Kreisler was, without doubt, one of the most famous violinists of all time, dominating the world’s stage until the 1930s and surviving even Jascha Heifetz’s explosive debut of 1917, audiences remaining loyal to Kreisler’s warmth of tone and arresting musical personality. Feted by many as a pioneer of the so-called continuous vibrato (i.e. used as a constituent part of his tone, applied to passagework as much as to long melodic notes), Kreisler was not without his detractors in his early years. In 1896, when he auditioned for the Vienna Hofoper Orchestra, Arnold Rosé, twelve years his senior, rejected him on the grounds that he was unable to sight-read – a reason that seems far less plausible than the possibility that Rosé, espousing an older German performance aesthetic (not unlike Joachim’s), considered Kreisler’s playing inartistic and perhaps even felt threatened by his easy but devastatingly effective tonal charms. In spite, or perhaps because, of Ysaÿe giving Kreisler a standing ovation at his Berlin premiere, Joachim was cool in his reception of the young virtuoso who in many ways epitomised the qualities of the Franco-Belgian school that Joachim criticised. Most certainly he disagreed with what he considered an abuse of the vibrato and when Kreisler filled in for an accompanist in Joachim’s class the master failed to mention Kreisler’s violin performance, preferring instead to compliment him on his piano playing!

In truth, Kreisler did not invent the modern violin vibrato. It was a well-known characteristic of Wieniawski’s playing, whilst many others considerably older than Kreisler (including Ysaÿe, Hubay and Sarasate) used it frequently. Moreover, Rosé’s solo recordings reveal that he too used it much more than Joachim. Kreisler bore Joachim no malice and even cited him as one of the profoundest influences of his artistic life. Nonetheless, he popularised this approach to sound, which was to prove highly influential: there is scarcely a violinist of the twentieth century who was unaffected by Kreisler’s style. In many respects the reason for this can be traced to his recordings. According to Carl Flesch, Kreisler’s tone was particularly suited to the recording processes of both the acoustic and early electric eras, his musical personality transcending their limitations.

Recognised for leading a trend towards more overtly emotional styles of playing, Kreisler was known for the bravura and intensity of his performances. Equally at home in the small-scale recital as with the concerto, he composed a large number of pieces for performance in recital, all of which remain popular. Famously, Kreisler passed off many of these as rediscovered works by earlier composers (Couperin, Dittersdorf, Pugnani), only to reveal in 1935 that this had been a good-humoured act of deception made in order to avoid over-repetition of his own name in solo recital programmes! Kreisler was great friends with Ysaÿe and, perhaps more incongruously, Rachmaninov, with whom he recorded a number of works including an individual but effective 1928 performance of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata, Op. 30 No. 3.

Kreisler’s recordings display his wonderfully flexible sound and a controlled but effective expressivity. Certainly, he is much more overt in these matters than musicians of Joachim’s circle, but his is a more disciplined approach than, for example, Huberman’s sometimes wilful eccentricity. His earliest recordings (made during Joachim’s lifetime in 1904) already reveal the hallmarks of his later reputation: a regular and, some might say, rather saccharine portamento and a frequent (but not actually continuous) vibrato which seems narrow compared to that of modern players, whatever Kreisler’s pioneering reputation. His 1916 recording of the Bach Double Violin Concerto with Zimbalist shows the performers’ individuality, something that renders this disc (with nothing more than string quartet accompaniment) both powerful and fascinating. His 1920s performances of the Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Brahms concertos with the Berlin State Opera Orchestra under Leo Blech are, arguably, finer than his later versions in terms of interpretation although they are technically inferior from a recording point of view, whilst his pairing with Rachmaninov holds an obvious fascination.

Kreisler, who allegedly never practised (possibly because he was so frequently occupied with actual performing engagements), seems not to have suffered from stage fright and was in many ways a thoroughly natural player. For all his education and broad experience of life, he lacked the self-conscious academicism of older players of the Germanic tradition, many would say to his evident credit. A warm-hearted and generous artist, easy-going to a fault, Kreisler’s best recordings mirror this generosity of spirit and allow us to glimpse something of the magnetic personality that ensured his enduring popularity.

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