Regarded as the greatest violin pedagogue of the 20th century, Leopold Auer taught of three of the most renowned violinists in the 20th century: Elman, Heifetz and Milstein. Benno Rabinof and Toscha Seidel, the two Auer pupils featured on this CD, may not have had the stellar careers of his three most famous pupils, but are regarded as two of Auer’s most outstanding students and are deeply revered by string players. Featuring their only solo LP recordings, Rabinof and Seidel were renowned for their brilliant virtuosity and glowing violin tone. 
	Born in the Lower East Side of New York City, Benno Rabinof became a pupil of Leopold Auer after the legendary teacher left St Petersburg and emigrated to New York in 1918. Auer declared that Rabinof was ‘the most gifted of all the students he taught in America’, and sponsored Rabinof’s début at Carnegie Hall in which he performed the Elgar and Tchaikovsky Concertos. The distinguished New York Times critic Olin Downes wrote that Rabinof was ‘a violinist of exceptional attributes, including a fluent and even spectacular technique, and a tone prevailingly warm and brilliant’. Rabinof performed on the radio frequently, and together with his wife Sylvia frequently performed the complete Beethoven sonata cycle in a single day. Rabinof had the good fortune to play on two remarkable instruments: the 1734 ‘Lord Amherst’ Strad that formerly belonged to Fritz Kreisler and a 1742 Guarneri del Gesù. 
	Toscha Seidel was born in Odessa, the hotbed of violinistic talent, in the Ukraine in 1899. Just over a year older than Jascha Heifetz, Seidel and Heifetz were regarded as the most talented pupils in Auer’s class during the First World War and their teacher dubbed Heifetz ‘the angel’ and Seidel ‘the devil’. Following the Russian Revolution, both Seidel and Heifetz, as well as their teacher Auer, emigrated to the United States. Seidel made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1918 and made his first solo recordings for the American Columbia label. He is immortalized in the 1921 popular song “Mischa, Jascha, Toscha, Sascha’ by George Gershwin. Seidel eventually settled in Los Angeles and established his career in Hollywood, where David O. Selznick engaged him to be the ‘ghost’ violinist for the solos in his 1939 popular romantic film Intermezzo. Seidel’s only LP record on the ‘Impresario’ label was made in his mid-50s and features the legendary ‘Da Vinci’ Strad of 1714, on which he performed throughout his career.


3 Rabinof in Kreisler Gypsy Caprice extract

Toscha Seidel was – along with Jascha Heifetz – one of the star pupils in Leopold Auer’s legendary class in St Petersburg. Dubbed ‘the angel’ (Heifetz) and ‘the devil’ (Seidel) by Auer himself, these two superstar fiddle talents were frequently showcased together in the Bach ‘Double’ Concerto. After emigrating to New York following the Russian Revolution, Toscha Seidel made his American début at Carnegie Hall in 1918. Immediately following this triumphant success, the teenage Seidel was offered an exclusive recording contract by the Columbia Record Company to rival Heifetz on the Victor label. 
	Described by The New York Times as ‘transcendental’ and The New York Tribune as ‘ unforgettable’, Seidel never managed to establish the fame of his fellow Auer students. Most notably, the distinguished violinist and pedagogue Carl Flesch wrote in his Memoirs that ‘the quality of [Seidel’s] tone is one of the most beautiful I have heard in my career. Technically, too, he is excellently equipped, whence I regard it as an injustice of fate that he is not considered the third in a triumvirate with Heifetz and Elman.’   
	This CD features Toscha Seidel’s first recordings for the American Columbia label, and include such well-known favourites as Brahms’s First Hungarian Dance, Dvořák’s Humoresque and Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen. Although complete concertos were not recorded at the time Seidel made his first records, this CD features him playing the heartfelt Canzonetta from Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and the Romance from Wieniawski’s beloved Second Concerto


BRAHMS Hungarian Dance 1 extract

extract 4 BEETHOVEN Sonata movt 2

David Nadien (1926-2014) was one of the major American violinists of the 20th century. Beginning his career as a brilliant prodigy who performed the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the New York Philharmonic at the age of 14, he was one of the star pupils of the famed Ivan Galamian. Unanimously regarded by his peers as one of the outstanding violinists of his generation, Nadien rarely performed concerts. Due to his innately introverted and diffident nature and distaste for self-aggrandizement, he preferred to keep a low-key profile and ended up establishing himself as the foremost free-lance commercial violinist in the New York area. Nevertheless, in 1966, he was appointed by Leonard Bernstein to be concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. 
The recorded legacy of Nadien is sparse. Apart from an LP of the Franck and Debussy sonatas (reissued on Biddulph 85012-2), there are no commercial recordings of major classical repertoire. This live recital with Jacques Abram on CD offers an opportunity to hear Nadien in Classical sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven, as well as the romantic Franck Sonata. The violinist’s glowing tone and shimmering vibrato with luscious position changes is heard to wonderful effect in these stirring readings. 
The pianist Jacques Abram (1915-98) was a student of David Saperton at the Curtis Institute and Ernest Hutcheson at the Juilliard School, and made his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall performing the MacDowell Piano Concerto. Abram also championed a number of British works, premiering the Benjamin Britten's piano concerto and making the work’s first recording, as well as Arthur Benjamin's 1949 Piano Concerto ‘quasi una Fantasia’.


extract 2 MOZART Sonata movt 2

David Nadien (1926-2014) was one of the major American violinists of the 20th century. Beginning his career as a brilliant prodigy who performed the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the New York Philharmonic at the age of 14, he was one of the star pupils of the famed Ivan Galamian. Unanimously regarded by his peers as one of the outstanding violinists of his generation, Nadien rarely performed concerts. Due to his innately introverted and diffident nature and distaste for self-aggrandizement, he preferred to keep a low-key profile and ended up establishing himself as the foremost free-lance commercial violinist in the New York area. Nevertheless, in 1966, he was appointed by Leonard Bernstein to be concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. 

The recorded legacy of Nadien is sparse. Apart from an LP of the Franck and Debussy sonatas (reissued on Biddulph 85012-2), there are no commercial recordings of major classical repertoire. This live recital with Jacques Abram on CD offers an opportunity to hear Nadien in Classical sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven, as well as the romantic Franck Sonata. The violinist’s glowing tone and shimmering vibrato with luscious position changes is heard to wonderful effect in these stirring readings. 

The pianist Jacques Abram (1915-98) was a student of David Saperton at the Curtis Institute and Ernest Hutcheson at the Juilliard School, and made his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall performing the MacDowell Piano Concerto. Abram also championed a number of British works, premiering the Benjamin Britten's piano concerto and making the work’s first recording, as well as Arthur Benjamin's 1949 Piano Concerto ‘quasi una Fantasia’.


extract 2 MOZART Sonata movt 2

Biddulph Recordings

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