Leon Sametini, at present director of the violin department of the Chicago Music College, where Sauret, Heermann and Sebald preceded him, is one of the most successful teachers of his instrument in this country.  It is to be regretted that he has not played in public in the United States as often as in Europe, where his extensive tournees in Holland—­Leon Sametini is a Hollander by birth—­Belgium, England and Austria have established his reputation as a virtuoso, and the quality of his playing led Ysaye to include him in a quartet of artists “in order of lyric expression” with himself and Thibaud.  Yet, the fact remains that this erstwhile protege of Queen Wilhelmina—­she gave him his beautiful Santo Serafin (1730) violin, whose golden varnish back “is a genuine picture,”—­to quote its owner—­is a distinguished interpreting artist besides having a real teaching gift, which lends additional weight to his educational views.

REMINISCENCES OF SEVCIK

“I began to study violin at the age of six, with my uncle.  From him I went to Eldering in Amsterdam, now Willy Hess’s successor at the head of the Cologne Conservatory, and then spent a year with Sevcik in Prague.  Yet—­without being his pupil—­I have learned more from Ysaye than from any of my teachers.  It is rather the custom to decry Sevcik as a teacher, to dwell on his absolutely mechanical character of instruction—­and not without justice.  First of all Sevcik laid all the stress on the left hand and not on the bow—­an absolute inversion of a fundamental principle.  Eldering had taken great pains with my bow technic, for he himself was a pupil of Hubay, who had studied with Vieuxtemps and had his tradition.  But Sevcik’s teaching as regards the use of the bow was very poor; his pupils—­take Kubelik with all his marvelous finger facility—­could never develop a big bow technic.  Their playing lacks strength, richness of sound.  Sevcik soon noticed that my bowing did not conform to his theories; yet since he could not legitimately complain of the results I secured, he did not attempt to make me change it.  Musical beauty, interpretation, in Sevcik’s case were all subordinated to mechanical perfection.  With him the study of some inspired masterpiece was purely a mathematical process, a problem in technic and mental arithmetic, without a bit of spontaneity.  Ysaye used to roar with laughter when I would tell him how, when a boy of fifteen, I played the Beethoven concerto for Sevcik—­a work which I myself felt and knew it was then out of the question for me to play with artistic maturity—­the latter’s only criticisms on my performance were that one or two notes were a little too high, and a certain passage not quite clear.