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Violinists From the Early Days of Recording

Rare examples from the beginning of the Recording Era feature Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, Leopold Auer, Pablo Sarasate, Joseph Joachim, and others.

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Uzi

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February 4, 2015 - 4:40 pm

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DanielB

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February 4, 2015 - 7:43 pm

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Splendid stuff, Uzi! Good find.

I've been studying Auer's book "Violin Playing As I Teach It" lately, and it was excellent to hear some of the players that are mentioned that I hadn't hunted up recordings by (where such recordings even exist) yet.

So far as I know, there are only two recordings of Leopold Auer himself playing.

All great stuff, very inspiring.

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DanielB

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February 5, 2015 - 4:48 pm

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A few more..

How about Sarasati being played by .... Sarasati

Some Joseph Joachim

And for the folks out there that do some home recording.. Brahms playing Brahms on piano. Sound quality is very bad, and it is short. But considering it was made in 1889 and probably more or less what we'd consider a home recording today, I think it is just amazing to hear ANYTHING from 1889, especially by someone like Brahms.

Uzi

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February 6, 2015 - 10:04 am

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Wow! Who would have thought that we could hear the actual voice of Brahms? Very cool. Those are really good finds. Thank you Thomas Edison. The quality of the Sarasate recording was surprisingly good. Thanks for posting those.

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. ~Herm Albright

DanielB

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February 6, 2015 - 4:04 pm

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Now, if you want to look back just a little further than Edison.. You can get to the actual first recordings in the mid to late 1850s. Sort of. I'd say "sort of" because we usually think of a recording as something we can play back. Before Edison, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville made a device for scientific study of sound vibrations, but had no way in that time of playing them back. Probably never even intended it as a possibility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.....nautograph

With modern tech, some of the surviving bits of scribbles in soot have been made back into sound. But since there was no way of playing them back when they were made, one could still argue that Edison gets the credit for recording the first song with "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Or Scott singing "Claire de la Lune".

But back to early recordings of violinists (or at least significant musicians like Brahms), I agree it is great being able to hear some of them and how they played and how the modern fashion of playing is different.