"I would not be surprised if Nardini, Vivaldi and their companions were to appear to you at the midnight hour in order to thank the master for having given new life to their works, long buried beneath the mold of figured basses; works whose vital, pulsating possibilities these old gentlemen probably never suspected. Nardini emerges from your alchemistic musical laboratory with so fresh and lively a quality of charm that starving fiddlers will greet him with the same pleasure with which the bee greets the first honeyed blossom of spring."
"And now you want my definition of 'Violin Mastery'? To me the whole art of playing violin is contained in the reverent and respectful interpretation of the works of the great masters. I consider the artist only their messenger, singing the message they give us. And the more one realizes this, the greater becomes one's veneration especially for Bach's creative work. For twenty years I never failed to play the Bach solo sonatas for violin every day of my life--a violinist's 'daily prayer' in its truest sense! Students of Bach are apt, in the beginning, to play, say, the _finale_ of the G minor sonata, the final _Allegro_ of the A minor sonata, the _Gigue_ of the B minor, or the _Preludio_ of the E major sonata like a mechanical exercise: it takes _constant_ study to disclose their intimate harmonic melodious conception and poetry! One should always remember that technic is, after all, only a _means_. It must be acquired in order to be an unhampered master of the instrument, as a medium for presenting the thoughts of the great creators--but _these thoughts_, and not their medium of expression, are the chief objects of the true and great artist, whose aim in life is to serve his Art humbly, reverently and faithfully! You remember these words:
"'In the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise!...'"
Maximilian Pilzer is deservedly prominent among younger American concert violinists. A pupil of Joachim, Shradieck, Gustav Hollander, he is, as it has already been picturesquely put, "a graduate of the rock and thorn university," an artist who owes his success mainly to his own natural gifts plus an infinite capacity for taking pains. Though primarily an interpreter his interlocutor yet had the good fortune to happen on Mr. Pilzer when he was giving a lesson. Essentially a solo violinist, Mr. Pilzer nevertheless has the born teacher's wish to impart, to share, where talent justifies it, his own knowledge. He himself did not have to tell the listener this--the lesson he was giving betrayed the fact.