The Violin Chronicles Podcast
In this podcast I will be telling the wild and wonderful stories englobing the lives of famous violin makers, what they got up to and placing them in their historical and musical context. We will look at instrument makers such as Gasparo da Salo, the Amati family, Guarneri Del Gesu and Stradivari just to name a few. Who were these people? What were their lives like? What was Stradivaris secret? and most importantly why and how did they make these master pieces we see and revere today. What was the first ballet like that Andrea Amati’s instruments played in, costing millions? Why did Antonio Stradivari have a shotgun wedding? and did Guarneri del Gesu really go to prison for murder? I speak to historians, musicians, violin makers and experts to unveil the stories of these beautiful violins, violas, cellos, double basses and the people who made them.
Episodes
Monday Mar 18, 2024
The 4 sons of Francesco Rugeri Part V
Monday Mar 18, 2024
Monday Mar 18, 2024
Francesco Rugeri had 4 sons, lets take a look at who they were and their contribution to Cremona in its golden period.
Sunday Mar 10, 2024
Ep 22. Francesco Rugeri Part IV with Duane Rosengard
Sunday Mar 10, 2024
Sunday Mar 10, 2024
In this episode we will be looking at Francesco’s most productive period of making instruments with a busy workshop and 4 sons helping him out. Jason Price from Tarisio fine violins and bows talks to us about Rugeris distinctive making style and his prolific production at this time in his life but things do not run as smoothly as Rugeri would like as he finds himself in hot water with court cases and grumpy children.
Thankyou to the Australian Chamber Orchestra for permission to play their music.
Saturday Mar 02, 2024
Ep 21. Francesco Rugeri Part III
Saturday Mar 02, 2024
Saturday Mar 02, 2024
Join me as we continue to look at the life of this innovative violin maker who was literally living outside the box. His workshop has been successfully set up, he has a young family and work is pouring in. Francesco now has to take on apprentices but who could they be? Keep listening to find out.
Sunday Feb 25, 2024
The incredible story of Kathleen Parlow Part II
Sunday Feb 25, 2024
Sunday Feb 25, 2024
Part II
Kathleen Parlow was one of the most outstanding violinists at the beginning of the 20th century.
In 1912, she was signed by the Columbia Record Company in New York, and her first records for the U.S. label were brought out alongside those of the legendary Eugene Ysaÿe.
Listen to her fascinating story and how she took the world by storm. From her devastating looks to the intrigue her priceless instrument created. You will hear rare recordings of this prodigious player as we retell her life and try to understand why such an incredible talent has been so forgotten today.
Brought to you by Biddulph recordings
Transcript
Welcome to the Historical String Recordings podcast, a show that gives you a chance to hear rare and early recordings of great masters and their stories. My name is Linda Lespets and my co host is Eric Wan.
This is part two of the story of the remarkably talented violinist Kathleen Parlow. In part one, we met a prodigious talent. She was the first foreigner to study in the Russian Conservatorium in St. Petersburg with the famous teacher Auer, and her most ardent admirer had given her an extraordinary gift of a Guarneri del Gesù violin. But just how far can talent, hard work, and good looks get this young woman in the beginning of the 20th century? Keep listening to find out.
So now it's 1909 and Kathleen has her career taking off. She has her teacher with connections, she has her violins, and the concert that she did in the National Theatre, the one where Einar saw her for the first time, the one with Johan Halvorsen conducting, well Kathleen and Johan hit it off. And now, a year later Johan Halvorsen has finished his violin concerto, and he's been working so long and hard on it, like it's his baby and, he actually dedicates this concerto to Kathleen Parlow, and asks her to premiere it with the Berlin Philharmonic at the Modenspa outside The Hague in the Netherlands in the summer of 1909.
Then Johan Halversen writes this concerto, which is sort of athletic and sort of gymnastic to play. And he finishes it and dedicates it to her to Kathleen Parlow. And she plays this very tricky piece which kind of shows his faith in her virtuosic talents. Well, one of her first recordings was the Moto Perpetuo by Paganini and Auer says it's one of the most difficult pieces in terms of bowing technique ever written, he says in one of his books. The reason why is one has to keep a very controlled bow, crossing strings all over the place, and play it very rapidly. Now Kathleen Parlow's recording of the Paganini Moto Perpetuo, which was made in her first recording session for HMV, is really astounding. It's the fastest version ever made. I think it's even faster than the Jascha Heifetz and Yehudi Menuhin. Clean as a whistle, but she also phrases it so beautifully. So she doesn't just play it technically very fast. She really shapes, you know, it's all regular sixteenth notes or semiquavers, and yet she shapes the line beautifully and really gives a direction. So when you hear this, you realize she's more than just a virtuoso performer. She's somebody with real musicianship. She's an astounding player.
And this concerto, it's quite interesting. It's, it's tricky and it's a piece that really shows off a virtuoso. So it's, it’s quite a good one for Kathleen. And at the same time, he gives it a Norwegian twist. It's cleverly composed and a virtuoso such as Kathleen was perfect for playing this piece. There are references to Norwegian folk music. In the last movement, we can hear pieces that were traditionally played on the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle. So it's a violin that has sympathetic strings that run under the fingerboard, and it gives it quite like a like a haunting sound, a very kind of Scandinavian sound. So there are bits in this concerto that are from traditional music played on that violin. Then there's, there's this fun bit which makes a reference to a traditional Norwegian dance called the Halling Dance. And the Halling Dance is danced, it's danced by men at weddings or parties, and there's really no other way to describe it than breakdancing and it's like the ancestor of breakdancing. So what happens is the men, they show off their prowess to the ladies by doing this really cool sort of these acrobatics and the music for this hailing dance itself is quite tricky and you have to play it with like a rhythm to get the crowd moving and to give the dancer like the impetus to do his tricks and the men, they wear these like traditional costumes of like high waisted breeches and red waistcoats with long puffy sleeves and this little black hat. It's a bit like Mr. Darcy meets Run DMC. You've got this man in this traditional dress doing this breakdancing, basically. And then they do they do backflips. They do that thing where you hold your foot and you jump through it with your other foot. They do like the caterpillar move. Even like spitting around on their heads. And what happens is they'll be, they'll be dancing to this music often played with, you know, the epinette and they'll be spinning around and then intermittently after spinning around, they'll do, you know, the backflip and the headspin or the, the caterpillar. And it's, I don't know how they do it. It's, they must be very dizzy. Anyway, it's incredible. And then sort of the climax of the dance is that there's a woman also, you know, dressed traditionally, and she's got this pole, this long pole. And on the end of the pole is a hat. And the idea is you have to kick the hat off, but the pole is three meters high. So she's standing on like a ladder with the pole. And so the dancer, he'll do this kind of flying kick in the air. Either you can, you kick it off or you miss it. So in Johan Halvorsen’s concerto at the end, there's this high harmonic and that you either have to hit on the G string. And like in the dance, you know, you're hitting that hat off. And so you're always there. You're always wondering if the soloist can pull it off. Can they, can they hit that high harmonic? And it's, it's the same sort of the equivalent of the spinning high kick from the dance. So, and if you were Norwegian, You would get this, I think, from the, from the music and you'd hear it. You hear that you do hear it in the music.
So Kathleen Parlow, she plays this Halversen concerto and she plays it three times that year, and when she plays the piece in the National Theatre in September, there's sort of, there are mixed reviews with the critics saying that the piece was too unconventional. It's a little bit different and here's where Halvorsen, he like, he kicks up a stink a bit. This, because this concerto is like his baby and he's really protective and he's like, you know, he's quite fragile. He's, he's worked so much on this thing and people are just saying, you know, nasty things. They don't understand the work that went into it. Yeah, you write a concerto. So people, they flocked to hear Kathleen play Johan Halversen's concerto at the theatre. And it was full to bursting on several nights in a row. And if you consider on the same night in Oslo in another hall, Fritz Kreisler was playing and here you have Kathleen Parlow and people are just like cramming in to see her and Halvorsen's concerto. She was a huge name in her time. Only after a few performances and the negative critiques, Johan Halvorsen, he cancelled all the future performances of the work and, and when he retired, he burnt the manuscripts and asked for all the copies to be destroyed as well, it really, he was really hurt. Well, it was to be lost forever, except So a hundred years later, a copy of the concerto was serendipitously found in the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music, when one of the employees was looking through, not music, but personal documents of Kathleen's and it had been filed in there by mistake. And because it was with her personal files, it hadn't really, like her letters and things, it had been overlooked. So they found it and they resurrected it and they've re performed this concerto that had been lost for a hundred years. And that's another role as a musician. You're also not managing, but you also have to deal with composers that could have quite be quite touchy and everything like a musician has to have, have on their plate.
