SIVORI

“While studying with Leonard I met Sivori, Paganini’s only pupil (if we except Catarina Caleagno), for whom Paganini wrote a concerto and six short sonatas.  Leonard took me to see him late one evening at the Hotel de Havane in Paris, where Sivori was staying.  When we came to his room we heard the sound of slow scales, beautifully played, coming from behind the closed door.  We peered through the keyhole, and there he sat on his bed stringing his scale tones like pearls.  He was a little chap and had the tiniest hands I have ever seen.  Was this a drawback?  If so, no one could tell from his playing; he had a flawless technic, and a really pearly quality of tone.  He was very jolly and amiable, and he and Leonard were great friends, each always going to hear the other whenever he played in concert.  My four years in Paris were in the main years of storm and stress—­plain living and hard, very hard, concentrated work.  I gave some accompanying lessons to help keep things going.  When I left Paris I went to London and then began my public life as a concert violinist.

GREAT MOMENTS IN AN ARTIST’S LIFE

“What is the happiest remembrance of my career as a virtuoso?  Some of the great moments in my life as an artist?  It is hard to say.  Of course some of my court appearances before the crowned heads of Europe are dear to me, not so much because they were court appearances, but because of the graciousness and appreciation of the highly placed personages for whom I played.

“Then, what I count a signal honor, I have played no less than three times as a solo artist with the Royal Philharmonic Society of London, the oldest symphonic society in Europe, for whom Beethoven composed his immortal IXth symphony (once under Sir Arthur Sullivan’s baton; once under that of Sir A.C.  Mackenzie, and once with Sir Frederick Cowen as conductor—­on this last occasion I was asked to introduce my new Second concerto in B minor, Op. 36, at the time still in ms.) Then there is quite a number of great conductors with whom I have appeared, a few among them being Liszt, Rubinstein, Brahms, Pasdeloup, Sir August Manns, Sir Charles Halle, L. Mancinelli, Weingartner and Hans Richter, etc.  Perhaps, as a violinist, what I like best to recall is that as a boy I was invited by Richter to go with him to Bayreuth and play at the foundation of the Bayreuth festival theater, which however my parents would not permit owing to my tender age.  I also remember with pleasure an episode at the famous Pasdeloup Concerts in the Cirque d’hiver in Paris, on an occasion when I performed the F sharp minor concerto of Ernst.  After I had finished, two ladies came to the green room:  they were in deep mourning, and one of them greatly moved, asked me to ’allow her to thank me’ for the manner in which I had played this concerto—­she said:  ’I am the widow of Ernst!’ She also told me that since his death she had never heard the concerto