‘As the sand on the sea shore’: Women Violinists in London's Concert Life around 1900

Summary

Though the number of female violinists is as the sand on the sea shore at the present moment, no one has been able to come within measurable distance of this veritable queen of violinists [Lady Halle]

(Strad, August 1894)

THE PROFUSION of women violinists in concert life in the decades around 1900 remains an extraordinary if still comparatively under-explored phenomenon. Parts of the story are, indeed, well known, especially the astonishing life story and still more astonishing achievements of Marie Hall. Aspects of the rise of the woman violin virtuoso have also been analysed in Paula Gillett's path-breaking book on women musicians, in Phyllis Weliver's writings on women in fiction, as well as in Sophie Fuller's work on female composers and ladies’ orchestras. But there is much more still to be investigated about the way in which women made their mark in such a highly competitive and increasingly global marketplace.

First we should clarify that this worldwide abundance of women violinists coincided with a veritable craze for the violin tout court during this period. For all the impact of such pianistic giants as Paderewski, Busoni and Teresa Carreno, it was the new wave of violinists that attracted most press attention and audience adulation. The old guard of Joachim and Sarasate was giving way to the more brilliant and more assertive style of a new generation of virtuosi, boasting a larger tone and a more thrusting presence both on and off stage: the likes of Ysaye, Kubelik, Kreisler and Huberman, and prodigies such as Vecsey, Elman and Szigeti, to mention only the most prominent male violinists of the 1900s. As one journalist reported in 1905, ‘I can call to mind very few cases of violin players playing now who first appeared more than ten or twelve years ago. The old order – but not the oldest – has largely given place to the new, and the new came along only at the beginning of this century with Kocian, Hegedus, Kubelik and the rest.’ This same year did perhaps represent the apogee (‘the boom of the violinist, which began a year or more ago, shows little or no signs of abatement even now’), with audiences for violin recitals at Queen's Hall far exceeding even those of popular pianists.