Well, I think being a musician, not only do you have to have an incredible skill level, you have to have an engaging personality. You have to be able to transmit a personality through the music itself. And you have to have incredible social grace to navigate charming not only your audience, but charming the people who create the concerts, the sponsors, the people who bankroll them. I think it's an incredibly difficult task. Because the skill level playing the violin is so difficult. That in itself would take up most people's energy. But on top of that, also have to be ingratiating and charming. I think it's an incredibly difficult life. Yeah, must be exhausting. And she does get exhausted. She'll have Breakdowns through, like her first one is when she's about 22. She has like almost like a nervous breakdown. And so it's kind of, she runs hot for a long time and then crashes. And it might be like, you're saying like all these different things they have to, all the balls that they have in the air that they're juggling to keep it going. Kathleen Parlow, she's still in her teens. She's still a teenager. She has incredible success. She's performing in Germany and the Netherlands. And later that same year, she returns to Canada where she makes an extensive tour. She makes her debut in New York and Philadelphia. I mean, she's just like, she's just all over. I mean, America's a big place and she's just all over the place. And then in 1909, at the age of 19, she gets a recording contract with the gramophone company known as his master's voice. And that's the one with the dog listening into a recording trumpet. And she was offered a 10 percent artist's royalty figure.
So is that good? Getting 10 percent royalties?
Yes. A 10 percent royalty at that time. is really quite unheard of. I believe the gramophone company gave that to their superstars. Louisa Tetrazzini, for example, was the great coloratura soprano of the day, and she received 10 percent of the sales royalty. So for Kathleen Parlow to be receiving that percentage really attests to her status.
Yeah. And like you were saying before, it was, it's like amazing that we've forgotten about her.
Oh, it's kind of astounding. She was an absolute star.
The concert halls and one newspaper wrote an article and I quote one of the articles, the young woman could not mistake the furor she created. She was, so she was described as the greatest woman violinist in the world and the girl of the golden bow and Of course the obsession with her willowy figure and pale complexion and feminine wilds continues Which is sort of I mean even the case today I suppose will people will go into describing a woman and what she's wearing what she looks like a bit more than a guy, this thing that's just pervaded and then there was Einar Bjornsson, always there in the background. The communications between them, himself and Kathleen, was sort of constant. He was always visiting and in her diary she was, you know, just abbreviating his name because it was so his feelings for the young woman were extreme and the money he borrowed from his father, he would never be able to repay. So he was sort of indebted his whole life because of this.
It must have been a little bit awkward explaining to his wife as well where the money has gone. Yeah, it's a big chunk of her dowry. I mean, even if he did tell her, maybe, you know, I don't know, maybe he didn't tell her. Maybe she, it was possible for him to do that. I'm not sure how the laws in Norway work. If, you know, sometimes in some countries, once you marry, your, your money becomes your husband's.
Basically, after the successful gramophone company recordings, she was really launched her career. She travelled all over. She travelled to, back to the United States, even though she's from Canada. She was regarded as a British artist, primarily because Canada was part of Britain, but then she made her success in the United States. And she was a very big success, so much so that the Columbia Record Company decided to offer her a recording contract. Now, there were two main companies in the United States. One of them was the Victor talking machine, which is essentially, that later became RCA Victor when it was bought by the Radio Corporation of America. But it originally started as the Victor talking machine. They had many, many big artists. They had people like Fritz Kreisler and Mischa Elman, and they also engaged a female violinist by the name of Maude Powell, who was an American born violinist. And so the Columbia Record Company decided that they should have their own roster of great instrumentalists, particularly violinists.
And so they signed up Eugene Ysaie, the great Belgian violinist, but at the same time they also signed up And I think, in a sense, that was to somehow put themselves in competition with the Victor Company. These two major record companies in the United States. So you had the Victor Company with Mischa Elman and Fritz Kreisler and their female star, Maude Powell. And then you have Columbia answering back with Eugenie Ysaie and their female star, Kathleen Parlow.
Yeah. So you have like we were saying, like all the relationships that you have to keep juggling as a musician. And I think what Kathleen Parlow had on top of that was this. This complicated relationship with Einar, her, her patron, who was, who it was, it's all a bit ambiguous what was going on there, but she also had that in the equation.
So it's not surprising that she had multiple breakdowns like she would just go for it and then, and crash. And she plays, I think Kreisler's tambourine chinois. And was that because there was sort of this, like this kind of fascination with the Orient at that time in the, in like the 1910s, 1920s?
Well, the origin of tambourine chinois, apparently according to Kreisler, but Kreisler always spun tall tales. He said that he was in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco when the idea, the musical ideas of tambourine chinois came to, to being. So, but Kreisler always. You know, invented stories all the time. I mean, the thing is, it's a very playful, it's a very you know, fun piece of music. It's very bustling. So, hence, that's why probably Fritz Kreisler is associated with a busy Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, because it's very, very bustling in its character. But the middle section of Tamborine Chinois It's Act Viennese, so it's funny, because the middle section, when you hear it, it doesn't sound like anything to do with the Orient, or if anything, it sounds like the cafe, coffeehouses of Vienna.
Yeah, it'd probably be cancelled anyway today. Well, if they heard that story, it certainly would.
Then, she actually only does her first tour in America when she's 20. Kathleen, she continues with her endless touring and concert. Her money management was never great, although, you know, she's still, she's still earning quite a lot of money, and her mother and herself had, they had enough to live on, but never enough to be completely hassle free. And not that she wanted it, it seemed like she was sort of addicted to this life of the stage, and she once said when she was older that she thought maybe she had to get a job teaching, but she just couldn't do it. She played more than 375 concerts between 1908 and 1915 and, and you can believe it to get an idea.
So she's 19 year old's touring schedule. Here are the countries she played in in 1909. And you have to remember the concerts are nonstop every night, almost in different cities, but here are just, here are just some of the countries she travelled to in this year, in 1909. Germany, England, Poland, Netherlands, then she goes back to England, Ireland, Germany, England, the Netherlands, Norway, Wales, England again, Ireland again, England, Scotland, Poland. Man, I gave it, it was just, you know, huge. And in her diaries we can see that she’s, like, she's just a young woman, like, about town when she's in London, she takes trips to the theatre, and she talks about going to see Madame Butterfly, and she goes shopping, and she goes to tea with people she has like, appointments at the dressmaker for fittings for new dresses, and, and all of this is in between lessons, and rehearsals, and concerts. And her diary is just jam, she has these day books and they're just jam packed. Then Auer when he comes to London, her diary, it's like she has lessons with him. And you can see she's sort of excited, she's like hours arriving and then she'll see him and then she'll often have lunch with him and lessons and sometimes the lessons are at eight o'clock at night or, or 10am on a Saturday or at the middle of the night on a Monday. And she'll skip from him to rehearsals with her pianist from Carlton Keith. And she's lots of tea. She's going to tea a lot with a lot of different people. She's still only 19 here. So her popularity, it's like, it's far reaching and she's not just playing like classical music. She'll also play just popular pieces of the day. There's Kreisler's Tambourine Chinoise. And then she'll play, there's some of the recordings. They're these Irish, little Irish. Songs. So it was to appeal to the general public as well, her repertoires and her recordings. And then in 1910, she turns 20 and she has her first tour in North America. And then in 1911, the New York Herald declares her as one of the phenomena of the musical world on par with Mischa Elman. That must have been frustrating because for years she's in the same class as him and she knows him. And everyone just keeps comparing her to, she's like, Oh, she's almost as good as this guy.
