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Kreisler: Beethoven-Violin Sonatas 5, 9 & 10 (2001)

Classical | Label: Allegro | Time: 75:15

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Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962) was not only a great violinist, he was one of the great charmers in the history of music. It is almost impossible to find a report of anyone saying anything against him, despite the fact that he was a notorious "fibber." Part of the reason is that he never said anything against anyone else. And he exuded charm—the warm champagne charm of old Vienna, where he was born and whose music and style he lived and breathed and loved all his long life. He even composed his own Viennese operetta. He was a handsome man with a noble demeanor. He looked great on stage. And he could play the violin in a magical way. He freely admitted to not having the superlative technique of a Heifetz or a Milstein, and in fact he bragged about not practicing for months at a time. Yet he could pick up a cheap violin and make it sound like a Stradivarius. This sounds like puffery or legend, but it is attested by innumerable people who heard him, including most of his greatest rivals.

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Kreisler did own a collection of priceless violins, but he seldom played them in public. His wife loved to tell people, "Everyone thinks Fritz is playing a good violin when he performs. No, he leaves the good ones at home!" He called one of his instruments the "Parker Stradivarius." When asked where it came from, he said it was made by a Mr. Parker of London. "Then why do you call it a Stradivarius?" "Because it sounds so good!"

In his own autobiography, Nathan Milstein called Kreisler his musical god. When he and Vladimir Horowitz were visiting Paris in the mid-1920s, they attended a Kreisler concert. When it was over, they stayed in their seats, stunned, while the rest of the audience left the hall. An usher had to shoo them out. The two young men looked at each and made a decision: They would leave Russia and stay in the West, if it had artists like that. Kreisler, of course, was only human, and he was not on top form at every appearance. "But even then," Milstein noted, "what would have been a catastrophe for others sounded charming for him." Kreisler was such a radiant artist that he simply could not lose an audience.

As for the "fibbing," the most famous examples involve the numerous small pieces he wrote himself but passed off for years as "rediscovered masterpieces" by older composers. When the critics finally found out, they were furious; but they couldn't do much but sputter, after pronouncing them to be authentic for years past. But Kreisler seemingly dissimulated for the pure fun of it. He would make up elaborate, serious-sounding tales such as consulting with Robert Schumann himself as to how to play his Fantasy for violin and piano, knowing full well that Schumann had died two decades before he was born.

He once lectured Milstein and Horowitz on the evils of gambling, and insisted he never did it himself. On a later occasion, the pair took a strictly sightseeing tour of the famous casino in Monte Carlo, and there was Kreisler, licking his lips and excitedly piling his chips on the roulette table. Maybe behind that eternal fafade of graciousness there was a streak of contempt for gullible humanity. Like so many great people, perhaps Kreisler was simply complex and paradoxical. If that's what it takes to create playing like his, maybe we can live with it.

Bill Parker

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