Leopold Auer - Playing

Playing

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was especially taken with Auer's playing. Reviewing a 1874 appearance in Moscow, Tchaikovsky praised Auer's "great expressivity, the thoughtful finesse and poetry of the interpretation." This finesse and poetry came at a tremendous price. Auer suffered as a performer from poorly formed hands. He had to work incessantly, with an iron determination, just to keep his technique in shape. He wrote, "My hands are so weak and their conformation is so poor that when I have not played the violin for several successive days, and then take up the instrument, I feel as if I had altogether lost the facility of playing."

Despite this handicap, Auer achieved much through constant work. His tone was small but ingratiating, his technique polished and elegant. His playing lacked fire, but he made up for it with a classic nobility. After he arrived in the United States, he made some recordings which bear this out. They show the violinist in excellent shape technically, with impeccable intonation, incisive rhythm and tasteful playing.

His musical tastes were conservative and refined. He liked virtuoso works by Henri Vieuxtemps and Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst and used those works in his teaching. Once a student objected to playing Ernst's Othello Fantasy because it was bad music. Auer did not back down. "You'll play it until it sounds like good music," he thundered at the student, "and you'll play nothing else." He played little Bach. Never did he ever assign any of Bach's solo concertos to a student. The Double Concerto, however, was one of his favorites.