Fritz Kreisler

Fritz Kreisler, born Friedrich Kreisler in Vienna on February 2, 1875, and dying on January 29, 1962, was a violinist and composer who held both Austrian and American citizenship. He stood among the most celebrated violin virtuosos of his era, celebrated for a sweet tone and expressive phrasing that made heavy use of portamento and rubato. Like other great violinists of his time, he developed a signature sound that listeners could instantly identify. While his technique owed much to the Franco-Belgian school, his playing also evoked the cozy, gemütlich atmosphere of pre-World War I Vienna.

Kreisler’s father, Samuel, was a doctor, and his mother was Anna (née Reches). Though of Jewish descent, he was baptized at age twelve. He entered the Vienna Conservatory at seven, studying under Anton Bruckner, Jakob Dont, and Joseph Hellmesberger Jr. From 1885 to 1887, he studied violin and composition at the Paris Conservatory with teachers including Léo Delibes, Lambert Massart, and Jules Massenet. At twelve, he graduated with the top Premier Prix in violin, besting forty other competitors, most of whom were at least twenty years old.

He made his U.S. debut at Steinway Hall in New York City on November 10, 1888, and toured the United States in 1888–1889 with Moriz Rosenthal. After returning to Austria, he sought a position in the Vienna Philharmonic but was rejected by concertmaster Arnold Rosé. This led him to leave music and study medicine. He also spent a short time in the army before returning to the violin in 1899, performing with the Berlin Philharmonic under Arthur Nikisch. That concert, along with American tours from 1901 to 1903, brought him real acclaim. He was also an excellent pianist, and his piano playing survives on Ampico reproducing piano rolls.

During a 1901 U.S. tour, he met Harriet Lies, a New York-born divorcée, Vassar graduate, and daughter of a German American tobacco merchant. They fell in love immediately and married a year later, repeating the ceremony three more times due to legal technicalities. They had no children, and Harriet devoted her life to his career. They were married for sixty years, until his death.

In 1910, Kreisler premiered Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto, a work commissioned for and dedicated to him. He served briefly in the Austrian Army during World War I, receiving an honorable discharge after being wounded. He arrived in New York on November 24, 1914, and stayed in America for the rest of the war. He returned to Europe in 1924, living first in Berlin, then moving to France in 1938. At the outbreak of World War II, he settled again in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1943. He gave his last public concert in 1947 and continued broadcasting performances for a few years after.

On April 26, 1941, he was hit by a truck while crossing a New York street, suffering a fractured skull and spending over a week in a coma. In later years, he experienced hearing loss and cataracts. He died in New York City in 1962 from a heart condition worsened by old age, and was buried in a private mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

Kreisler composed many violin pieces, including encore solos like “Liebesleid” and “Liebesfreud.” Some of his works were pastiches in the style of other composers, initially attributed to figures such as Gaetano Pugnani, Giuseppe Tartini, and Antonio Vivaldi. In 1935, he revealed he had written them. When critics objected, he replied that they had already deemed the compositions worthy: “The name changes, the value remains.” He also wrote operettas, including *Apple Blossoms* (1919) and *Sissy* (1932), a string quartet, and cadenzas for concertos by Brahms, Paganini, and Beethoven. His Beethoven cadenzas remain the most commonly played. He composed the music for the 1936 film *The King Steps Out*, directed by Josef von Sternberg, about Empress Elisabeth of Austria’s early years. He also performed and recorded his own version of Paganini’s D major Violin Concerto’s first movement, rescored and reharmonized, with a rewritten orchestral introduction, giving it a late-nineteenth-century feel.

Kreisler owned several antique violins by Stradivari, Pietro Guarneri, Giuseppe Guarneri, and Carlo Bergonzi, most of which later bore his name. He also had an 1860 Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume violin, used as his second instrument and often lent to young prodigy Josef Hassid. In 1952, he donated his Giuseppe Guarneri to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where it remains in use for library performances.

On recordings, Kreisler’s style resembles that of younger contemporary Mischa Elman, with expansive tempi, continuous and varied vibrato, expressive phrasing, and a melodic approach to passage-work. He used considerable portamento and rubato. Their approaches differ more in large standard works, like Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, than in smaller pieces. A visit to a Kreisler concert is described in Siegfried Sassoon’s 1928 autobiographical novel *Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man*. The Australian electronics manufacturer Kriesler (later a Philips subsidiary) supposedly took its name from him.