GRACE, CHARM AND EFFORTLESS ELEGANCE

To mark the 70th anniversary of the death of the great French violinist Jacques Thibaud, Tully Potter looks back at the life of one of the 20th century’s most influential musicians

US LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The musical world was plunged into mourning when on the night of 1 September 1953 the Air France Constellation plane carrying the great violinist Jacques Thibaud, his daughter-in-law Suzanne, his accompanist René Herbin and 39 others crashed into a mountain near Barcelonnette in the French Alps en route to Saigon. Thoughts inevitably turned to the similar catastrophe four years earlier which had taken the lives of Ginette Neveu, young hope of the French violin scene, and her pianist brother, Jean. At close to 73, Thibaud was nearing the end of his career, but recordings from the year of his death show him fiddling and phrasing with much of his old wizardry.

By all accounts, Thibaud was a superb virtuoso but, not being addicted to hard work, in later years he let his technique slip a little; his innate musicality and the suavity of his platform manner usually saved him. His slim moustache and svelte figure were all part of the elegance he projected – his tone pure and penetrating, with the silvery vibrato of the Franco-Belgian school, his portamento underlining the ease of his inimitable phrasing.

‘He possessed the innate freedom of his French heritage to express the elegance of a phrase without being a slave to the metronome,’ Yehudi Menuhin said. Carl Flesch recalled: ‘His playing was imbued with his yearning for sensual pleasure, with an unchastity that was all the more seductive for its refinement.’ Albert Spalding, at whose wedding Thibaud performed, said: ‘The same grace and charm that individualised his violin playing was evident in everything else he undertook. He was irresistible to women, young and old, and was as proud of this power as he was modest about his musical genius.’ And Casals called him ‘a star from Heaven’.

Jacques Thibaud (standing) in c.1907 with (l–r) his pianist brother Joseph, violinist father Georges and cellist brother Francis

THIBAUD FAMLY PHOTO TULLY POTTER COLLECTION

Thibaud himself had no time for vacuous virtuosity. ‘Mon Dieu, what amazing fingers! What a good cabinet maker!’ he dryly remarked to fellow judge Joseph Szigeti at a Paris Conservatoire competition.

Joseph Jacques Thibaud was born on 27 September 1880 into an intensely musical family in Bordeaux. His father, Georges (1840–1914), a Jean-Delphin Alard pupil remembered by Jacques as ‘an extraordinary musician’, had been solo violinist of the local Opéra but after an accident had turned to teaching. His mother Amélie died aged only 36, when he was not yet two.

Of his six brothers and half-brothers, two died in infancy but the others were outstanding musicians. From Georges’s first marriage, pianist Alphonse made his career in Buenos Aires and died there. Violinist Hippolyte was a hugely talented pupil of Lambert Massart but died of TB when Jacques was seven (just the day before, Jacques had heard César Thomson play the Beethoven Concerto, a profound experience for him). His two full brothers played a part in his early career: Joseph (1875–1951) was a pianist who studied with Louis Diémer, and Francis (1877–1942) was a cellist who later headed the conservatoire of music in Oran, Algeria. In due course, the three of them had a trio.

YSAŸE, VISITING BORDEAUX, TOLD THIBAUD’S FATHER: ‘YOU KNOW, YOUR SON PLAYS BETTER THAN I.’

Thibaud’s first instrument was the piano, but he started playing the violin to surprise his father. Thibaud père took the bait and started giving him lessons. In 1892 he appeared with the Orchestre de la Société Sainte-Cécile in Bordeaux playing Wieniawski’s D minor Concerto. Ysaÿe, visiting the city, told Georges: ‘You know, your son plays better than I.’

At twelve, Thibaud entered the Paris Conservatoire to study under the Belgian Martin Marsick (1847–1924), whom he recalled as ‘adorable’ and ‘Maître incomparable’, although the teacher was not above rapping him over the knuckles with a bow or even giving him a kick in the pants – Thibaud, like Kreisler, had his indolent side. There was no ill feeling, and later Thibaud consistently programmed Marsick’s jolly Scherzando, recording it three times.

In the 1894 Paris Conservatoire competition Thibaud played disastrously, and in 1895 he received an honourable mention. In 1896 he finally took one of the first prizes, but was fourth of four winners (Pierre Monteux, already inclining towards the viola and conducting, was ahead of him). Acknowledging this first sign of the concert nerves that would plague him, he joked: ‘I was fourth because there was no fifth place.’

Playing in the Café Rouge in the Paris Latin Quarter to supplement his income while still in his teens, he was throwing off Saint-Saëns’s Introduction et Rondo capriccioso when the conductor Édouard Colonne heard him and recruited him for the Concerts Colonne. One day the concertmaster took ill,Thibaud was asked to play the Prélude to Saint-Saëns’s Le déluge in his place, was applauded by the Thibaud’s teacher, Martin Marsick, in 1895 orchestra in rehearsal and by the audience at the concert, had to play Beethoven’s Romance in F major as an encore and, ultimately, became a regular soloist, appearing 54 times in the 1898–9 season.

Concerts Colonne programme leaflets from this period show that on 3 December 1899 he played Théodore Dubois’s Concerto with the composer conducting. On 15 February 1900 his solo was the Introduction et Rondo capriccioso. On 29 November that year, he and brother Francis performed Mendelssohn’s C minor Piano Trio with pianist Lucien Wurmser; and to close a crowded bill of fare,he led Saint-Saëns’s new E minor String Quartet, assisted again by Francis plus Stanley Moses and Monteux.