But no, here they're saying she is as good as this guy. I could just, must've been a little bit frustrating. Then she makes an appearance with the Toronto Symphony in 1911 and she'll go back there many times. And in the next year, in 1912, she moved with her mother, who's still her mentor and manager and chaperone, to England, where they, they rent a house just out of Cambridge, you know, in the peaceful countryside away from the big cities. And in between her touring from here, she went, she goes to China, to the U. S., to Korea and Japan. And in Japan, she records with Nipponophone Company. She recorded quite just in a not much in a short space of time. She could have, she could have recorded more afterwards, because yeah, but she doesn't.
Then the news of the tragic sinking of the Titanic in April had Kathleen jumping on a streamliner herself to play a benefit concert in New York for the survivors of the disaster. And I've seen that booklet, and that you open the booklet, and there's like, life insurance. And then there's actually ads for another streamliner, and you're like, too soon, too soon, people don't want this. And then she plays, so on that same trip, she plays at the Met Opera. She plays Tchaikovsky's Serenade, Melancholique. And in New York, she signed up by Columbia Record, by the Columbia Record Company. And her first records for the US label are brought out alongside those of Eugene Ysaye. So she's alongside these, they all, they must've all known each other.
She was a contemporary and she just kind of slips off the radar. And as with all the recordings of the great violinists of the day, most of Paolow’s recordings on American Columbia were of popular songs and that, that would attract the general public. But the fact that most of these recordings were accompanied by an orchestra and not just piano highlights her status as a star.
So they had the, they got together an orchestra for her, so she's worthy of an orchestra. Still in 1912, Kathleen, she's 22 now and she's been traveling so much, she's, now it's happening, it's hitting her, she's exhausted and she has a kind of breakdown it'd probably be like a burnout and, which, it's amazing she's lasted this long, since, you know, age 5, 6, up to 22.
So she's both mentally and physically exhausted and her mother, acting as her agent, realizes that she needs to reduce some of her tours. She retreats to Meldreth, that's that house just outside of Cambridge that they have, that they've been renting. It's quite close to London, that little cottage that they have. They have easy access to London by train. And not only could they go easily to London, but traveling, traveling businessmen! From Norway! Could come to them! Easily. She continues with the concerts, one at Queen's Hall in London. So she has her little burnout, but then she's back again. Plays Schubert's Moment Musical around this time.
After they've rented this home for four years, they end up buying it. So she does have enough money to buy a house, so she is you know, not frittering away all her money. So this gives her some sort of stability. And it, even though it's a, it's still a very unusual existence for a young lady of the day.
So she's breaking a lot of stereotypes and this could end up being exhausting after a while. So it was nice for her to have a calm place to kick up her heels or fling off her corset. But no, she didn't, but willowy frame, she doesn't look like she's got a corset. I don't think you can play. Can you? Could you play that much? You know, you can't breathe. But, but, aren't there like old photos of, of lady violinists in corsets? I don't know how they do it. Like, you can't. Well, you had to do everything else in the corset. But you get kind of hot and sweaty and you're under the lights and it must have been exhausting. At least she was like lucky to have that pre Raphaelite fashion where she could be wearing, you know, the flowing sort of we're heading into the, the sort of the looser clothes in this era. But I think some people are still hanging on to corsets, but it's like the end of corsets and you're getting more loose clothing thankfully for her.
And according to letters Kathleen wrote to friends her and her mother, and they fell in love with the village life in Mildreth. Kathleen was able to relax and lead a normal life in between tours. And then in 1915, you have World War I hits, and her tours are less frequent. Her, her patron Einar, must have been having some lively fun. Dinner conversations with his family on opposing sides. So you've got, you know, with his, you know, fascist party, enthusiastic brother and his ex-prime minister brother in law and his theatre operating lefty brother and his Jewish wife and his Left wing satirical journalist sister, and her German husband, and then, and then his patriot father.
So Einar probably just wanted to run away to willowy Kathleen, and her stunning violin. But she remains in England for much of the war, and she does a few concerts locally. And her diary is quite blank until about 1916. And she uses, like, so she uses this time to relax. So ironically, she needed a war. To have a rest. That was the only thing slowing her down. She could, because she couldn't travel and tour. Now she's 26, but I feel like she's just, she’s lived so much already. It's incredible. So Meldreth was the happy place where she enjoyed their lovely garden and their croquet lawn and Miss Chamberlain from the Gables next door would come and play croquet and she could escape to another world, almost.
She'll go through periods of having these sort of breakdowns. I think she just pushes, there are some people like that. They'll push themselves; they just keep pushing themselves until they collapse. And I feel like she was one of, she looks like she didn't really pace herself. She just went, just hurtling into it. She just catapults herself into life and concerts and playing. In 1916, she returned to the US. She toured Norway and the Netherlands. For playing she was said to possess a sweet legato sound that made her seem to be playing with a nine foot and was admired for her effortless playing, hence her nickname, the girl with the nine foot bow.
So yeah, so she must have had this really kind of, it's hard to tell, you want to be there in the concert hall to hear her. I feel like the recordings don't do her justice.
A lot of Experiencing music and these pieces is actually going to a concert and it's the same today listening on a you know, at home, it's not the same as being in a concert hall and having that energy of the musician and the energy of the orchestra and the and the audience, it's very different dynamic. She recorded a few small pieces for Columbia records. And then that was, that was it. And we have no more recordings of her. And between 1917 and 1919, she wasn't able to tour outside England due to the war that was going on. And for the last 12 years, Einar Bjornsson had. He'd been this presence in her life, but now in the summer of 1920, he visited her one last time in London before sailing home for good.
So that. So it finishes at this time, so he was, he was married, he had children, he was also broke. Buying a horrendously expensive violin and giving it to a girl can do that to you. And Kathleen writes, Kathleen writes in her diary simply, E. B. Sailing home. Einar had to return to his family as soon as possible because he couldn't afford to divorce his wife. Elspeth Langdon, she was, she wasn't going to let him off that easily. And if he left, he would have had to repay the, the dowry, I imagine. Thank you. Thank you very much. As I said, there are just no letters of her correspondence. There's correspondence between her and everyone else, but not with them. So that still remains. But you can sort of see by circumstance what was kind of going on. And after the Great War, Kathleen Parlow, she resumed her career in full force. She gave several world tours traveling to the Middle East, to India, to China, to Korea and Japan. And she toured the States, Canada, Indonesia and the Philippines in that year and she played concerts in 56 different cities.
It was just non stop and in, and when I say 56 different cities, that's not 56, you know, concerts. That's like multiple concerts in each. City, night after night. And then in 1926, Kathleen and her mother, they leave England and they move to San Francisco. She takes a year off due to her mental health. So again, she's like, she's overdone it. The stress and basically, you know, a nervous breakdown and she's now in her mid thirties. But after having this year off, she's back onto it. She's back touring again. It's like this addiction, like you were saying, this is what, it's kind of like her, what makes her run. It's what, You know, keeps her going. But at this point she begins to slow down slightly and she starts teaching a bit. Starts teaching more and in 1929 she tours Mexico and she travels without her mother for the first time. Because her mother, Minnie, she would have been getting quite old and then Kathleen she's 39 now. So despite playing many concerts and receiving very high praise financially, she's barely kind of breaking even and she later told an interviewer that when things were very hard she and her mother had talked about her getting a job to ensure their security for the future but she just couldn't do it. And then, but then she did end up teaching at Mills College, Oakland, California. For from 1929 to 1936, but then her world tours continued and this is like, this is how she thrived, even though she would, you know, she'd crash and burn and from the exhaustion and, but then, you know, then she would go back.
