In temperament he is quick and somewhat impatient.  He expects much of his pupils, and is the very opposite of the painstaking, phlegmatic Wilhelmj.

In 1896 M. Sauret again visited the United States, when it was admitted by those who had heard him twenty years before that he had grown to a consummate and astounding virtuoso.  His tone was firm, pure, and beautiful, though not large.  Marsick and Ondricek had preceded him by a few weeks, but Sauret did not suffer by comparison.

One of the most remarkable violinists of the present day is Cesar Thomson, who was born at Liege in 1857.  He entered the conservatory of his native place, after receiving some instruction from his father, and had completed the regular course by the time he was twelve years of age, after which he became a pupil of Leonard.

At the age of eighteen he made a concert tour through Italy, and while there became a member of the private orchestra of the Baron de Derwies.  In 1879 he became a member of the Bilse Orchestra, and in 1882, having won distinction at the musical festival at Brussels, he was appointed professor of the violin in the Liege conservatory.

Most of his travelling has been done since that time, and he has acquired an immense reputation in Europe.  In Leipzig, at a Gewandhaus concert in 1891, he made a phenomenal success, and in 1898 at Brussels he received five enthusiastic recalls from a cold and critical audience, for his magnificent performance of the Brahms concerto.

M. Thomson’s command of all the technical resources of the violin is so great that he can play the most terrific passages without sacrificing his tone or clearness of phrasing, and his octave playing almost equals that of Paganini himself.  Yet he is lacking in personal magnetism, and is a player for the musically cultivated rather than for the multitude, though his technique fills the listener with wonder.  He visited the United States in 1896, and was, like Marsick, compared with Ysaye, who at that time swept everything before him and carried the country by storm.

In 1897 Cesar Thomson left Liege, owing, it is said, to disagreements at the Conservatoire, and made his home at Brussels.

The greatest of Belgian violinists of to-day is Eugene Ysaye, who possesses that magnetism which charms alike the musician and the amateur, because of his perfect musical expression.  He possesses the inexplicable and inexpressible something which takes cold judgment off its feet and leads criticism captive.

Ysaye was born at Liege in 1858, and, after studying at the conservatories of his native town under his father and at Brussels, entered that of Paris, where he completed the course in 1881, and immediately afterward started on a series of concert tours.  Ysaye’s eminence as a violinist has been gained by hard work.  He did not burst meteor-like upon the world, but he earned his position in the violin firmament by ten years of concert touring, during which time he passed successively through the stages of extreme sentimentality until he reached the “sea” of real sentiment.