A Teacher Lineage - Auer

So, I imagine that most violinists have either listened to, watched, or have at least heard of Jascha Heifetz. I mean, his performances certainly ignited the imaginations of many of today's violinists. Why? Well, if for no other reason, just trying to figure out how his bow grip worked.

And what about the incredible Nathan Milstein? How many times have you listened to his recordings or looked at his videos on YouTube? Well, besides being totally impressed, did you ever think about who taught them? Whose ideas guided these violinistic giants as they were learning their craft? If you did, then you likely came across the name Leopold Auer.

He taught them, along with Mischa Elman, Efrem Zimbalist, Toscha Seidel, Boris Sibor, and many others.

Well, while all of this is remarkable, ever thought about who the teachers were behind the ideas Auer passed on? Well, he was born on June 7, 1845, in Veszprém, Hungary.

Auer began his violin studies early, and around 1853, he entered the Budapest Conservatory, where he studied with Dávid Ridley-Kohné, who was concertmaster of the orchestra of the National Opera.

As Kohné was a pupil of the French school, his teaching emphasized technical precision and expressive phrasing.

Then as a teenager, Auer traveled to Graz to audition for Henri Vieuxtemps.

But the audition was unsuccessful, and he returned to his studies in Vienna with Jakob Dont. Dont was a student of Josef Böhm, a name that will come up more and more in the lineages to be explored.

Then in 1861, Auer traveled to Hanover to study with Joseph Joachim, whose emphasis on expressive interpretation and musical integrity over pure virtuosity would later help shape his teaching philosophy.

It's now 1868, and Auer, having completed his studies under Joachim, was appointed violin professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory at the invitation of Anton Rubinstein, the legendary pianist who had founded the conservatory just six years earlier. The fact that Auer succeeded Henryk Wieniawski in the position was quite an accomplishment, especially for a 23-year-old.

As a performer, Auer led the string quartet of the Russian Musical Society from around 1870 until 1906. This placed him in the center of chamber music life in St. Petersburg.

He also held the position of first violinist in the Orchestra of the Imperial Theaters in St. Petersburg, which included the Mariinsky Theatre and the Hermitage, where he performed nearly all the violin solos in the Imperial Ballet repertoire for decades.

In 1878, Tchaikovsky dedicated his Violin Concerto in D major to Auer.

Auer hesitated to perform it, reportedly calling portions of it unplayable.

And so Adolf Brodsky gave the premiere in December 1881 in Vienna.

Auer eventually performed the concerto and even taught it, but only after making his own editorial modifications.

In 1917, the Russian Revolution disrupted everything, and Auer, now 72, left Russia, ending nearly five decades of teaching at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

He arrived in the United States via Norway and settled in New York, where he taught privately.

Many of his former students were already there or arrived around the same time, having fled the same upheaval.

In 1928, he joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

One of the things I find fascinating when I listen to Heifetz and Milstein is that they don't sound at all alike, yet they both studied with Auer.

Clearly, he taught no two students the same way.

His guidance seems to have depended on the students' temperament, their musical instincts, and what he sensed they needed at that moment.

So his ideas were adaptive rather than preplanned, driven by diagnosis, not curriculum. He didn't teach answers. He guided students toward understanding what they wanted to say.

It becomes clear then that Auer was focused on artistic identity, not mechanical correction. His book Violin Playing As I Teach It, published in 1921, offers a window into these ideas.

He taught that technique serves expression, and that expression must be discovered, not imposed.

You know, this sort of reminds me of a famous quote: “Teach the student, not the subject.”

In 1930, while visiting Europe, Auer passed away in Loschwitz, Germany, at the age of 85.

But his influence did not end there. Through students like Sevčík and Mostras, his ideas were passed on to Galamian, and from Galamian to DeLay—and, well, I don't think they've ever stopped being passed on.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRvJ298CC3g

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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