“I have worked a great deal in my life, but have always found that too large an amount of purely technico-musical work fatigued me and reacted unfavorably on my imagination.  As a rule I only practice enough to keep my fingers in trim; the nervous strain is such that doing more is out of the question.  And for a concert-violinist when on tour, playing every day, the technical question is not absorbing.  Far more important is it for him to keep himself mentally and physically fresh and in the right mood for his work.  For myself I have to enjoy whatever I play or I cannot play it.  And it has often done me more good to dip my finger-tips in hot water for a few seconds before stepping out on the platform than to spend a couple of hours practicing.  But I should not wish the student to draw any deductions from what I say on this head.  It is purely personal and has no general application.

“Technical exercises I use very moderately.  I wish my imagination to be responsive, my interest fresh, and as a rule I have found that too much work along routine channels does not accord with the best development of my Art.  I feel that technic should be in the player’s head, it should be a mental picture, a sort of ‘master record.’  It should be a matter of will power to which the manual possibilities should be subjected.  Technic to me is a mental and not a manual thing.

MENTAL TECHNIC:  ITS DRAWBACK AND ITS ADVANTAGE

“The technic thus achieved, a technic whose controlling power is chiefly mental, is not perfect—­I say so frankly—­because it is more or less dependent on the state of the artist’s nervous system.  Yet it is the one and only kind of technic that can adequately and completely express the musician’s every instinct, wish and emotion.  Every other form of technic is stiff, unpliable, since it cannot entirely subordinate itself to the individuality of the artist.”

PRACTICE HOURS FOR THE ADVANCED STUDENT

Mr. Kreisler gives no lessons and hence referred this question in the most amiable manner to his boyhood friend and fellow-student Felix Winternitz, the well-known Boston violin teacher, one of the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music, who had come in while we were talking.  Mr. Winternitz did not refuse an answer:  “The serious student, in my opinion, should not practice less than four hours a day, nor need he practice more than five.  Other teachers may demand more.  Sevcik, I know, insists that his pupils practice eight and ten hours a day.  To do so one must have the constitution of an ox, and the results are often not equal to those produced by four hours of concentrated work.  As Mr. Kreisler intimated with regard to technic, practice calls for brain power.  Concentration in itself is not enough.  There is only one way to work and if the pupil can find it he can cover the labor of weeks in an hour.”

And turning to me, Mr. Winternitz added:  “You must not take Mr. Kreisler too seriously when he lays no stress on his own practicing.  During the concert season he has his violin in hand for an hour or so nearly every day.  He does not call it practicing, and you and I would consider it playing and great playing at that.  But it is a genuine illustration of what I meant when I said that one who knew how could cover the work of weeks in an hour’s time.”