Julius Eduardovich Conus was a Russian Empire and Soviet violinist and composer.
Background
Conus was born in Moscow on 1 February 1869 to a distinguished musical family of French extraction who had migrated to Russia at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. His father was the piano teacher Eduard Conus, and his brothers were the composer and music teacher Georgi Conus and pianist Lev Conus.
Education
All three studied at Moscow Conservatory under Sergei Taneyev and Anton Arensky, and all three stayed on to teach there. He then studied in Paris, where he played the violin in the Opera orchestra and was a virtuoso in his own right for several years.
Career
In 1891, he became a concertmaster in New York City. One of his notable students was violinist, composer, and conductor Alexander Chuhaldin. He also gave concerts, both as a soloist and as a chamber musician, appearing sometimes in a Trio or other ensemble with Rachmaninoff to play the latter"s works.
(Rachmaninoff dedicated his Two Pieces for Violin and Piano, op 6, to Julius, and the two men remained close friends throughout their lives)
Conus had two sons, Serge and Boris.
However, as the Nazi threat spread across Europe, Lev emigrated to the United States in 1935, and in 1939 Julius returned to Russia. Julius Conus died in Moscow, at Melenki on 3 January 1942.
Besides pedagogical works, Conus was known for his adeptness at long-lined melody, as shown particularly in his Violin Concerto in East minor which he premiered in Moscow in 1898 when he was 29 years old. An effective showpiece, it became a repertoire staple in Russia and was long popular with audiences, although it was dismissed by critics.
Conus, a violinist himself, wrote no other major work, although he did produce several shorter pieces for violin, which are mostly unplayed today.
In the early 1900s Fritz Kreisler championed the concerto, giving its first performance in London (1904). He included it in his worldwide concert repertoire, and from 1920 played it many times in Carnegie Hall. He also recorded it with the Radio Corporation of America Symphony Orchestra under Izler Solomon in 1952.