Background

Fritz Kreisler was born on February 2, 1875 in Vienna, Austria. He was the son of Samuel Severin Kreisler, a physician, and Anna Kreisler. Like many musical prodigies he responded to music before he could read: at three he winced at wrong notes played by his father's amateur string quartet and constructed his own instrument from cigar box and shoestrings. At four he was given a miniature violin and first instruction by Jacques Auber, concertmaster of the Ring Theater.

Education

Kreisler broke records by his admittance to the Vienna Conservatory at the age of seven, no student younger than ten had previously attended. He studied harmony and composition with Anton Bruckner and violin with Joseph Hellmesberger, Jr. He taught himself to play the piano. In 1884 Kreisler made his first public appearance, sponsored by the Conservatory. Paris Conservatoire, the core of musical education of that time, saw Kreisler as a student in 1885, his instructor was Joseph Massart, and his tutor in composition Léo Delibes. He graduated in 1887 with the Premier Grand Prix in violin and the Premier Premier Prix ranking him above the prizewinners in every instrumental field. At the age of twelve he had completed his formal musical education.

Kreisler returned to Vienna in 1890 to complete his academic education. After two years at the Piaristen Gymnasium he entered the Medical School of the University of Vienna but abandoned that profession in 1894 for music.

Career

In 1888 Kreisler shared an American tour with the pianistic giant Moritz Rosenthal. He made his orchestral debuts in Boston with Walter Damrosch and in New York under the baton of Anton Seidl. During these American appearances he learned English, for his linguistic talents paralleled his musical ones; he eventually spoke eight languages fluently.

In 1895 he produced his first two cadenzas, both for the Beethoven Violin Concerto. In Vienna, Johannes Brahms was numbered among his coffeehouse friends, and the two often played Brahms's chamber compositions. A critic at his Berlin debut the next year hailed him as "Paganini redivivus. "

In the decade before World War I, Kreisler maintained enormous concert schedules, playing as many as 260 engagements a year. He loved to perform but loathed practicing; "technique is a matter of the brain, " he maintained. Rachmaninoff, a close friend, contended that because Kreisler played so much he never needed to practice. His practice habits--or rather their lack--were part of Kreisler's excuse for never accepting students; he felt that his example would be harmful for pupils who needed constant and consistent exercise. Before World War I, Kreisler appeared in programs with Enrico Caruso, Geraldine Farrar, and Josef Hofmann; he played chamber music with Harold Bauer, Pablo Casals, and Ferruccio Busoni; and he composed a cadenza for the Brahms Violin Concerto and began to write in archaic style small pieces that he ascribed to composers such as Padre Martini and Antonio Vivaldi.

In early 1914 Kreisler joined the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Army. Wounded in combat, he was discharged and returned to New York in November 1914. From his experience he produced a small book entitled Four Weeks in the Trenches (1915), which is interesting chiefly as an illumination of his humanitarian feelings. At first his career did not suffer from anti-German sentiment, but when the United States entered the conflict in 1917 many of his engagements were canceled. He played no public recitals until 1919 and made a stunning comeback in England, but it was not until 1924 that he could once again play in Paris. During his withdrawal from the concert stage he wrote an operetta, Apple Blossoms, which opened on Broadway in October 1919 to rave reviews. Among the cast were Fred and Adele Astaire. Kreisler produced two other works in this genre: Sissy, staged in Vienna in 1932, and Rhapsody, produced in New York in 1944. Kreisler was initially reluctant to make recordings, fearing that it would interfere with attendance at his concerts; but he later found that his audiences increased. Although he is believed to have been the first to record an entire violin concerto, his biggest public was attracted to his series of one-disc instrumental miniatures. He also made Ampico piano rolls of his own transcriptions and piano accompaniments to violin pieces. Before Kreisler's South American and Balkan tours of 1935 he revealed that compositions published under the title "Classic Manuscripts"--works allegedly transcribed by Kreisler from holographs "found in a monastery" and attributed to such composers as Gaetano Pugnani, Antonio Vivaldi, and Louis Couperin, pieces that had been played in concert for years--were Kreisler's own works. The small teapot of the musical world was tempest-tossed. Before the weather cleared the eminent English biographer and critic Ernest Newman had railed at Kreisler's duplicity in print. The virtuoso, although more gently, rebutted in kind. Olin Downes, music critic of the New York Times, and American musicians in general were considerably less disturbed, accepting it as a gentle joke on themselves. No musicologist or critic had previously questioned publicly the authenticity of these pieces, which had become a useful and popular segment of the string repertoire.

Kreisler built a magnificent home in Berlin in 1924, but in 1933 he refused to play in Germany until artists of any nationality or religion were permitted to appear there. The sale and broadcast of his music was banned, and by 1938 he had become a French citizen. In September 1939 the Kreislers made the United States their permanent home, and Kreisler became a naturalized citizen on May 28, 1943.

In the mid-1920's, disdaining radio performances by musicians, Kreisler had said, "I do not like the idea of being turned on and off like electric light or hot water. " But on July 17, 1944, he played the first of five broadcasts for the Bell Telephone Hour, averring that an audience with access to concerts curtailed by wartime schedules could now hear his playing. He continued to appear yearly on the "Great Artists Series" for Bell, and his last public performance was broadcast on March 6, 1950. He had previously said farewell to his concert constituency at Carnegie Hall on November 1, 1947. Kreisler had owned and sold many Guarneri and Stradivari violins, all of which he had played in public. He gave one of his Guarneris and a Tourte bow, as well as holograph manuscripts of the Brahms Violin Concerto and the Chausson Poème for Violin and Orchestra, to the Library of Congress. The rest of his collection of incunabulae, rare books, and manuscripts was auctioned for charity in January 1949. After 1950 Kreisler limited his appearances to benefits in support of the Harriet and Fritz Kreisler Fund for the education of young musicians.

Achievements

• Kreisler was a secret composer of short violin pieces. He left a legacy of some 200 original works, transcriptions, and arrangements.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Sicilienne And Rigaudon - Intermediate - Violin & Piano - BK/CD

    (Carl Fischer Music introduces this exciting new addition ...)

  • PRAELUDIUM AND ALLEGRO IN THE STYLE OF PUGNANI VIOLIN AND PIANO
  • The Fritz Kreisler Collection, Vol. 1

Connections

In May 1901, returning from what had become his annual American tour, Kreisler met Mrs. Harriet Lies Woerz, an American divorcée to whom he proposed marriage. They had two civil weddings, in the United States in November 1902 and in London in 1903; and in 1947, brought back to their Catholic faith by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, they renewed their vows in a Roman Catholic rite. They had no children.

Father:

Samuel Severin Kreisler

physician

Mother:

Anna Kreisler

Spouse:

Harriet Lies Woerz

References

• Fritz Kreisler
• Fritz Kreisler : Love's Sorrow, Love's Joy