Joseph Szigeti
September 5, 2023
The Hungarian violinist Joseph Szigeti was born on this day, September 5, 1892. He began violin lessons at age seven, and because of his great aptitude for the instrument was soon accepted into the class of the renowned violin pedagogue Jenö Hubay.
Szigeti made his Berlin debut at age thirteen. His program consisted of Heinrich Ernst’s Violin Concerto in F Sharp Minor; Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chaconne from Partita No. 2 and Prelude from Partita No. 3, for solo violin; and ended with Niccolo Paganini’s Le Streghe (The Witches’ Dance). From there, Szigeti began his decades-long international concert career, in which he was admired not only as a violin virtuoso but also as both an inspired interpreter of the great traditional repertoire and a champion of new music.
As a teenager earnestly practicing the violin, I don’t believe I’d ever even heard Joseph Szigeti’s name, much less anything about his playing. My music-loving father often brought home records of the great Russian violinists—Mischa Elman, whose deep- throated tone could bring tears to my eyes, Nathan Milstein, whose brilliance and stylishness took my breath away, and Jascha Heifetz, whose mesmerizing playing made my heart beat faster and my palms begin to sweat. Marinated in the world of these dazzling Russian artists, what could be better than for me to dream of someday joining their virtuoso ranks!
Only as a beginning violin student at the Curtis Institute of Music in 1954 did I first hear about Szigeti from fellow students, and, more specifically, about his recording of Sergei Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto. Szigeti’s performance of the work was flawless technically, but by some kind of magic he was able capture the fairy-tale atmosphere that inhabited much of the work. Unlike the Russian violinists I had listened to so often, his sound was nuanced, somewhat slender, and almost mournful at times. Szigeti was able to cast aside the virtuoso violinist that he undoubtedly was, and transformed himself into a teller of stories. With each phrase he seemed to be in search of the very essence of a feeling or state of mind. Everything Szigeti touched—concertos by Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, and Berg, the great sonata literature, modest salon pieces like Hubay’s The Zephyr, and, of course, Bach—reflected his interlocking qualities of intelligence and sensitivity.
Szigeti’s unforgettable playing on recordings prompted me and several fellow students (including John Dalley, who would later become my violin partner in our Guarneri String Quartet) to hear the great violinist live. On March 13,1955, we traveled to Radnor High School in Wayne, Pennsylvania, where Szigeti gave a recital with pianist Leopold Mittman. Already in his sixties, his bow shook and his vibrato was slow enough to provoke muffled laughs when he began. And yet, by sheer will and sense of purpose, Szigeti made his vision of the music triumph over his failing body. The laughter stuck in our throats as he played.
In 1957 we Curtis students were able once again to hear Szigeti, this time with pianist Carlo Bussotti in Philadelphia. They performed in a cycle of twentieth-century sonatas by composers Vaughn Williams, Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky, Ernest Bloch, Ferruccio Busoni, Claude Debussy, Béla Bartók, Arthur Honegger, Sergei Prokofiev, and Charles Ives. Szigeti was undoubtedly nearing the end of his performing career, and yet here he was boldly plunging into new music. Who was this intriguing man?
Here, fate seemed to to step in as if to answer that question. When I was about to graduate from Curtis in 1959, George Szell, conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, invited me to become its assistant concertmaster. Szell promised me a yearly solo appearance with the orchestra, and one more thing: he offered to arrange for me to study with Joseph Szigeti, who had just retired from the concert stage, and to pay for the trip to Switzerland, where he lived. Szell told me that working with Szigeti would be ideal for my further musical growth. That was the clincher. I accepted Szell’s offer.
At the end of the 1961–62 Cleveland Orchestra season, my final paycheck was unusually large. True to his word, Szell had financed my trip to Switzerland.
Arriving for my lessons, I would often hear Szigeti playing for himself. Rather than ring the doorbell, I would stand transfixed under his window, listening to a rambunctious gigue, or a fugue whose principal voices rose effortlessly to the surface through a maze of two-, three-, and even four-note chords as if he was skillfully reciting the intertwining dialogue of several characters. Szigeti’s playing had faltered enough for him to have given up concertizing entirely the year before. But, inexplicably, his command of Bach, whose music most often exposes a musician’s weaknesses, remained virile and bold; and when the music softened, his sound, unlike the generic solidity of many violinists, became longing and plaintive, qualities that quite undid me.
When Szigeti finished playing, I slipped away from the window like a thief and rang the doorbell. His halting footsteps approached, the door opened, and he greeted me forlornly, in a voice reminiscent of the very sound I’d just heard. A litany of complaints poured forth: he had not slept well, his fingers hurt him, and his digestive system was again not in order. Szigeti’s complaints came as a shock. Gods did not suffer from aches and pains. But aches and pains were forgotten when the lessons began. The violin was a talking instrument in Szigeti’s mind. “Parlando, parlando,” he called out during Béla Bartók’s First Rhapsody. “You are speaking, and there is a rise and fall in the words and stresses on certain syllables that must be emphasized.” Szigeti and Bartók had performed the Rhapsody together, and some of Szigeti’s suggestions had undoubtedly come directly from the horse’s mouth.
