From Wikipedia: Carl Flesch (Hungarian: Flesch Károly, 9 October 1873 – 14 November 1944) was a violinist and teacher. Flesch was born in Moson (now part of Mosonmagyaróvár) in Hungary in 1873. He began playing the violin at seven years of age. At 10 he was taken to Vienna to study with Jakob Grün. At 17 he left for Paris, and joined the Paris Conservatoire, studying with Martin Pierre Marsick. He settled in Berlin, and in 1934 in London. He was known for his solo performances in a very wide range of repertoire (from baroque music to contemporary), gaining fame as a chamber music performer. He also taught in Bucharest (1897-1902), Amsterdam (1903-08), Philadelphia (1924-28) and Berlin (Hochschule fuer Musik, 1929-34). He published a number of instructional books, including Die Kunst des Violin-Spiels (The Art of Violin Playing, 1923) in which he advocated for the violinist as artist rather than merely virtuoso. Among his pupils were Charles Barkel, Edwin Bélanger, Bronislaw Gimpel, Ivry Gitlis, Szymon Goldberg, Ida Haendel, Josef Hassid, Adolf Leschinski, Alma Moodie, Ginette Neveu, Yfrah Neaman, Ricardo Odnoposoff, Eric Rosenblith, Max Rostal, Henryk Szeryng, Henri Temianka, Roman Totenberg and Josef Wolfsthal, all of whom achieved considerable fame as both performers and pedagogues. He said his favorite pupil was the Australian Alma Moodie, who achieved great fame in the 1920s and 1930s but made no recordings and is little known today. In his memoirs he said, ' ... there was above all Henry [i.e., Henri] Temianka, who did great credit to the [Curtis] Institute: both musically and technically, he possessed a model collection of talents...He owned the Brancaccio Stradivarius, but had to sell it in 1928 after losing all his money on the New York Stock Exchange.Flesch lived in London during the 1930s, and was later arrested by the Gestapo in the Netherlands, was released, and died in Lucerne, Switzerland, in November 1944.' Flesch made relatively few recordings. These included a small number of electrics made for the Edison company. This upload features one of these, recorded on 21 March 1928. Fortunately, my copy of this is in reasonably good condition and the surface is much quieter than many Edison discs. It is an excellent example of Flesh's artistry at the peak of his career.

• published: 14 Feb 2019
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