Violin Mastery - FRANZ KNEISEL - Part 5
THE FIRST VIOLIN IN CHAMBER MUSIC VERSUS
THE ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR
The comparison which I asked Mr. Kneisel to make is one which he could establish with authority. Aside from his experience as director of his quartet, he has been the concert-meister of such famous foreign orchestras as Bilse’s and that of the Hofburg Theater in Vienna and, for eighteen years, of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in this country. He has also conducted over one hundred concerts of the Boston Symphony, and was director of the Worcester Music Festivals.
“Nikisch once said to me, after he had heard us play the Schumann A minor quartet in Boston: ‘Kneisel, it was beautiful, and I felt that you had more difficulty in developing it than I have with an orchestral score!’ And I think he was right. First of all the symphonic conductor is an autocrat. There is no appeal from the commands of his baton. But the first violin of a quartet is, in a sense, only the ‘first among peers.’ The velvet glove is an absolute necessity in his case. He must gain his art ends by diplomacy and tact, he must always remember that his fellow artists are solo players. If he is arbitrary, no matter how right he may be, he disturbs that fine feeling of artistic fellowship, that delicate balance of individual temperaments harmonized for and by a single purpose. In this connection I do not mind confessing that though I enjoy a good game of cards, I made it a rule never to play cards with my colleagues during the hours of railroad traveling involved in keeping our concert engagements. I played chess. In chess the element of luck does not enter. Each player is responsible for what he does or leaves undone. And defeat leaves no such sting as it does when all may be blamed on chance. In an ensemble that strives for perfection there must be no undercurrents of regret, of dissatisfaction—nothing that interferes with the sympathy and good will which makes each individual artist do his best. And so I have never regretted giving cards the go-by!”
HINTS TO THE SERIOUS VIOLIN STUDENT
Of late years Mr. Kneisel’s activity as a teacher has added to his reputation. Few teachers can point to a galaxy of artist pupils which includes such names as Samuel Gardner, Sascha Jacobsen, Breskin, Helen Jeffry and Olive Meade (who perpetuates the ideals of his great string ensemble in her own quartet). “What is the secret of your method?” I asked him first of all. “Method is hardly the word,” he told me. “It sounds too cut-and-dried. I teach according to principles, which must, of course, vary in individual cases; yet whose foundation is fixed. And like Joachim, or Leschetiszky, I have preparatory teachers.
Violin Mastery
Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers
by Frederick H. Martens
Published 1919
