Huberman, Bronislav
Polsk violinist f 1882 d 1947
Elev till Michalowicz, Rosen, Lotto och
Joachim. Debuterade som 7-åring.
Kom till Berlin 1892 för att studera med den sistnämda. Joachim blev
begeistrad av den lilla 9-åriga pojken, kysste honom på pannan och
sa: "Jag konstaterar med förnöjsamhet att den 9-åriga Huberman från Warsawa
besitter en i sanning anmärkningsvärd mausikalisk talang. I hela mitt liv
har jag knappast stött på en sådan lovande, musikalisk utveckling på violin."
Carl Flesch (se nedan) menar att H. började turnera vi för ung ålder, innan hans
violinistiska utbildning var klar.
Carl Flesch kritiserar Huberman
Two factors are decisive if we wish to judge a violinist objectively:
his technical grounding and his particular personality. Huberman’s
technique, though sound, has always betrayed the fact that he left
school too early.[His playing represents a catalogue of violinistic,
stylistic and general-musical bad manners] His technical basis is
that of the 1890’s. He holds the bow in the old manner, employs a
pure finger vibrato without participation of the wrist, and intones
semitones pianoforte-like, according to equal temperament
- a circumstance which becomes particularlly unpleasantly striking
in his unaccompanied Bach. In tonal respects, too, he follows the
tradition of his childhood in as much as he sacrifices smoothness and
evenness of tone production, which in our time is an absolute
necessity, to extravagant characterization;[Inexact intonation [, ...]
glassy tone quality, disregard of beauty of tone when displaying the
[rhythmic element] in other words, he either ‘scrapes’ or ‘whispers’.
His bowings again, excellent as they may be in themselves, leave much
to be desired from the tonal point of view. Unreserved praise, on the
other hand, is due to his runs and passage work, the precision and
verve of which meet the most fastidious requirements.
Musically, too, his style gives occasion for serious criticism.
The fact that he was left to his own devices at an all too early
stage shows in his frequent neglect of elementary rules of
articulation, especially in the form of wrong accents. Above all,
however, it is the over-emphasis he lays upon his own personality
as distinct from the work of art, that characterizes both his good
and his bad performances. His personality is self-willed,
sensitive, nervous and excitable, passionate and self-assured.
[Musically - strictly speaking beyond the pale
[eigentlich indiskutabel], wrong accentuation, unscrupulous
alteration of the text, arbitrary, not originating from a
spontaneous original intuition, but from the waywardness of
a pathological condition [Veranlagung]; footling sentiment,
artistically overstrained, over-heated] It does not tolerate
contradiction and demands subordination, even of the music.
In this way, extraordinary results can be achieved if composition
and interpreter are in natural harmony with each other, whereas
otherwise Huberman always tries to adjust the tone of the work
to the pitch of his own ego. Agreement or disagreement with his
interpretation depends chiefly on the degree of sympathy or
antipathy which the individual listener feels for a personality
so full of contradictions. Side by side with his serious artistic
intentions, his extreme drive for perfection, his acute intelligence
and his iron will, there is this, at times, downright amusing
over-estimation of his own self - which, in favourable circumstances,
may yet again result in an extraordinary power of artistic
conviction, to whose hypnotic suggestion the receptive listener
submits unresisting. The strength of his personality, then, is
undeniable, like it or not. Its influence on the younger generation,
however, would seem to be unfavourable; young people tend towards
self-glorification at the expense of the music, and Huberman’s
successes are likely to confirm them in their attitudes....