Henryk Szeryng Passed Away 25 Years Ago
March 3, 2013 quietly marked the 25th anniversary of the passing of Henryk Szeryng, one of the magnificent violinists of the 20th century.
Szeryng was a polyglot, fluent in 7 languages. Like Kreisler and Heifetz before him, Szeryng also was an excellent pianist and as well as a composer of pieces for the violin (only a few of of which seem to have survived). Szeryng was a generous philanthropist too, donating many of his famous violins (including a Strad, 2 del Gesus and a Vuillaume) to Israel, Mexico and several of his students.
Today Szeryng seems to be remembered mostly for his wonderful performances of Bach's sonatas and partitas, but his playing of chamber music, sonatas and concertos (including Paganini's 3rd violin concerto, which Szerying discovered) also was second to none. I was fortunate to be a youngster in the late 1960s who heard Szeryng perform live (as well as live performances of many of the other great violinists of the era, including Oistrakh (my personal favourite), Kogan, Milstein, Grumiaux, Francescatti, Menuhin, Stern and Haendel) -- Szeryng's playing was as memorable as the best of them.
Samuel Applebaum, in The Way They Play, wrote that Szerying's favorite quote was "Sharing is caring; to breathe is to wish; to wish is to have; to have is to give; to give is to love; to love is to live". Henryk, thank you for sharing your musical gifts with us during your lifetime. Your recordings will live forever. We hope that now you are sharing your musical gifts with everyone in heaven.
Please help celebrate Szeryng's life by sharing with us your favorite Szeryng performance, recording or story.
Replies (6)
Szeryng was amazing, true class act in every way. Love watching him play, my teacher speaks fondly of having seen him play many times.
Heard him live in Holland, playing Sibelius. As wonderful a concert as I ever heard. I direct my high-schoolers to his Bach recordings. How could it be 25 years? A voice silenced much too soon.
In addition to his Bach, Szeryng made gold standard recordings of the Mozart sonatas with Ingrid Haebeler. He is missed by all.
One of my teachers (a graduate of the Leningrad conservatory, in the same class as Mischa Maisky) was a former concertmaster of the Canadian Chamber Orchestra and Szeryng was doing a concert with them. My teacher had a horrible fiddle at that point and Szeryng took notice. The next day, Szeryng showed up on his doorstep and brought him a better fiddle to play.
I was privileged to see Mr. Szeryng twice. Once he played the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the Chicago Symphony, and it was a great, great performance. To my ear it sounded practically note perfect. Musically, to me, Szeryng always had not only a consummate technique and plenty of warmth and emotion and excitement when called for, but there was always an elegance that I think set him apart.
I also heard him "jamming" at a private get-together with (as I recall) members of the Fine Arts Quartet. This was in a small lounge of a very elegant apartment building in Chicago, and I was invited to be part of the audience (of about 30 people). I was sitting so close to him that I could have reached out and touched his fiddle. They read through, as I recall, the 1st Rasamuvsky (did I spell it right?) Quartet of Beethoven. Szeryng was the ultimate chamber musician, and blended in wonderfully.
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March 5, 2013 at 07:00 AM · My favourite is probably his Paganini concerto no.3. I always knew he was a great violinist just never knew how good his technique was til I saw the video. Thank you for reminding us of this extraordinary artist!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur70PUoMZFQ