She realized she had to teach to earn some money. And then she returned to Canada in 1941, where she remained until she remains there until she dies in 1963. She's offered a job at the Toronto College of Music and she begins making appearances with orchestras. She has a pianist, she has the, she creates the Parlow String Quartet, which was active for 15 years.
Even though this time was difficult financially for her, she would, she would never give up her violin. You know, she was struggling, just scraping by, but she, she would never give up her violin and so, I mean, it was a tricky situation. It was, it was a gift. Yeah. I mean, could you imagine? Like, she must've realized what Einar went through to give this to her and she can't, you know, she can't just be like, I'm going to sell it. So there's this sort of, it's like she's holding on to a bit of him really, like, by keeping it, if she, she gives that up. So she taught at the University of Toronto and on her wall was a large portrait of her teacher, Leopold Auer, whom she would always refer to as Papa Auer.
Now that she'd given up her career as a soloist, but she still remains very active in chamber music, concerto appearance. October of 1959, she was made head of the string department at the London College of Music in West Ontario, Canada. She never marries, and she dies in Oakville, Ontario, in 1963 at the age of 72.
She kept her Guarneri del Gesu until her dying day, and the instrument was sold with her estate. The Kathleen Parlow scholarship was set up with the proceeds from the sale of her violin and the money from her estate. So Kathleen Parlow was a somewhat extraordinary woman, ahead of her times in many ways, and her relationship with Einar, must have been pretty intense. And it was, there was obviously strong feelings there. And even though it's a very grey area, we don't know her love life contrasts with her, her brilliant career and her phenomenal touring and the, the energy that she had to do, it was. Exceptional she just does these brief recordings and then she does no more. And maybe, maybe that's why we've forgotten her.
Have the other, did the others go on to keep recording?
Well, they did. They certainly did. I think I'm surprised that Kathleen Parlow didn’t make more recordings. I really am. And I don't know what that's about. I can only speculate, but I think she also kind of retreated from concertizing, didn't she, in her twenties? So, I mean, you know, she did play as far afield as the, you know, she went to China, she went to Japan. She even made recordings for the Niponophone Company in the early twenties. So she was obviously still a great celebrity. But it's sort of puzzling how somebody who had all their ducks in place to make a superstar career.
You know, she had talent, she had beauty, she had interest. You know, from the public, so support from her teacher, all those elements would guarantee a superstar career. But it's so mysterious that she kind of fell off the radar. So much so that her name is completely forgotten today. Yeah, it's one of the big mysteries, but it's really quite remarkable that she was such a terrific violinist, even at the end. It wasn't that she lost her nerve or lost her playing ability. She obviously had it. So there are definitely other factors. that made her withdraw from public concertizing. And just her touring schedule is just exhausting. Like just the traveling.
Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, I mean, this is truly an example of burnout. Yeah. But, but then she would, she would have the crisis and then she'd be back on, she'd be back touring. Well, you know, she was pretty resilient. But I think just the sheer number of years, I think, must have taken its toll. I think she loved being in England, in Cambridgeshire.
I think those were some really happy years for her, to have a home and in a beautiful setting. But it really, it's a very complicated life and a life that really, one would want to try to understand in a deeper way. Yeah, and it seems a little nothing was ever very simple. Yeah, and she never, she never marries, she never has a family.
It's Yes. Her life is really And you'd imagine she'd have suitors, you know, send them off because, you know, she was a talented, beautiful woman. So she's got Misha Elman. He could, like, if you were a man, you could easily get married and then your wife would have children. But at that time, if you married, like, she had to choose between getting married and her career. You couldn't work if, like and it often, like, you weren't allowed to work.
Absolutely. Terrible. No, it's true. So she had this like, this threat, and that's all she could do. That was her life playing. And then if she married, that would be taken away from her. So she had to decide between, you know, a career and this.
It's kind of, it's a bit sad, but yeah, it's a huge choice that she made and she was married to life. Yeah. The sacrifice. One way or the other. Well, I think it's wonderful that she is being remembered through this Buddulph recordings release. And it's the first time there's ever been a recording completely devoted to her. So I'm really glad that. will be able to somehow restore her memory, just a little bit even.
Well, thank you for listening to this podcast. And I hope you enjoyed this story about the incredible Kathleen Parlow. If you liked the podcast, please rate it and review it wherever you listen to it. And I would really encourage you to keep listening to Kathleen Parlow's work. What you heard today were just excerpts from her songs.
So if you would like to listen to. The whole piece, Biddulph Recordings have released two CDs that you can listen to on Apple Music, Spotify or any other major streaming service. You can also buy the double CD of her recordings if you prefer the uncompressed version. Goodbye.
Saturday Feb 24, 2024
Saturday Feb 24, 2024
Kathleen Parlow was one of the most outstanding violinists at the beginning of the 20th century.
In 1912, she was signed by the Columbia Record Company in New York, and her first records for the U.S. label were brought out alongside those of the legendary Eugene Ysaÿe.
Listen to her fascinating story and how she took the world by storm. From her devastating looks to the intrigue her priceless instrument created. You will hear rare recordings of this prodigious player as we retell her life and try to understand why such an incredible talent has been so forgotten today.
Brought to you by Biddulph recordings
TRANSCRIPT
Kathleen Parlow Part 1
Welcome to this very first episode of the Historical Strings Recording Podcast. A show that gives you a chance to hear rare and early recordings of great masters and their stories. Hello, my name is Linda Lespets. I'm a violin maker and restorer in Sydney, Australia, and I'm also the host of another podcast called ‘The Violin Chronicles’, a show about the lives of historically important violin makers and their instruments.
But today we have a different podcast and telling this incredible story with me is my co-host Eric Wen.
Hello, my name is Eric Wen, and I'm the producer at Biddulph Recordings, which is a label that focuses upon reissuing historic recordings, particularly those by famous string players of the past. I also teach at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where I've been for the past 24 years.
In this first episode, we will be looking at an incredibly talented violinist called Kathleen Parlow, who, in her time, took Europe and the world by storm, giving even Fritz Kreisler a run for his money in the popularity department.
She was described in the media as being ‘One of the phenomena of the musical world’ on par with Mischa Elman, or the ‘greatest lady violinist in the world’, and ‘the girl with the golden bow’. She was treated with superstar status wherever she went, which begs the question as to why she is so little known today?
Well, join us to discover her incredible story, the events of her career and her violin. A violin which would eventually financially ruin one man and divide his family. We will take a closer look at high hat kicking breakdancers, militant fascists, scandalous theatre directors, impossible love, a score ripping composer, and all this revolving around one of the world's most expensive violins and the incredible means one man went to get it into his hot little hands and then give it away.
This is the story of Kathleen Parlow.
And all of the pieces you will be hearing in this podcast are of Kathleen Parlow playing her violin.
Kathleen Parlow was born into a modest family in Calgary on the Canadian prairies in 1890. Her mother, Minnie, was a violinist. So, at a young age at four, she gave her daughter a violin and started teaching her. When she was six years old, the family, Kathleen, Minnie, and her father, Charlie, they moved to San Francisco where her talent was immediately recognized. And well, this is probably because of the, the mom. And she was having lessons with her cousin called Conrad Coward in San Francisco. Very soon, still aged six, she gave her first recital in San Francisco.
So is six, is six a reasonable age for a child to give a recital? What do you think? It's extremely young. In fact, that is truly prodigious. I mean, people don't even begin the violin till six and that's an early beginning of an instrument. Most people start around seven or eight, but to begin much earlier and to even be playing a concert at the age of six. That's really quite phenomenal.
So with her burgeoning talent, she now started having lessons with Henry Holmes, who was a pupil of Louis Spohr, the well-known German composer and violinist. And he's a conductor and who he's the man who apparently invented the chin rest. So where would we be without the chin rest, really? He's attributed with inventing it.
