Josef Hassid - London Studies and Concerts

London Studies and Concerts

Hassid came to London with his father in 1938 at Flesch’s invitation, to continue studies with him. Flesch concentrated on his musical and interpretative development rather than technical skills. Musical celebrities who heard him play at Flesch’s house and were astonished at his ability included Joseph Szigeti (1892-1973), Jacques Thibaud (1880-1953), David Oistrakh (1908-1974) and Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962). In a passage supplementing his father’s memoirs Carl F. Flesch wrote that “Hassid was no doubt one of the strongest violin talents of his time. Indeed Fritz Kreisler, after hearing him at my father’s house, said: ‘A fiddler such as X is born every 100 years; one like Hassid every 200 years.’” Kreisler loaned Hassid for the remainder of his career a violin of 1860 by the French maker J.B. Vuillaume (d. 1875), which was a great improvement on the instrument he had played up until then.

He gave a private recital with the pianist Ivor Newton on 9 March 1938 as “Yossef Hassid” at the home of Mr L.L. Gildesgame, 41 Clifton Hill, South Hampstead, where the guests included Sir Henry Wood. After giving a private recital at the home of Sir Philip Sassoon, Hassid made his public debut at a recital with Gerald Moore in the Wigmore Hall on 3 April 1940, billed as the “Polish Boy Violinist”, playing works by Corelli (La folia variations), Debussy, Schubert (Sonata in G), Bach (adagio and fugue from one of the unaccompanied Sonatas), Paganini (I palpiti) and others. The next day The Times said Hassid “showed imagination and musical insight” and that “his performance created a strong impression.” Many years later Moore commented that Hassid was “the greatest instrumental genius I’ve ever partnered. I don’t know how to explain his incandescence. He had technical perfection, marvellous intonation, glorious tone – but there was something above that which was quite incredible, a metaphysical quality. Sadly he had an unhappy love affair which literally drove him mad. But then maybe the unrest inside him made him play so fantastically.” (Interview in The Gramophone, April 1973.) Three weeks later on the evening of 25 April he made his orchestral debut at the Queen’s Hall in a Polish Relief Fund concert (broadcast on the BBC Home Service) playing the Tchaikovsky concerto with the LPO under Gregor(y) Fitelberg (during which he suffered a memory lapse). The concerto was preceded by two short items by Chabrier and Kondracki and followed by Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The next day The Times reported that Hassid “showed some signs of nervousness at the outset”, but “the beauty of his tone was striking and the brilliance of the finale” earned him generous applause.

He also gave a few recital broadcasts on the BBC and played the Beethoven concerto during an afternoon concert in the Queen’s Hall with Sir Adrian Boult conducting the LPO on 5 January 1941. On the 8th The Times commented of Hassid “a technically accomplished performance, but he has not yet attained to the purity of style, especially in the matter of sustaining an even tone throughout a phrase that the music needs.” Hassid’s final concert was also at the Queen’s Hall, on the afternoon of 1 March 1941, where he played the Brahms concerto with the Sidney Beer Symphony Orchestra of about thirty players under Sidney Beer. The Times review (4 March) noted that the concerto was “the least satisfactory part of the concert, because neither the young violinist not the conductor seemed to have a determined view of Brahms to present to their hearers. The solo performance was scarcely more than that of a clever student who has worked hard to memorize the concerto but is still liable to be thrown off his stroke, even to the point of forgetting his notes occasionally. The rhythm throughout was indecisive and the last pages of the Finale became almost a race between soloist and orchestra.”