th and
seventeenth centuries were very jealous of the secrets of their famous
feints and _ripostes_, and only confided them to favorite pupils who
promised not to reveal them. Auer had his little secrets, too, with
which he was loth to part. When I was to make my _debut_ in Berlin, I
remember, he was naturally enough interested--since I was his pupil--in
my scoring a triumph. And he decided to part with some of his treasured
technical thrusts and parries. And when I was going over the
Tschaikovsky _D minor concerto_ (which I was to play), he would select a
passage and say: 'Now I'll play this for you. If you catch it, well and
good; if not it is your own fault!' I am happy to say that I did not
fail to 'catch' his meaning on any occasion. Auer really has a wonderful
intellect, and some secrets well worth knowing. That he is so great an
artist himself on the instrument is the more remarkable, since
physically he was not exceptionally favored. Often, when he saw me, he'd
say with a sigh: 'Ah, if I only had your hand!'

"Auer was a great virtuoso player. He held a unique place in the
Imperial Ballet. You know in many of the celebrated ballets,
Tschaikovsky's for instance, there occur beautiful and difficult solos
for the violin. They call for an artist of the first rank, and Auer was
accustomed to play them in Petrograd. In Russia it was considered a
decided honor to be called upon to play one of those ballet solos; but
in London it was looked on as something quite incidental. I remember
when Diaghilev presented Tschaikovsky's _Lac des Cygnes_ in London, the
Grand-Duke Andrew Vladimirev (who had heard me play), an amiable young
boy, and a patron of the arts, requested me--and at that time the
request of a Romanov was still equivalent to a command--to play the
violin solos which accompany the love scenes. It was not exactly easy,
since I had to play and watch dancers and conductor at the same time.
Yet it was a novelty for London, however; everybody was pleased and the
Grand-Duke presented me with a handsome diamond pin as an
acknowledgment.

VIOLIN MASTERY

"You ask me what I understand by 'Violin Mastery'? Well, it seems to me
that the artist who can present anything he plays as a distinct
picture, in every detail, framing the composer's idea in the perfect
beauty of his plastic rendering, with absolute truth of color and
proportion--he is the artist who deserves to be called a master!