As I played, Szigeti, perhaps not trusting my memory, would often write down directly on my music the things he considered most important. In the beginning of the Rhapsody he scrawled the words “art not scholarship”, and later in a languid section interrupted by two biting notes, Szigeti wrote“Impatient.” In the slow movement of Fauré’s First Violin and Piano Sonata, it was “Chopin Dialogue” where piano and violin exchange heartfelt moments. And in Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto, it was the word “Étage”—French for level or floor—to describe the intrinsic differences in the sound of the violin’s four strings, and how I might use them in the service of four phrases that appeared one after another in various registers. The idea was highly innovative and effective. Was Bartók, Szigeti’s close friend, whispering in his ear?
Toward the end of the summer, Szigeti asked me whether I would like to accompany him on his customary two-week vacation in the high mountains. A few days later we traveled by train and then by small cable car up to the high reaches of Riederalp, a small village nestled alongside the Aletsch Glacier, the largest in the Alps. Before the age of cable cars, Szigeti had made the trip by mule.
During our stay I ate meals with Szigeti, took daily walks with him, and had several lessons a week. Filled with music and stimulating conversation, the two weeks passed quickly. Szigeti was about to celebrate his seventieth birthday. He spoke of the great musicians he had known and heard in the early twentieth century—the violinists Joseph Joachim, Eugène Ysaÿe, Fritz Kreisler, Mischa Elman, and Jascha Heifetz, the composers Ferruccio Busoni and Béla Bartók, and his own teacher, Jenö Hubay. Occasionally he talked about the more recent past—the Nazis, anti-Semitism, art, and the state of music. Lessons, however, remained the core of my Swiss stay, and Bartók and Bach always seemed to take center stage.
Bartók, via their friendship, may have been whispering things of importance in Szigeti’s ear, but I had a similar if undoubtedly irrational feeling that Bach also spoke to him. Bach died in 1750; Szigeti was born in 1892. It was fanciful to think that these two men, separated by 142 years, were connected. Yet something of substance must have been handed down from one generation of fine musicians to the next—ever changing with the styles of the day but nevertheless retaining some essential nuggets of Bach’s intent. Once, passing Szigeti’s hotel room, I heard him play the Chaconne with the sort of freedom that could only come from someone completely at home in Bach’s idiom. How else could he have dared to indulge in such lavish tempo changes and still keep the work alive and the individual variations flowing naturally from one to another? Szigeti was playing for no one but himself, yet it was a performance to be remembered, and one that defied the presumed constraints I as a young musician felt obliged to obey.
In the plane back to the United States, one thing seemed clear: Joseph Szigeti was a template for the musician I would hope to become: inquisitive, innovative, sensitive, informed.
Szigeti died in 1973, but his playful rendition of Hubay’s The Zephyr, the magical aura of his Prokofiev First Violin Concerto, the moving Bach Chaconne I had surreptitiously listened to as he played for himself in that high mountain hotel, and so much more of his unforgettable music making have remained deeply imbedded in me. And even now, some sixty years after that wonderful Swiss summer with Szigeti, when I pick up the violin I can often still hear him saying in that distinctive Hungarian voice of his, “The violin is a talking instrument. You must speak when you play!”
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Comments
Wonderful recollections, Arnold! To speak and speak truth, is all any of us can do in this world of woe.
Joyful memory. You have so many and I appreciate all of them. Keep talking with words or music.
arnold this is so in-depth. now i will listen for szigeti when i listen to
your recordings. it sounds as if something numenous was going on for him
when you heard him playing by himself behind closed doors… sandy
this is just marvelous.thank you
Thank you for this! My parents heard Szigeti in a recital performance a couple of years before you first heard him. My Mom said that it was one of two times that she was so enraptured as to forget to breathe and passed out in her seat. (The other was Odetta…) I wish she was still here to read your remembrances!
Just wonderful! Thank you so much for your always wonderful writing. My teacher, Franco Gulli, also studied with Szigeti. He idolized him.
Beautiful! great memories of a great artist!
not sure I ever heard him in person but I had his recordings. Thanks for your tale.
Of all the great 20th violin virtuosi Szigeti was perhaps the most literate. His legacy of written anecdotes and pedagogical thoughts is “ must-read” material for all serious students of violin history and technical innovation. I will never forget his reminiscences of conversations with his friend Ysaye. The great Belgian master told Szigeti with only poorly veiled pride that he himself had written the violin part to the Chausson Poéme by request of the insecure composer who felt ill at ease writing for the instrument!
What precious memories, words — and music to be remembered & cherished. My teacher Fred Zimmermann (NY Philharmonic for 36 years) spoke about Szigeti at my lessons. He revered him in the same way you remembered him. I ushered at Carnegie Hall during the years you heard Szigeti, and heard him play during the 1950’s. Violinists of the NY Phil. spoke about him the same way you have written. Thank you, Arnold!