Well, Spohr was a fine violinist, German violinist. He was also a quite prominent composer. He was quite a conservative composer. So, I believe he wasn't that fond of the music of Beethoven. In other words, there were people like Spohr, Von Weber, and they represented a much more conservative branch of the sort of German composition. of the German composers. And basically, they looked upon Beethoven as such a wild revolutionary in his music, so daring that I think they were almost a little offended by it. So Spohr, if you could say, is primarily a kind of conservative, very well-schooled, excellent composer. He wrote many, many violin concertos, the most famous of which is No. 8 in A minor, which is written in the form of an operatic scene. Full of violin solo recitatives and arias for the violin.
Oh, wow. Yeah, that's interesting. So they were, there was like very shocked by Beethoven. They were, apparently. Was he a contemporary of Beethoven? Because I, because sometimes you go back pretty quickly, don't you? Like the teacher of the teacher of and all of a sudden you're in like the
Well, Spohr was born 14, he's 14 years younger than Beethoven.
Oh, okay. So, he was born in 1784, but he lived a lot longer. He lived over 20 years longer than Beethoven.
Oh, wow. And that's fascinating. So, Henry Holmes, Kathleen Parlow's teacher, was taught by this guy who would have known Beethoven?
Yes, absolutely.
And objected to Beethoven. Was shocked by his music.
Well, I mean, I think sort of the, you might say the more mature Beethoven or the more daring Beethoven. But I think, you know, I'm sure maybe some of Beethoven's early works were much more acceptable. They were more normative, so to speak.
Oh, okay. So Kathleen's in San Francisco and her parents’ marriage is breaking down. Her father, Charlie, moves back to Calgary where he dies of tuberculosis the year after. But Kathleen, she rockets on and is becoming more and more well known. Her new teacher sees real talent in the girl, and this teacher, Henry Holmes, he has contacts to make things happen. And he helps arrange a tour for her and playing engagements in England. So for this to happen, Kathleen's mum, she's, she's I'm getting stage mum vibes.
Yes.
Because she's still very, still very young.
Oh, yeah. I mean, I can't believe she wasn't playing with dolls.
And this would have been a conversation between Minnie, Kathleen's mum, and the teacher. It probably wouldn't have been a conversation with her as a child.
No, probably not.
You don't really choose much when you're six, seven.
No, that's true.
So the problem they have is that they have no money. So, so what do you do, Eric? You have no money, you have a prodigy.
You exploit the prodigy by having them play and make an income for you, which is something that happens unfortunately to many, many talented musicians coming from, you might say, less well-off families. They end up becoming the breadwinner. All their focus gets put upon these, these kids. And so not only do they have the added burden of playing and making sure they keep up They're playing well, but they also have the burden of making sure that they play well enough to make an income so that their families can survive. I mean, that's a very familiar story, and it's a story that has more failures than winners, I'm afraid, because you do hear about the winners. You do hear about the Misha Elmans or the Yasha. Well, Heifetz is a little different because he had a more middle-class family, but you do hear of Oskar Shumsky, for example, who I know I knew personally, he says, don't believe that these violence that you hear about having normal childhood behind every great violence, there's always a mama or a papa. And I think he himself endured that kind of pressure, the pressure to somehow become. The breadwinner, or let's say the some, the pressure to become a great violinist, primarily because he would serve as the breadwinner for the family. Well, if you think about it, you could say that. Violin playing in the early 20th century was very dominated by Russians, particularly Russian Jews. And one of the reasons for that was that in Russia, all the Jews were confined to an area known as the Pale of Settlement. In other words, a designated area that they could live in, but they could not leave that particular area. And basically, some very gifted young students could get into university or could go into a conservatory, and one of the big examples was Misha Elman, and Misha Elman, you might say left the Pale of Settlement to go study with Leopold Auer in St Petersburg. And they had to get all sorts of permission to do that. Well, the success of Misha Elman, the global success, the international success, I think resonated so well. with the people in the ghetto that they sort of saw, wow, this is one of our boys and look what he's done. He's now playing for the crowned heads of Europe. So I think for them, they felt this was a way out. And if you think about it, the film, Fiddler on the Roof, which is a famous musical and it was adapted as a famous film. And basically, that film, just the very title, talks about the Fiddler on the Roof. And the setting is in the Pale of Settlement, the Jewish ghetto in Russia. They're often subjected to random attacks by the Cossacks and all sorts of difficulties. But here, despite all that, you know they manage to survive. And of course the image of the Fiddler on the Roof. The violinist is exemplified, you might say, by Misha Elman, who literally grew up in the Russian ghetto.
Yeah, and Misha Elman, he'll, he'll become, he He'll become important in our story, yeah.
The money. This is not a problem. There is a wealthy admirer called Harriet Pullman, Carolan, in San Francisco. And she pays for Kathleen and her mother to take the trip to England. And in 1904, at the age of 14, Kathleen plays for King Edward VII at Buckingham Palace. And then in the next year in 1905, she and her mother, they come back to England. This tour marks the beginning of a life that she would lead for years to come of performing and playing. And so by the time she was 15, she was touring and playing with the London Symphony. And it was in a concert at the Wigmore Hall in London that she really shoots to fame. So is the Wigmore Hall, is that, is that still today an important place to play?
Oh, extremely so. It's funny because the Wigmore Hall was originally called the Bechstein Hall, and obviously during the wars, it became a much more the name was more neutralized to become less dramatic, and it became named after the street it's on, which is Wigmore Street. It was always a very important venue, but around the sort of 60s In the 70s it had declined a bit in its status because the South Bank had been built and so the Wigmore Hall was a little bit relegated to a sort of a little second class status. But in the past 20 years or so the Wigmore Hall has catapulted to fame again and it's today one of the most distinguished halls. In London.
All right. Okay. And this is, this is pre war. So it's, it would have been called?
Bechstein.
Okay. So it would have been called the Bechstein Hall when she played?
Probably. Oh yeah, definitely. So the Bechstein Hall was, I think first opened in 1901 and it was built by the piano manufacturers, the German manufacturers Bechstein, hence the name. And after the First World War, I believe it was changed to a more neutral sounding, less Germanic name, and it adopted the name of the street that it's currently on, which is Wigmore Street. Incidentally, the first concert at Wigmore Hall was actually performed, was a violin and piano recital, performed by Eugene Ysaye and Federico Busoni.
And then one night in London, Kathleen and her mother went to another concert of another child prodigy called Mischa Elman. And he was, so he's the fiddler on the roof guy, and he was almost exactly the same age as Kathleen. He was just a few months there's just a few months difference between them. And she, she hears him playing this concert and she's, she's just blown away. Blown away, and after the concert, she and her mother decide that Kathleen, she just has to go and have lessons from the same teacher as this, as this, as Mischa. So the only thing, only little thing about Mischa Elman's teacher is that he is in Russia. And as far as anyone knows, no foreigners study in the St. Petersburg Conservatorium, but that is about to change. Definitely no ladies. So, Kathleen and her mother had arrived in England with 300 raised by their church in San Francisco and this was, it just wasn't enough to get them to Russia and to the conservatorium where the famed Leopold Auer was a professor, but get there they would because Kathleen's mum, Minnie, still had a few tricks up her sleeve. She went and petitioned the Canadian High Commissioner. So she must have been, I feel like Minnie, she must have been very persuasive. Like there was nothing was getting in between, you know, her daughter and this career.
Forceful, a task to be reckoned with, certainly.
Yeah. She's like we'll get to England, we have no money. Not a problem. We're gonna, we're gonna get this teacher. He's in Russia. Not a problem. No foreigners. It, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't seem to be a problem for her, no girls. Not a problem. No foreigner has ever studied in this St. Petersburg conservatorium. Not daunted. They're off. They go. So to pay the cost travel, Minnie managed to get a loan from Lord Strathconia, the Canadian high commissioner. And from there, mother and daughter travelled to Russia. And in October of 1906, Kathleen becomes the first foreigner to attend the St. Petersburg Conservatorium. And in her class are 45 Students and she's the only girl. And we have to remember this is pre-revolutionary Russia. So there's still the Tsar Nicholas the second at this point. Yeah. She's mixing in, in that set. So it's an interesting place to be as a musician. Cause you're frequenting the sort of the upper classes but you can come from, from nothing and arrive there. Her professor was the famed teacher, Leopold Auer, who had a knack of discovering talent.
