The violin is a curious instrument. When ill played, it is supremely ugly; when mastered, more than any other string instrument it approaches the human voice in its ability to communicate what I am afraid can only be called (even in this advanced and putatively rational age) soul-states. It is for this reason, I suppose, that the violin has so often been seen as a favorite instrument of the devil. This association has entered literature and art (to name only two examples, the first now little known and the second relatively recent) in the German poet Lenau’s drama Faust (1836-46) and in Stravinsky’s music-cum-dance-cum-narration L7’Histoire du soldat (1918). In the rather more public world of performance, the suggestion of satanic inspiration formed the largest part of the legends surrounding the Italian violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840).

As far as performers are concerned, in our own century the violin (in the proper hands) has seemed a benevolent voice, a speaker on behalf of the deepest yearnings of the individual, and, in the case of Jewish violinists, a representative of a whole people. It is in this light that most of the greatest violin careers of our time are to be seen. Unlike such intellectually sophisticated artists as Josef Szigeti (1892-1973) and Adolf Busch (1891-1952), such famous artists as Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962), Efrem Zimbalist (1890-1985), Mischa Elman (1891-1967), Jascha Heifetz (b. 1901), and David Oistrakh (1908-74), for all their natural musicality and grace, were content to play brilliantly and