on his opera The Gambler. He returned to the concerto in the summer of 1917. It premiered on October 18, 1923 at the Paris Opera with Marcel Darrieux playing the violin part...
a standard part of his repertoire, and frequently performed and recorded works of Stravinsky (including the Duo Concertante, recorded with the composer at the piano in 1945.)