Leopold Auer was actually a Hungarian violinist, and he was trained in Vienna, and he also studied with Joachim. And what happened was Russia has always had a sort of love for the violin, and they employed many people to teach at the conservatory, because they really embraced Western culture. They had A number of important French violinists come, but their big, you might say, catch was to get Vieuxtemps, Henri Vieuxtemps, to teach for a number of years at, in St. Petersburg. And after Henry Vieuxtemps, they actually got Henry Wieniawski to teach at the conservatory. And when Wieniawski decided to go back to Europe, they employed Leopold Auer to take his place at St Petersburg.
Right. So he's up there with the big names.
Well, they were a little bit let down. I mean, that's what they were, I think, a little bit disappointed to replace Wieniawski with Leopold Auer because Wieniawski was such a major violinist. So he had initially a little rough time, but he was adored by Tchaikovsky and Tchaikovsky loved Auer's playing, dedicated a number of works for him, including the famous serenade melancholic, and wrote a lot number of ballet scores, which Leopold Auer played the solos for. But of course, they had a big rift when Tchaikovsky wrote his violin concerto for Auer, because Auer said it was unplayable. And that really hurt Tchaikovsky's feelings. And it laid dormant for several years before another Russian violinist. Brodsky took it up, learned it, and. Premiered it in Europe first, and only after its success in Europe did he bring it back to Russia, where it became a big success, and Auer felt very bad about that, and in fact, just before Tchaikovsky died, a few months before Tchaikovsky died, story has it that Auer went to Tchaikovsky and apologized to Tchaikovsky for his initial mistrust of the concerto. In fact, by that time, Auer himself had actually performed the concerto, championed it, and taught it to many of his students.
Yeah, and we'll see in this story how sensitive composers are, and how easy it is to hurt their feelings and really create. Like a lot of emotional turmoil. That's coming up. So Auer, like he might not have been their first choice for replacing, but he did have a knack of finding star pupils. That is something that we see, that I see in the conservatorium. Every now and then you have a teacher who's very talented at finding talent.
Absolutely. And I know in Australia you have one very distinguished teacher who I think now has been poached by the Menuhin School in, in England.
Yes. And we're not going to talk about that.
Yes, we won't. Because it's Must be a sore point. But we do see, we do see him every now and then when he comes back. So along with Elman and Efren Zimbalist, Parlow becomes one of Auer's star pupils and Auer was so taken with her playing that he often called her Elman in a skirt, which I think is supposed to be a compliment. And in Auer's biography, he writes, he says, “It was during this year that my first London pupil came to me, Kathleen Parlow, who has since become one of the first, if not the first, of women violinists”. And that, he says that in his biography, My Long Life in Music. So, Every year, Auer had a summer school in Kristiana, which is Oslo today. And Parlow spent her summers there and became a great favourite in Norway, which leads us to the next and perhaps one of the most marking events in her career and life.
At 17, having spent a year at the conservatory in Russia, Kathleen begins to put on public performances she gives solo performances in both St. Petersburg and Helsinki. So these are two places she knows quite well by now. And these concerts were, they were very important as Kathleen's mother really had no money to support them. And so, with but you know, Minnie doesn't bother her, she just ploughs on. And so with the money from these concerts this would have to tide her over. From letters that I've read, they were living in like this small apartment and then another friend writes, you know this other person, they've been saying you live in a tiny little place, but I'm not going to spread that rumor. And, and so it was a, it was a thing on the radar that they didn't have much money and they were scraping by and they were like frequenting people of much more wealthier than they were, so they were sort of on the fringes of society, but with her talent that was sort of pushing, people wanted to know her.
So she makes her professional debut in Berlin and then began, she begins a tour of Germany and the Netherlands and Norway. And in Norway, she performs for the King Hakon and Queen Maud. Of whom she'll become a favorite. And, and her touring schedule was phenomenal. It was just like nonstop. So, yeah. For a 17-year-old that's, you know, she's going all over the world. And you were saying that Auer knew . Do Tchaikovsky do you think Auer, was he was giving her these pieces that did, that influenced him? Yes. I mean, Tchaikovsky wrote a number of violin, solo violin works before the concerto, the most famous of which is, of course, the Waltz Scherzo and the Serenade Melancholique. One is a fast, virtuoso piece, the other is a slow, soulful piece. And I know that Auer was the dedicatee of certainly the Serenade Melancholique, which she did play.
So, so Auer's giving her stuff from, you know, his friend Tchaikovsky to play. Now she's 17 and she's touring to support herself and her mother and she has an amazing teacher who probably understands her circumstances all too well because Auer growing up also found himself in her position, supporting his father in his youth with his playing. So she's studying in St. Petersburg, which is an incredible feat in itself. So she must have had quite a strong character and her mother, Minnie, also appears to be very ambitious for her daughter. We're talking about her mother being ambitious, but for Kathleen to, you know, she's her daughter, she, she must've had quite a strong wheel as well.
Yes. Well, she certainly did. I wish we knew more about her because maybe she was very subservient, you know, we have no idea. Maybe she didn't have, I mean, it's a speculation, of course.
Yeah. We do have like hundreds of letters from Kathleen and there's a lot between her and Auer, and there's a real sort of paternal, he really sort of cared for her like a daughter almost and she looked up to him like a father and he was always very correct about it, you know, he would always write the letter to her. To Minnie, her mother the correspondents, it was, and it was always very, everything was very above board, but a very, they were very close.
Kathleen later says that after expenses, her Berlin debut netted her exactly 10 pounds. She didn't know it at the time, but this was an indication of what her future would be like, and she would be sort of financially in a precarious state most of her life, and she would so her routine was she studies with Auer every summer in order to prepare, like they were preparing her repertoire for the next season of touring.
So now she has a tour in 1908, so she's still 17, almost 18. It's in Norway, and to understand just a little bit of the political climate in the country, We can see that Norway, only three years earlier, had become independent of Sweden and had basically become its own country. So there's this this great sense of nationalism and pride in being Norwegian. And they have a newly minted king, King Hakon, who she's played for, and his queen, who was, He was in fact a Danish prince. And then when Norway, the Norwegian parliament asked him if he would like to become the king of Norway when they had their independence. And he said, why not? As part of this great sense of nationalism Norwegian musicians, composers, writers, and poets, they were celebrated and became superstars.
And, oh gosh, yes,
We can sort of understand. Poets have sort of dropped off the list, but back then poets, they were a big deal. So you add to this a young, fresh faced, talented Canadian girl who knows and understands their country. She arrives in Oslo to play in the National Theatre, where Norway's very own Johan Halvorsen who's conductor and composer and violinist, he's conducting the country's largest professional orchestra. And that night for Kathleen's concert, she plays Brahms and some of Halvorsen's compositions and the two, Kathleen Parloe and Halvorsen, they would go on to become quite good friends and Halvorsen regarded her very highly in saying, he said that her playing was superior almost to all the other famous soloists who made guest appearances in the city. So, I mean, a lot of people went through Oslo, so that was, you know, high praise. And Kathleen quickly Becomes a admirer of his and she would become a driving factor in him finishing his violin concerto that he'd been dithering over for a very long time. And this is Kathleen playing one of Halvorsen's compositions.
It's not his concerto, it's Mosaic No. 4.
So back to the theatre. And it was a magical night with the romantic music of Brahms to make you fall in love. And everyone did, just some more than others. And to finish off, there's music from their very own Johan Halvorsen to celebrate you know, a Norwegian talent. So Kathleen plays her heart out and when the concert ended, the crowd goes wild and the 17 year old soaks up the thunderous applause. She's holding on tight to her violin as she bows to adoring fans. Tonight she is the darling of Oslo. In the uproarious crowd stands a man unable to take his eyes off this young woman. Her playing has moved him and her talent is unbelievable. This man makes a decision that will change both their lives forever.
