The accounts of Carl Halir’s playing that I’ve read are varied, and haven’t come together yet to form a clear picture. I was therefore interested to read Theodore Spiering’s column in The Musician on the occasion of Halir’s death in 1909. Spiering (1871-1925) studied with Joachim at the Hochschule around 1890, and took part in a few Joachim Quartet performances. He returned to the US and began his illustrious career by joining the newly formed…
Edward N. Bilbie studied violin in Berlin for three years starting in 1888. He wrote a memoir of his career in 1921, which includes descriptions of some of the virtuosos of the time. I heard De Ahna play the Beethoven Concerto with his own cadenzas. He was a clear, full-toned artistic player with flawless technique and delightful style. He gave the concerto a flavor I have never heard duplicated. It was perfect, yet a little…
I recently came across a privately printed volume of memoirs by Edward N. Bilbie, entitled Experiences of a Violinist at Home and Abroad. It includes descriptions of some of the violin virtuosos of the day and life in Berlin in the 1880s and ’90s. The author was born in 1865, studied violin for seven years at the School of Music at Ann Arbor, and continued his training in Berlin for three years. He started by…
Anton Rubinstein, Quartet op. 47#2 (1874), op. 106 (1885) Ernst Rudorff, Sextet, op. 5 (1876) Bernhard Scholz, Quartet op. 46 (1877), Quintet op. 47 (1878) Leo Schrattenholz, Quartet op. 28 (manuscript, 1902) Charles Villiers Stanford, Quartet op. 64 (1897), Quintet op. 86 (1904) Taubert, Quartet op. 183 (1884) Johann Vierling, Quartet op. 56 (1887) Robert Volkmann, Quartet op. 14 in g minor (1873, 1880, 1883) The last of the three performances of this piece was…
1870s Reviews of the quartet’s performances in its first decade were almost always completely positive. The only complaints were about the conservative programming, with the prevalence of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, some Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn–and almost always Beethoven. In 1878 a program of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven’s Op. 131 had a reviewer commenting that since the Joachim Quartet concerts were “the caviar of musical delicacies,” the Singakademie was filled to the last place. Still, it “would…
Joseph Joachim (1831-1907) was the most important force in establishing the prominence and prestige of the Classical string quartet concert in modern concert life. When Joachim formed a quartet in 1869 in Berlin, it was part of the plan for the new “Königlichen Akademie der Künste zu Berlin verbundene Lehr-Anstalten für Musik.” The main idea was to provide an opportunity for students to hear professional performances of the repertoire they were studying by giving them…