When I came across the name Szigeti. I stopped and so many years came rushing through my mind and emotions, I studied piano with Elvira Szigeti and her husband, by then quite elderly invariably came to my lesson sharing the “Hungarian” tehniques and emotions with my playing. He, I believed was , at one time, Concert Meister of the Metroolitan Opera orchestra. I ,at age 10 , was also introduced to the music and stories of Joseph Szigeti. I consider myself blessed to have experience what is indelible in my mind. I loved reading you article, especially because it brought back the aura of Szzigeti and what it meant to me as a young child and into my teenage years. Thank youy!!
My sole connection to Szigeti was a RPM 78 recording of the Lalo Symphony Espanyol that my father had among his collection. [I can’t remember the orchestra or conductor; my hunch is that it was Boston with Munch,] In those days, [the 1950s] Heifetz was still at his peak, Milstein was classically wonderful, and Isaac Stern was still a young rising star. But the recording of the Lalo was a door opener to a ‘new’ kind of fiddle playing; soulful, humanistic and with a sound that was utterly and magnificently unique. I never heard anyone that sounded like him, then or since.
Strangely, i never heard him live and he was rarely mentioned on QXR and the national press. I’m thrilled to have read of your interactions with him and to imagine his influence on your playing.
As an former oboe player I lament that, despite the host of wonderful orchestral oboe players, there was never an oboe player who commanded all eyes and ears and who took over a stage the way the fabulous fiddle players did. In recent years Heinz Holliger filled that bill but he was the first and, for my money, probably the best ever.
Thanks for sharing!!
What an extraordinary moment of contact! I wonder if he talked about Barton’s solo sonata, and the quarter-tones. Or the Contrasts. But who can fault him for returning to that monumental first Chaconne? It has to be where we all go eventually. Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you!
I admire you for wanting to channel Szigeti, instead of the “aggressive” virtuosos. Even in old youtube videos, he seemed to coax music out of his instrument, always lovely.
Thank you for these great memories! My teacher, Franco Gulli, who studied with Szigeti always spoke with great passion about him.
What a wonderful memoir! Thank you so much. I’m forwarding it to my favorite violinist.
Szigeti was my father’s favorite violinist, and I grew up listening to his records. Whenever he came to LA to perform, usually in recital with piano, we attended. I was only 11 and just beginning on clarinet, but his sound really got to me. That’s why I was so frustrated trying to play the clarinet at first. Good thing I stuck with it anyway.
Hi Arnold, thanks for this fascinating and educational tribute to Szigeti. I knew so little about him until reading this. I particularly liked imagining your trip with him into the “high mountains” to accompany him on his vacation. What an honor. I can imagine how thrilled and complimented you felt. Everyone likes to be in your company, Arnold, even did the very Greats of your instrument which then one of them you became yourself.
PS. I appreciate that you include performances with many of your blogs.
Another marvelous essay! I was startled to read of Szigeti’s 1955 performance at Radnor High. I was 13 and studying violin in Haverford Township, and I’m amazed that my teacher, Rudi Tecco, didn’t urge me to attend. I do wish he had!
I love this, Arnold! I am going to pass on these wonderful phrases to every violinist! I hope you and DODO are well.
Dear Arnold, I know I always tell you this, but I have to repeat it: after reading your beautiful essay on Szigeti and your relationship with him, I am convinced that if you hadn’t been urged by mother to practice the violin, you would’ve become a renowned author. Your talent as a writer is extraordinary, just as your talent as a violinist continued over the years until your retirement. I feel a kinship with you as I two in retirement have turned to my writing career in contrast to the career I left as a psychoanalyst writing only clinical and technical articles and books. Now I feel free to allow my imagination to run amok, and even to write a memoir, impart inspired by your own two memoirs. Lastly, I’d like to thank you so very much for the historic recording of the Bartok. Both Ted and I enjoyed listening and seeing the photographs That you kindly included. I hope you are enjoying your free spirit in the land of us free spirits, and that you and your wife are both in good health. À bientôt, Judith
Your writing is as beautiful, insightful, and intriguing as your playing has always been to me. Delightful gifts you’ve shared with the world of music, Mr. Steinhardt! Thank you!
~ a student cellist from summers of ’66 & ’67, Ithaca College & the Guarneri Quartet
Dear Arnold,
Very interesting. Last week on Wisconsin Public Radio I heard a composition by Hubay for the first time, teacher of Joseph Szigeti, whom I was unaware of either. I enjoy your essays tremendously and I, too, appreciate hearing recordings of the artists you feature. They bring your points alive. Many thanks
Katie
Thank you for another gem which soothes the soul. I just heard the Emerson Quartet at South Mountain (Massachusetts) on their final tour. I so well remember hearing the Guarneri there on your final tour – 2009. And your Weill Hall recital over 30 years ago. So many fond memories – thank you for still being a part if our lives with your excellent writings on the Internet. Madge Briggs
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