So, Einar Bjornsson had fallen head over heels for the 17 year old Canadian there and then. She would turn 18 in a few months. And in that moment, he decided to give her the most beautiful gift she would ever receive. So, who is Einar Bjornsson? So what we were saying, poets, poets are less of a, you know, a hot shot today, but Einar was the son of a very, very famous poet. A Norwegian businessman and son of one of the most prominent public figures of the day, Bjørnstan Bjørnsson. He was a poet, a dramatist, a novelist, a journalist, an editor, a public speaker, and a theatre director. Five years earlier, in 1903, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and one of his poems, called ‘Yes, We Love This Land’, was put to music and is the Norwegian national anthem up to this day. So, you could say he was kind of famous in these parts, and his personality alone would have easily filled. A concert hall, that one in Oslo. Einar's father here, we're talking about Einar's father, he's the poet. Einar himself doesn't appear to have written any poetry. And this, so this situation could have been just fine the whole infatuation, love at first sight thing, except for a few things that put a spanner in the works.
To begin with, Einar Björnsson is somewhat older than the youthful Kathleen he's 26 years older. Then her, in fact, and for a 17 year old, that is a big age gap. So he's 45, but that aside, there is a problem that he's also married and has two children. His daughter is actually almost the same age as Kathleen she's 16, but he doesn't really seem to see that. All he can see is this violinist and her talent. And he's been just, he's besotted and he's going to make a grand gesture. So obviously, one way to support the arts is to, what patrons do is they will buy, a lovely instrument and lend it to someone. So that's your normal affair. Obviously, one way to show his devotion to her is to find her a better violin. Hers is absolutely not good enough for someone of her talent. And he has to find her something amazing because she is amazing. He's determined to give her the most wonderful gift she has ever received. So he goes out and he's a businessman. And so he goes to his businessman contacts. And Kathleen would have spoken to her entourage. I imagine, and I now finally finds a violin worthy of Kathleen's virtuosity, and it happens to be one of the most expensive violins on the market in 1908, and it's a 1735 Giuseppe Guarneri Del Gesu violin.
It had previously belonged to great violinists such as Giovanni Battista Viotti and Pierre Baillot. So just to clarify in the violin making world Antonio Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesù are the two top makers. If you're comparing two instruments, if one was owned by no one not anyone that you know. And then another one was owned by Viotti and Pierre Baillot . The one that's owned by Viotti and Pierre Baillot is probably going to be worth more. Yeah. So Viotti, he was just huge. He had a lot of instruments. I think he did a little bit of teaching and dealing on the side, Viotti. Like with the number of instruments named after him, or he just went through a lot of instruments. So she buys this violin, and it's not all smooth sailing to get the violin. Because she, there's this, there's a big correspondence between her and Auer, and we see that actually there's this letter where it says from Auer saying, I saw Hamming very cross. He says that the violin is compromised if he takes it back. So at one point, I think she may have changed her mind about this violin, but Hamming the dealer was not okay with this. All the I'm just trying to read his writing, it's not that easy. All the papers brought the news That Kathleen bought it so the newspapers have already, so the, you've got Hamming, that's annoyed, the papers have already said they've bought this violin and he could not, it says he could not sell it soon and repeat the sale, waiting till he finds something equal to the Guarneri.
He showed me a Strad, indeed wonderful, asking 60, 000 livres, which must be pounds, right? A nice fellow, isn't he? And now, goodbye, write to me. Love, Auer. They do end up getting the violin. They, they don't get the 60, 000 Strad that Hamming Gets all upset about and offers, which I think he might have been exaggerating the price just to make him calm down about and to keep the del Gesu.
Then Einar gives this to Kathleen. So this is a very kind of strange situation because normally you don't, you don't actually give, the patrons don't actually give their instrument to the
No, absolutely. That's a remarkable gift. Just in terms of, I mean, the gesture is very magnanimous, but in terms of financial, there's just a financial cost or value of the gift is quite enormous.
And so really after only knowing her for a month, Einar transfers this money into her account and she travels, Kathleen travels to Germany to the Hamming workshop and purchases her del Gesu violin for two thousand pounds and in today's money according to an inflation calculator, that is three hundred thousand pounds. Almost four hundred thousand US dollars. More than half a million Australian dollars, which at the time was a lot for a violin as well. So we're not I mean, I, today you'd be kind of happy to buy a Del Gesu for half a million, but then it was, it'd be a bargain. So, it's interesting this, like, he buys this, this young violinist this very expensive present and it's a, and it's a grey area and it's fraught with debate ethically, really. And I feel like today musicians find themselves sometimes in this position where they're sort of indebted to the, to a benefactor. It's almost feudal. I I feel cause at the same time you're very happy that they're lending it to you, but got to keep an eye on if it's a healthy relationship to. To get the money he had to get, you know, half a million pounds pretty quickly. If you remember, Ina's father was a very famous poet who'd won a Nobel Prize in literature and part of the prize is that you win a large sum of money. And so, what does Einar do? He goes and asks Dad. So he asks, he borrows, he borrows most of the money actually. Goodness knows how he convinced him, but you know, he's a businessman. And also for the remaining, he's married, remember, and he's married to, actually, to an heiress, and he takes a bunch of her, her dowry money and transfers this to essentially a teenager he met a month ago. The purchase of this incredibly expensive violin attracted, it attracted the attention of the press internationally, but journalists It's never really questioned the fact that this, this gift was given to a young woman by a, by an established family man. So everyone was just like, Oh, isn't it amazing? Because normally in this circumstance, people don't often give the instrument. You buy it as an investment and you'll lend it to someone. I think I've heard of like very few, very few cases of things being gifted, but actually normally your standard practice is to, to lend it to people. And most people playing on strads, that's, that's what it is, someone's lent it to them.
How would you feel about someone giving a 300, 000 instrument to your daughter, who's a teenager?
Well, I'd be, I mean, I'd just hate the sort of obligation that would involve, because On one hand, it is a very wonderful gift if it is a gift, but you almost expect that there is some expectation in return, don't you?
Yeah. It's like he's bought her almost.
Kind of.
So, Einar, as, as I mentioned, he's, he's from a well known Norwegian family. They're very patriotic. His father's writings really established a sense of pride and meaning to what it was to be Norwegian. And he was. Like his father was this beloved figure in the country and he was quite frankly a hard act to follow. But his children gave it a good shot. You have Einar was one of five children. His father Bjornstein Bjornsson was the poet and public figure. He worked in a theatre. His mother was an actress when he'd met her. Which is a little bit risque also for the time. So they're a bit more of sort of an acting bohemian theatre family. His older brother Bjorn Bjornsson, just to be complicated here, his brother's called Bjorn Bjornsson. And not to be confused with Bjornstein Bjornsson, his father. So he was a stage actor and a theatre director. Like his dad. He was a playwright and he was the first theatre director of the National Theatre. And that was the big theatre in Oslo where Kathleen played. He was also quite busy in his personal life, because his first wife was Jenny Bjornsson. I mean, another Bjornsson. Boarding house owner. So he married her for four years. So this is Einars older brother. He married her for four years, then he divorced her, then he married an opera singer.
