The afternoon of December 3, 1934 “was a time of extraordinary happenings at the Women’s Musical Club” when the WMC hosted the first North American concert of the eminent cellist, Emanuel Feuermann. Considered by many to be one of the greatest cellists of the twentieth century, Feuermann’s name is perhaps less well known today because of his untimely death at the age of only thirty-nine. Artur Rubinstein is quoted as saying, “Feuermann became for me the greatest cellist of all times”, and Jascha Heifetz who played in a trio with Feuermann and Rubinstein said of him, “A talent like Feuermann’s comes around once in a hundred years.”
A child prodigy, born in 1902 into a musical family, he debuted with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of eleven and was appointed a Professor at the Cologne Conservatory at sixteen. In 1929 he moved to Berlin to teach at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, but was dismissed in 1933 by the Nazi regime and left Germany for England. In search of a place to settle, he began a world tour with pianist, Fritz Kitsinger, that took him across Europe to Russia, China, Japan and North America, where his first concert was in Winnipeg, sponsored by the WMC. Club members were “spellbound” by his playing as “one might imagine that the "cello was the easiest sort of instrument to play, so free and supple the bowing, so agile his left hand and clear the notes.” “While the technical resources caused amazement ... one was always conscious of the great musical sensibility in reserve, and of the emotional expressiveness whenever there was substance in the music to bring it out.” The program included the lovely Schubert Sonata in A minor, a Toccata by Frescobaldi and Valentin's Sonata in E major “which served chiefly to put the hearers into a very definite frame of mind about the rarity of the occasion.” The Winnipeg Free Press review ended with “It is to be hoped that Mr. Feuermann will be heard again in Winnipeg in the not too distant future.” There is no evidence that he ever performed in Winnipeg again.
And yet there are Winnipeg connections to Feuermann. The great cellist Zara Nelsova, who was born in Winnipeg, studied with him briefly as a young woman, and WMC McLellan winner David Liam Roberts, who will be performing in this year’s WMC Centre Stage series with pianist Godwin Friesen, has a musical lineage that can be traced back to Feuermann. David Liam has studied with Steven Isserlis and Steven Doane, both of whom studied with Jane Cowan, a pupil of Feuermann’s. And so the line continues.
Feuermann left behind several recordings that can be found on the web for those who would like to hear what the excitement was all about on that December day in 1934.
Mary Lynn Duckworth Chair of Archives
Sources:
Winnipeg Free Press, Saturday, December 1, 1934
Winnipeg Free Press, Tuesday, December 4, 1934
‘Emanuel Feuermann’ Annette Morreau, Yale University Press ISBN 0300 096
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