A trip down the M9 with a legendary violin

Monday 28 November 2011

It's a long way from Dundee to Israel via the Ukraine.

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Michael Tumelty Michael Tumelty

But it’s an even longer way from two weeks ago on the M9 to the middle of the 19th century, which is roughly where we are headed.

Recently I reviewed the weekly RSNO concert from its performance in the Caird Hall. Three times that night I was asked why I was reviewing it from there and not Glasgow. Happenstance, I explained: there was a collision of events in my diary; it was review the concert from Dundee or not at all. I could get there by train. But the last train back was away before the concert was over, so I arranged a lift from the RSNO orchestra manager. The car returning to Glasgow carried the manager (driving), myself, the conductor Tomas Hanus and the soloist for the night, the sensational Ukranian-born Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman.

Needless to say, in a confined space for a few hours, we fell to chatting. I had been intrigued by Gluzman’s fabulous-sounding violin, which was named in the programme booklet as the “ex-Leopold Auer Stradivari”, a cumbersome name if ever there was one. I asked Gluzman about the background to the instrument. Leopold Auer, a massively influential figure in violin playing in the 19th century, was a Hungarian musician. Born in 1845, he was immensely precocious and studied in Budapest, Vienna and, ultimately, with the legendary violinist Joseph Joachim, intimate friend of Brahms and Schumann. Schumann wrote his Violin Concerto for Joachim, as did Brahms. Moreover, Brahms flavoured the finale of his concerto with a Hungarian twist in honour of Joachim’s Hungarian origins.Leopold Auer, hugely influenced by Joachim, made his debut with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. In his mid-twenties he was appointed professor of violin at the St Petersburg Conservatoire, a post he held for the next 50 years. There, he held court while composers flocked to write their latest pieces for him.Vadim Gluzman was scathing about Auer, who, he implied, basically exploited his position and influence. One of Auer’s duties was to play the solos with the Imperial Ballet. The violinist, said Gluzman, would insist on standing up to play his solos, then take off as soon as he was done. The most notorious story about Auer concerns Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, probably the most loved, performed and recorded of all the great Romantic violin concertos. Tchaikovsky wrote it for Auer to play on this unique violin, built by Stradivarius in 1692. “Hang on,” I said to Gluzman, as we drove past Perth and into a pea-souper of a fog. “Are you telling me that the instrument for which Tchaikovsky wrote his Violin Concerto is two feet away from me in the boot of this car?” “Yes,” said Gluzman, roaring with laughter.It gets better. When Tchaikovsky had written the concerto, he dedicated it to Auer and presented it to the violinist to give the premiere performance. Auer looked at it, declined the dedication and refused to play it. What on earth was his reason, I asked Gluzman? “He said it stank,” said the Israeli violinist, bluntly. “He said it was un-violinistic, too long and too awkward to play.”Auer, having the political power that he did, got his way. He didn’t premiere the Tchaikovsky. Instead, Adolph Brodsky gave the first performance in 1881. Auer did eventually play the concerto, in 1893, just before Tchaikovsky’s enforced suicide, but he couldn’t keep his hands off it: he tinkered with it, revising the solo violin part.Anyway, back in the car on the M9 in 2011, two feet from this incredible piece of history, I asked Gluzman who now owns the Auer Strad in the boot. “I’m not at liberty to say,” he replied. He’s been playing it for about 13 years. Each year he signs a contract with the Stradivari Society of Chicago, from which the violin is on extended loan. He claims it is imbued with the spirit of every violinist who has been privileged to play it in the past 300 years. I absolutely believe him.

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A trip down the M9 with a legendary violin

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