Four months after her death, Erica Morini was described in The Strad as the ‘most bewitching woman violinist of this century’. She received her first lessons from her father, a student of both Jakob Grün and Joseph Joachim, and proprietor of a music school in Vienna. At the tender age of five she played for Emperor Franz Joseph.

Morini entered the Vienna Conservatory masterclass of Otakar Ševčík at the age of seven as the youngest to have passed the entrance examination and the first female student. She studied with Rosa Hochmann—another Joachim pupil acquainted with Brahms—and took private lessons from Jakob Grün. Her studies with Ševčík informed her playing, especially his unique method of teaching left-hand technique, which was an important complement to the Grün–Joachim method for bowing (with a low elbow) that her father had taught.

In Vienna, 1916, Morini’s first orchestral concert was heard by Arthur Nikisch who invited her to Berlin; she appeared there two years later under Wilhelm Furtwängler. She described a concert under Nikisch with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1919 as ‘…the most important experience of my life. I was the only child who had been allowed to play there.’ Nikisch expressed his profound admiration with a catchy phrase which appeared repeatedly in concert reviews: ‘This is not a Wunderkind, it is a wonder—and a child.’

Morini’s first trip to America began on her her sixteenth birthday. She had been engaged for sixty concerts in North and South America, the first being in January 1921 in Carnegie Hall, for which she she received ‘unheard-of fees’. Despite what Nikisch had said, her image as the ‘Wunderkind’ was consciously cultivated: a photograph from this period shows a dark-haired girl with large eyes, a big white bow holding her hair back and a lace collar emphasizing her childlike appearance. Following her US début she was presented with the Guadagnini violin of American violinist Maud Powell who had specified in her will that it was to go to the ‘next great female violinist’. During 1921 and 1922 Morini made over a dozen recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company and went on to make more for other companies in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Until 1937 Morini lived in Vienna, moving to Budapest and then, after the Anschluss in 1938, to America where she became a naturalised citizen in 1943. Her status as a musician was such that she belonged to the artistic elite and so found herself in a privileged position with no interruption to the success of her performing and recording career. She continued to tour up to the 1960s, visiting Vienna again, appearing at the Casals and Salzburg Festivals, and concertising in South America, Australia, the Far East and, in 1968, Israel. Despite all this, she repeatedly voiced disappointment that, due to the narrow-mindedness and prejudice of many managers, women had a much more difficult time than male soloists in achieving success. Morini’s farewell concert was in 1976, some time after she had withdrawn from concert life. It is suggested that she never played the violin again.

Shortly before she died at the age of ninety-one various belongings, including her 1727 ‘Davidoff’ Stradivarius (which she had played since her father bought it for her 21st birthday) and scores marked with her fingerings, were stolen from her apartment, although she herself was not told of this because of her poor health. The theft is still listed by the FBI as one of the ‘Top Ten Art Crimes’ and remains unsolved.

Morini’s repertoire was built around the well-known Romantic solo concertos but also included less frequently-played works: for example, all of the violin concertos of Louis Spohr, which she advised every violinist to learn. Works from the twentieth century, on the other hand, seldom appeared on her concert programmes.

In her playing Morini has been compared to Busch, critics commenting upon her silken tone and musical vitality. She has a rich G-string sound and some old-fashioned traits, such as a Germanic portamento which she used right through her career, a sparing approach to vibrato, and a flexible attitude to tempo and rhythm. Her intonation is consistently secure and a filmed 1963 performance of Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 (of which she was a well-qualified exponent, having studied all three of Bruch’s concertos with the composer) shows her to have retained this technical command until relatively late in her career. Recordings made in her youth, including a lively and focused performance of Zarycki’s Mazurka (1921) and an idiomatic Brahms–Joachim Hungarian Dance No. 8 (1925) testify to strength of tone and command of the instrument. These performances demonstrate well Morini’s reserved vibrato and prominent but natural-sounding portamento, by no means the crudely distended effect that it could be in the hands of lesser players of the time. The Spanish Dance from Falla’s La vida breve, recorded in 1926, is similarly taut and fiery, and the Minuet from Mozart’s Divertimento No. 17 is, whilst not in any sense an evocation of eighteenth-century performing style, nonetheless full of nineteenth-century characteristics such as a masterly execution of slurred up-bow staccato.

These days Morini is rather undeservedly overlooked. She perpetuated nineteenth-century Romantic traits into the twentieth century with taste and decorum and was a polished technician; more importantly, hers was a romantic spirit that transcended changing tastes and continues to inspire.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Milsom (A–Z of String Players, Naxos 8.558081-84)