Kreisler, Fritz

Fritz Kreisler was born into a family of a doctor . His parents were Jews. He was baptized at the age of 12.

From the age of four, he studied violin under the supervision of Jacques Aubert, and quickly achieved great success. At the age of seven, he received the right to study at the Vienna Conservatory (now the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts), becoming her youngest student in history, admitted as an exception - according to the rules, persons not younger than 14 years old were accepted into the conservatory. He studied violin with Joseph Helmesberger and music theory with Anton Bruckner . At nine years old, Kreisler first appeared in public, and a year later he graduated from the conservatory with a gold medal. He continued to improve at the Paris Conservatory with Joseph Massard (violin) and Leo Delibes (theory and composition). In 1887, Kreisler received the first prize in the final exam, after which he decided to start an independent creative career.

Between 1889 and 1890, Kreisler performed a concert tour of the United States along with pianist Moritz Rosenthal , but the public accepts it with great restraint. Returning to Vienna , he entered the gymnasium, and then studied for two years at the medical department of the university, after which he served in the army. In 1896, Kreisler tried to enter the Vienna Palace Opera Orchestra, but did not enter the competition because of his poor ability to read from a sheet, which did not prevent him from starting a solo career. Two years later he gives a concert with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, ironically, formed from musicians of the very composition in which he was not accepted. Real international recognition comes to the violinist in 1899 when he first performed with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Arthur Nikisch . The following season (1900-1901), Kreisler toured the United States, and on May 12, 1902, gave his first concert in London . The English music community enthusiastically received the violinist, in 1904 he was awarded the gold medal of the London Philharmonic Society, and composer Edward Elgar dedicated his violin concerto to him, first performed by Kreisler on November 10, 1910 under the direction of the author.

With the outbreak of World War I, Kreisler went to the front as part of the Austrian army, but was demobilized after being wounded in October 1914 and soon left for the United States. In 1924, the violinist returned to Europe, where he lived first in Berlin and then in France .

After strengthening Nazi sentiment in Europe, Kreisler again left for the United States in 1938 , where in 1943 he accepted American citizenship. Despite the severe car accident in which he was in 1941 , he soon returned to active concert activity. Kreisler’s last public appearance was on November 1, 1947 at Carnegie Hall , and for the next several years he appeared on television, but soon decided to finally end his career as a musician due to progressive blindness and deafness (consequences of a car accident). Kreisler sold his unique collection of 18th-century violins, leaving himself the only instrument of 1860 by Jean Villaume . The violinist spent the last years of his life in New York.

Kreisler is one of the largest violinists of the first half of the 20th century. His performance was distinguished by technical impeccability, precise phrasing, elegant and warm sound, lively rhythm. The vibrato technique (“French” vibrato), which, according to Kreisler himself, he adopted from Henryk Wieniawski , was also one of the distinguishing features of his game. A fairly large number of his recordings have been preserved, relating mainly to the 1920s and 1930s, among them - concerts by Bach , Mozart , Beethoven , Paganini , Mendelssohn , violin sonatas by Schubert and Grieg (with Sergei Rachmaninov ) and others.

Kreisler was a talented composer, among his works - a string quartet, operettas ("Flowers of the Apple Tree" - 1919, "Sissy" - 1932), as well as works for violin - cadence for the concerts of Brahms and Beethoven , to Tartini 's G minor sonata "The Devil Trills ", Numerous plays, nowadays often performed" encore "-" Chinese tambourine "," Little Viennese march "," Wonderful rosemary "," Flour of love "," Joy of love "and many others, including numerous musical hoaxes attributed to composers of the past.

Fritz Kreisler owned several antique violins created by famous violin masters (among them Antonio Stradivari , Pietro and Giuseppe Guarneri , Carlo Bergonzi ), most of which eventually began to bear his name.

Kreisler played the Guarneri violin Del Gesu for a long time, but was forced to donate it to the Library of Congress in exchange for settling his tax arrears with the US Internal Revenue Service ^[1] . After that, the violinist used the instrument of Carlo Bergonzi as his first violin for more than ten years; as a second instrument, Fritz Kreisler often used the violin of Jean Baptiste Villaume (1860), the only one that he left to himself after the sale of the entire collection.

• Kreisler, Fritz // Basket - Kukunor. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1953. - P. 315. - ( Great Soviet Encyclopedia : [in 51 vols.] / Ch. Ed. B. A. Vvedensky ; 1949-1958, vol. 23).
• Yampolsky I. Fritz Kreisler. Life and art. - M .: Music, 1975

•   Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fritz Kreisler
• Kreisler: Praeludium und Allegro - Violin Guido Rimonda, Orchestra Camerata Ducale
• Fritz Kreisler on the Allmusic website
• Kreisler's Memoirs Text
• Fritz Kreisler Competition (Eng.) (German)