"To me it signifies technical efficiency coupled with poetic insight,
freedom from conventionally accepted standards, the attainment of a more
varied personal expression along individual lines. It may be realized,
of course, only to a degree, since the possessor of absolute 'Violin
Mastery' would be forever glorified. As it is the violin master, as I
conceive him, represents the embodier of the greatest intimacy between
himself, the artist, and his medium of expression. Considered in this
light Pablo Casals and his 'cello, perhaps, most closely comply with the
requirements of the definition. And this is not as paradoxical as it may
seem, since all string instruments are brethren, descended from the
ancient viol, and the 'cello is, after all, a variant of the violin!"




XIV


TIVADAR NACHÉZ

JOACHIM AND LÉONARD AS TEACHERS


Tivadar Nachéz, the celebrated violin virtuoso, is better known as a
concertizing artist in Europe, where he has played with all the leading
symphonic orchestras, than in this country, to which he paid his first
visit during these times of war, and which he was about to leave for his
London home when the writer had the pleasure of meeting him. Yet, though
he has not appeared in public in this country (if we except some Red
Cross concerts in California, at which he gave his auditors of his best