child; and here in the United States he has become, to quote Richard
Aldrich, "the serious and accomplished artist," whose work on the
concert stage has given such pleasure to lovers of violin music at its
best. The young violinist, who in the course of the same week had just
won two prizes in composition--the Pulitzer Prize (Columbia) for a
string quartet, and the Loeb Prize for a symphonic poem--was amiably
willing to talk of his study experience for the benefit of other
students.


CHARLES MARTIN LOEFFLER AND FELIX WINTERNITZ AS TEACHERS

"I took up the study of the violin at the age of seven, and when I was
nine I went to Charles Martin Loeffler and really began to work
seriously. Loeffler was a very strict teacher and very exacting, but he
achieved results, for he had a most original way of making his points
clear to the student. He started off with the Sevčik studies, laying
great stress on the proper finger articulation. And he taught me
absolute smoothness in change of position when crossing the strings. For
instance, in the second book of Sevčik's 'Technical Exercises,' in the
third exercise, the bow crosses from G to A, and from D to E, leaving a
string between in each crossing. Well, I simply could not manage to get
to the second string to be played without the string in between
sounding! Loeffler showed me what every good fiddler _must_ learn to do:
to leap from the end of the down-bow to the up-bow and _vice versa_ and
then hesitate the fraction of a moment, thus securing a smooth,
clean-cut tone, without any vibration of the intermediate string.
Loeffler never gave a pupil any rest until he came up to his
requirements. I know when I played the seventh and eighth Kreutzer
studies for him--they are trill studies--he said: 'You trill like an