Called Gina Oselio for 16 years, but then he, they, they got divorced, and then he married in 1909 Aileen Bendix, who was actually Jewish, and that's an important point, that she was Jewish, because at this time, things are kind of soon things will start heating up in Europe. And then he was, then there was Einar's younger brother called Erling Bjørnson, and he was a farmer and a politician for the Norwegian Far Right Party. So he was extreme right. Bit of a fascist. The other brother. So he was elected to the parliament of Norway and he was very active during World War II. So his two brothers have very, like, polarized opinions. Einar himself, he was a passive member of the far right party, but during the war years at that time that was the only party that people were allowed to be part of, so you can't, it's hard to tell his political leanings from that. Then he has a younger sister. Bergliot Bjornson, and she was a singer and a mezzo soprano, and she was married to a left wing politician Sigurd Ibsen, who was, he was the son of a playwright, and he becomes the Norwegian Prime Minister, so he plays a central role in Norway getting its independence. He met Einar's sister because he's a big patriot. Einar's father is a big patriot and that's how they were kind of family friends. It's not bad, you know, having your husband as the prime minister. Then he has another little sister called Dagny Bjornson and she was 19 when she marries a German publisher called Albert Langdon and so they're sort of like leftish as well. So Einar, he marries the sister of Albert Langdon. So they have this joint brother sister wedding. On the same day, the Bjornson brothers sisters marry the Langdon brothers sisters. But, the important thing to know is that the Langdons are very, very wealthy. They're orphans and they, they've inherited a lot of money. And so, but then Dagny, she ends up leaving her husband. Goes to Paris and works at another newspaper. And this is all in the, you know, the early 1900s. So she had this amazing life and then and then she marries another man, a French literate called Georges Sartreau well he comes also from a very wealthy family. Then you have Einar, who's a businessman, and he marries Elizabeth and they have two children, and his life is like not that remarkable. I think the most exciting thing he does is fall in love with Kathleen, I suppose, and sort of runs after her and her violin. From Kathleen's diaries, we can see the day after this concert in Oslo on the 10th of January, it's written 10th January, Mr Bjornson, 11;30am She meets with him the day after skiing and tobogganing with the Bjornsons. She has a concert the next day, but the day after that it's dinner with the Bjornsons, then another concert. And then she plays for the King. Then she goes to dinner with the Bjornsons. So this is just an excerpt from her diary for those weeks. And the next day, it's just Mr. Bjornson. That's just her meeting him not with the family. And maybe this is where he says, you know, I'll get you a violin. Maybe that was that meeting. And then on the 28th of February, she's in Germany and, and he's there. Einar is there. He goes to see her. Then on the 6th of March, she's in Amsterdam and in her diaries, you know, Mr Bjornson, he's there. He's kind of like, I don't know if this is creepy. He's following her around and then, and it's around about this time that he buys the violin for her. So she finishes her tour and she goes back to England and a month later in her diary, who rocks up? I know, he's there. In England, and she's still only 17 there. It's like he's kind of shadowing her a bit. Yes, it's that next level patronage.
And then there's the, the aesthetic at the time, the, the pre-Raphaelite willowy type woman, which she fits perfectly into. And Kathleen, if you, if you see Kathleen, it's kind of like. John William Waterhouse, his paintings. There's women in these long flowy robes with flowers in their hair and long willowy postures and, they're often like, you know, they're flopping about on something like a chair or there's this one holding this pot of basil. And there's that famous painting, The Lady of Shalott, where you've got this woman float, is she, is she dead? She's floating in the water with her hair and, and all this fabric and flowers and. In a promotional article, there was this quote from a review in the Evening Sun.
“Kathleen Parlow, tall, straight, slim, and swaying as the white birch sapling of her native Canada, but a spring vision, but a spring vision all in pink from her French heels to her fiddle chin rest and crowned with parted chestnut hair of a deeper auburn than any Stradivarius violin made an astonishing impression of masterful ease”.
I don't know if men were described like this, but they loved her. She's like a white birch.
Well she's very slender, she had beautiful long hair she was very thin, very fragile, and I think she sort of exemplified this pre Raphaelite beauty basically and that was so enchanting to have someone who was almost from another world playing the violin divinely. I think she must have cut an incredibly attractive image for the day. Absolutely. Yeah. And then she would have been like playing these like incredible romantic pieces.
It would be juxtaposed with her playing. Yeah. And yeah. Yes. So she was this real William Waterhouse figure with her violin. So she's lithe and willowy, and she has her touring schedule, which was phenomenal. She, so she tours England, Finland, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway. Just to name a few. It just kind of stopped after that. It was just never ending. And you have to remember it's the beginning of the 20th century, and traveling, it's not like it is today. It was much more. Uncomfortable. I mean, it's incredible. You see one day she's in one country, the next day in another country. So this must have been quite fatiguing. And she's just playing night after night. Her mother, Minnie, she's her, she's, they're quite close. She's, and often like with these, with prodigies, often their parents. They're best friends, like they're the only constant in their life. So in the summers, she returns to Oslo every year for the summer school hour that's helping her for the next concerts. She spends quite a lot of time with Halverson, going to lunches and teas and rehearsals with him. You can see this in her diaries. But is this, is this kind of the life of a musician as well? Like you have to, you have to go to a lot of teas and lunches with people to please patrons and so on.
Yes, I think you do because musicians don't normally have much money and so to ingratiate themselves to patrons and sponsors they really had to coax them into help
Yeah, because she's living this life sort of beyond her means, going to the theater, going to concerts and things, and sort of a balancing act.
Back in Norway, and a week after she turns 18, there's an entry in her diary, play for Mr. Bjornson, and the next month her entries, they change slightly, and she'll now just call him E. B. For Einar Bjornson and the entries will say things like E. B. arriving and then often like a week later It's E. B. leaving and in her diaries, it's intermittently always though he'll be there for a week wherever she is often in England or and every few months He'll just pop up, you know in London in Germany in the Netherlands And he just always happens to be happens to be there and what's interesting is she has these hundreds of letters archived Of her writing to friends, to family, to her pianist. And it's really interesting that there's zero letters to Einar. There's no correspondence between them, which I think is maybe on purpose, they may be, they have to have been removed because she just writes letters to everyone, but we don't have these, any letters from them, so it just leaves things up to speculation.
This brings us to the end of part one in the story of Kathleen Parlow. I would encourage you to keep listening to the music of Kathleen. To do this, Biddulph Recordings have released two CDs that you can listen to on Apple Music, Spotify, or any other major streaming service. You can also buy the double CD of her recordings if you prefer the uncompressed version.
I hope you have enjoyed her story so far, but stick around for part two to find out what will happen with her career, the violin, the man who gave it to her, and the mystery behind a missing concerto that Kathleen would, in part, help solve after her death. Goodbye for now.
Saturday Feb 24, 2024
Ep 20. Francesco Rugeri Part II with Dan Larson of Gamut Strings and Jason Price
Saturday Feb 24, 2024
Saturday Feb 24, 2024
Come and discover in this episode why your cello is the size it is!
We continue looking at the life of Francesco Rugeri and how his career intersected with other well known masters such as Guarneri and Stradivari.
The advent of wound strings will also play a part in piecing together the puzzle of how Francesco Rugeri was able to make smaller cellos 50 years before Stradivari even tried.
Sunday Feb 18, 2024
Ep 19 Francesco Rugeri Part I with Jason Price
Sunday Feb 18, 2024
Sunday Feb 18, 2024
Francesco Rugeri; this Cremonese violin maker often mistaken for Giovanni Battista Rogeri, another Cremonese trained violin maker living at the same time, made many fine instruments and is especially well known for his cellos and his innovation of the instrument. Join me as I delve into the life of violin makers in Cremona after the Amati's and before the Guarneri families, this is the age of the Rugeris'.
Wednesday Dec 13, 2023
Bonus ep: Ballet, Amati Violins, and a Psychopaths Wedding.
Wednesday Dec 13, 2023
Wednesday Dec 13, 2023
Want to hear about the worlds most expensive ballet performance, murderous royals and Cremonese violins? Well listen on to see what happened to Andrea Amati's instruments once they arrived in the French court.
Friday Oct 13, 2023
Ep 18. Girolamo II Amati, the last of the Amati family of violin makers
Friday Oct 13, 2023
Friday Oct 13, 2023
Girolamo II Amati was the last of the Amati family of violin makers in Cremona. He worked along side Antonio Stradivari and the Guarneri family in an intense moment of violin making and musical discovery at the time. Listen to how he fits into the story of the violin and turns out to be more that what he is (or not) remembered for.
Friday Sep 29, 2023
Free Patreon Episode, how to recognise that violin
Friday Sep 29, 2023
Friday Sep 29, 2023
For a quick revision of your makers with tips and clues to look out for so you too can recognise their work.
If you would like to hear more so that you too can become more confident in your knowledge of instruments and sound like a pro go to
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