“Felix Winternitz was a teacher who allowed his pupils to develop individuality.  ‘I care nothing for theories,’ he used to say, ’so long as I can see something original in your work!’ He attached little importance to the theory of technic, but a great deal to technical development along individual lines.  And he always encouraged me to express myself freely, within my limitations, stressing the musical side of my work.  With him I played through the concertos which, after a time, I used for technical material, since every phase of technic and bowing is covered in these great works.  I was only fifteen when I left Winternitz and still played by instinct rather than intellectually.  I still used my bow arm somewhat stiffly, and did not think much about phrasing.  I instinctively phrased whatever the music itself made clear to me, and what I did not understand I merely played.

KNEISEL’S TEACHING METHODS

“But when I came to Franz Kneisel, my last teacher, I began to work with my mind.  Kneisel showed me that I had to think when I played.  At first I did not realize why he kept at me so insistently about phrasing, interpretation, the exact observance of expression marks; but eventually it dawned on me that he was teaching me to read a soul into each composition I studied.

“I practiced hard, from four to five hours a day.  Fortunately, as regards technical equipment, I was ready for Kneisel’s instruction.  The first thing he gave me to study was, not a brilliant virtuoso piece, but the Bach concerto in E major, and then the Viotti concerto.  In the beginning, until Kneisel showed me, I did not know what to do with them.  This was music whose notes in themselves were easy, and whose difficulties were all of an individual order.  But intellectual analysis, interpretation, are Kneisel’s great points.  A strict teacher, I worked with him for five years, the most remarkable years of all my violin study.

“Kneisel knows how to develop technical perfection without using technical exercises.  I had already played the Mendelssohn, Bruch and Lalo concertos with Winternitz, and these I now restudied with Kneisel.  In interpretation he makes clear every phrase in its relation to every other phrase and the movement as a whole.  And he insists on his pupils studying theory and composition—­something I had formerly not been inclined to take seriously.

“Some teachers are satisfied if the student plays his notes correctly, in a general way.  With Kneisel the very least detail, a trill, a scale, has to be given its proper tone-color and dynamic shading in absolute proportion with the balancing harmonies.  This trill, in the first movement of the Beethoven concerto—­(and Mr. Gardner jotted it down)

[Illustration:  Musical Notation]

Kneisel kept me at during the entire lesson, till I was able to adjust its tone-color and nuances to the accompanying harmony.  Then, though many teachers do not know it, it is a tradition in the orchestra to make a diminuendo in the sixth measure, before the change of key to C major, and this diminuendo should, of course, be observed by the solo instrument as well.  Yet you will hear well-known artists play the trill throughout with a loud, brilliant tone and no dynamic change!