A caricature of Felix Mendelssohn from 1896 by Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley was a leading figure in the Aesthetic Movement of fin-de-siècle England that also included Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler.
Traveling to Paris, Beardsley encountered the poster art of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and a rage for Japanese prints. He managed to assimilate these influences, in addition to Pre-Raphaelite models, especially Edward Burne-Jones, in the development of his own distinctive style and contributed significantly to the development of Art Nouveau.
His frequent choice of decadent, grotesque, and salacious subject matter was a cause of continuous controversy, until his early death of tuberculosis at the age of 25.
Somehow, as I was in the thrall of the groundhog yesterday, I failed to equate February 2 with the birthday of Fritz Kreisler. And I’d had my eye on it, too, because it happened to be an important one. Kreisler was born on February 2, 1875 – 150 years ago.
In contrast to the cool intensity of his colleague, the great violinist Jascha Heifetz, who subjected himself to a punishing, though strictly secret, regimen of self-discipline in pursuit of superhuman perfection, Kreisler was warm, gregarious, and easygoing. As a sweet-toned confectioner and purveyor of violin bonbons, Kreisler ruffled feathers, not with his playing, but because he casually let slip that many of the 18th century “rediscoveries” he had used to charm audiences, critics, and musicologists were not in fact rediscoveries at all. Nor did they date from the 18th century. Rather they were composed by Kreisler himself. When the professionals complained, Kreisler shrugged.
It would be futile to argue against his serious musical credentials. He gave the world premiere of the Elgar concerto and became a favorite recital partner of Sergei Rachmaninoff. A famous anecdote relates that Kreisler and Rachmaninoff were giving a concert in New York. In the middle of a performance, Kreisler suffered a memory lapse, and as he noodled around on his violin, trying to find his way back, he inched closer to his pianist. “Where are we?” Kreisler whispered. To which Rachmaninoff replied, “Carnegie Hall.”
In 1941, Kreisler was crossing the street, when he was hit by a milk truck. The accident fractured his skull and put him in a coma. Like something out of an early Woody Allen comedy, when he awoke, he could communicate only in Latin and Greek. Thankfully, the effect was only temporary.
Kreisler met Heifetz, with whom he shared a birthday (Heifetz was born in Vilnius on February 2, 1901), for the first time at a private press party in 1912. After listening to the boy play through the Mendelssohn concerto, Heifetz declared, “We can all just break our fiddles over our knees.”
Happy belated birthday, and a joyous sesquicentennial, Fritz Kreisler. And since February 3 happens to be the anniversary of the birth of Felix Mendelssohn, here’s Kreisler performing Mendelssohn’s evergreen concerto.
Kreisler plays the “Meditation” from Massenet’s “Thaïs”
Kreisler, master of the miniature
Kreisler and Rachmaninoff play Schubert
Kreisler plays Rachmaninoff
Rachmaninoff plays Kreisler
Kreisler with John McCormack, in an aria from Benjamin Godard’s “Jocelyn”
Two-part radio interview on the occasion of Kreisler’s 80th birthday, with spoken tributes from Elman, Menuhin, Milstein, Stern, Szigeti and others:
I love how every year on February 2 everyone from scientists to journalists to scoffers on the street (or at any rate those on the internet) all feel compelled to point out that groundhogs aren’t really able to predict the weather. Oh, REALLY? I suppose there’s no Tooth Fairy either. These anemic killjoys are free to scowl over their soulless weather apps until the blue light eats away their maculae; I don’t want to live in a world without a prognosticating groundhog. This year even the calendar falls in with the mystic rodent. Six weeks until March 20 = six more weeks of winter! All hail Punxsutawney Phil!
For as long as it took Sony to reissue Columbia Records’ Black Composers Series on CD (40 years!), it was still ahead of the curve when it came to celebrating music by composers of color. Since the seismic social and political shift precipitated by the death of George Floyd, you can’t get through a week without new recordings and live performance of music by Black composers. But back in the day, these records were like Holy Grails, and as a collector, my heart would skip a beat if I ever came across one of the original albums on vinyl. I thought I would pass out when I discovered the CD reissues on the shelves of Princeton Record Exchange, since the box had basically been dumped on the market with no advertising.
Some of the composers have since found a toehold on the fringes of the concert repertoire – William Grant Still, George Walker, and the Chevalier de Saint-Georges are being heard with much more frequency – but there are many other fascinating discoveries to be savored.
I was so juiced at obtaining the entire series on CD that I promptly devoted four weeks of shows to the box set on “The Lost Chord” in 2019. Now, for the first time, the programs will be repeated, to coincide with Black History Month, over four Saturdays in February. Part One will feature selections by Saint-Georges, Olly Wilson, and Fela Sowande.
This is not a political statement, but rather a cultural and artistic one. Whatever it is that got us past this particular tipping point, I am grateful for it.
I hope you’ll join me for “Black to the Future” – selections from Columbia Records’ landmark Black Composers Series of the 1970s – on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST
