"But when I came to Franz Kneisel, my last teacher, I began to work with
my mind. Kneisel showed me that I had to think when I played. At first I
did not realize why he kept at me so insistently about phrasing,
interpretation, the exact observance of expression marks; but eventually
it dawned on me that he was teaching me to read a soul into each
composition I studied.

"I practiced hard, from four to five hours a day. Fortunately, as
regards technical equipment, I was ready for Kneisel's instruction. The
first thing he gave me to study was, not a brilliant virtuoso piece, but
the Bach concerto in E major, and then the Viotti concerto. In the
beginning, until Kneisel showed me, I did not know what to do with them.
This was music whose notes in themselves were easy, and whose
difficulties were all of an individual order. But intellectual analysis,
interpretation, are Kneisel's great points. A strict teacher, I worked
with him for five years, the most remarkable years of all my violin
study.

"Kneisel knows how to develop technical perfection without using
technical exercises. I had already played the Mendelssohn, Bruch and
Lalo concertos with Winternitz, and these I now restudied with Kneisel.
In interpretation he makes clear every phrase in its relation to every
other phrase and the movement as a whole. And he insists on his pupils
studying theory and composition--something I had formerly not been
inclined to take seriously.

"Some teachers are satisfied if the student plays his _notes_ correctly,
in a general way. With Kneisel the very least detail, a trill, a scale,
has to be given its proper tone-color and dynamic shading in absolute
proportion with the balancing harmonies. This trill, in the first