Thibaud’s 1704 ‘Baillot’ Stradivari. It is believed that the instrument was lost in the plane crash that killed its owner.

In 1900 Thibaud also premiered Enescu’s Second Violin Sonata with the composer at the piano. On 14 February 1901 he made his Berlin Philharmonic debut with Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G minor and the Beethoven Romances conducted by Josef Řebíček, also playing pieces by Lalo, Saint-Saëns, Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski. He toured Russia that year and first appeared in London on 4 January 1902 at the Saturday Popular Concerts, with the Parisian Trio: his colleagues were cellist Joseph Hollman and pianist Raoul Pugno. They topped and tailed the programme with Saint-Saëns’s E minor Piano Trio and Beethoven’s ‘Archduke’; and Thibaud’s solos were Beethoven’s Romance in F, Bach’s Gavotte en rondeau and Saint-Saëns’s Havanaise. The Times hailed ‘a very accomplished and interesting violinist’.

Thibaud had been playing a Carlo Bergonzi violin (c.1715–25), but in 1902 he acquired the 1709 ‘Baillot’ Stradivari. In 1919 he told Frederick H. Martens:

My violin? It is a Stradivarius – the same which once belonged to the celebrated Baillot. I think it is good for a violin to rest, so during the three months when I am not playing in concert, I send my Stradivarius away to the instrument maker’s, and only take it out about a month before I begin to play again in public. What do I use in the meantime? Caressa, the best violin maker in Paris, made me an exact copy of my own Strad, exact in every little detail. It is so good that sometimes, when circumstances compelled me to, I have used it in concert, though it lacks the tone-quality of the original. This understudy violin I can use for practice.

When the young Thibaud first met Marsick, the master asked: ‘Who is your favourite musician?’ to which the boy answered: ‘Mozart’. And there was always something special about a Thibaud performance of Mozart, even when it was not the real thing. On 30 October 1903 he made his North American debut at Carnegie Hall, New York, with Hermann Hart Wetzler and his orchestra, playing the ‘Mozart’ E flat Violin Concerto, now known to be by Friedrich Johann Eck, and the Saint-Saëns B minor. The New York Times scribe thought him ‘an artist of fine fibre and uncommon accomplishment. He has youth and the insouciance and buoyancy that go with youth, and especially with French youth; yet his temperament is rather poetic and gracious than impassioned or impetuous.’

By 1905 he was well enough known in London to offer ‘Jacques Thibaud’s Orchestral Concert’ at Queen’s Hall, with Enrique Fernández Arbós conducting the resident orchestra. He also gave two recitals. In 1907 he appeared at the Royal Albert Hall with the LSO and Max Fiedler, playing one of his warhorses, Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole (four movements only, as was customary before Henry Merckel restored the Intermezzo in the 1930s; Thibaud always played the mutilated version), and pieces by Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski. Henceforth, he was a regular, welcome visitor.

Until the Great War, Thibaud was also popular in Germany. On 23 February 1905 he made his Leipzig Gewandhaus debut, Arthur Nikisch conducting for him in the ‘Mozart’ E flat and Bruch G minor. On 7 January 1908, Bruch was in Cologne, city of his birth, to direct the Gürzenich Orchestra in some of his music, and Thibaud was the soloist in the G minor Concerto, also contributing Bach’s Chaconne.

Thibaud was a keen tennis player who won the north of France championship at Villers in 1910; and it always seems to me that there was a direct correlation between his violin playing and the graceful joie de vivre of the Four Musketeers who wowed Wimbledon in the 1920s: Jean Borotra (the ‘Bounding Basque’), René Lacoste, Henri Cochet and Jacques Brugnon.

Tennis formed a bond between him and Casals when the latter moved to 20 villa Molitor in Paris in 1905. The cellist kept open house for musicians, and string quartets would be played with the likes of Ysaÿe, Enescu, Monteux, Busch, Thibaud and Kreisler taking turns as second violinist or violist. Thibaud and his wife Marguerite – whom he had wed in 1902 – also acted as hosts, having ample space at their home; and there were summer gatherings at La Chanterelle, the country house that Ysaÿe rented at Godinne, on the banks of the River Meuse below Namur.

WHEN THE YOUNG THIBAUD FIRST MET MARSICK, THE MASTER ASKED ‘WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE MUSICIAN?’ THE BOY ANSWERED ‘MOZART’

From such casual beginnings emerged the legendary piano trio with Alfred Cortot and Casals. At first they performed for fun – they enjoyed each other’s company and liked playing tennis together – but in 1906 they expanded to include appearances at private soirées, and on 25 May that year they made their public debut in one of Gabriel Astruc’s concerts at the Salle Pleyel, Paris, with Schumann’s D minor Trio.

On 18 December, at the Salle des Agriculteurs, Paris, they played trios by Schubert (B flat), Brahms (C minor) and Franck (F sharp minor). Their three concerts at this hall in June the following year included Haydn’s ‘Gypsy Rondo’ Trio, Beethoven’s ‘Archduke’, Schubert’s B flat, Mendelssohn’s D minor, Schumann’s D minor, Saint-Saëns’s F major, Franck’s F sharp minor and Mozart’s K542; and at the Salle Gaveau in November, they gave a Beethoven cycle.

These events went so well that the trio began to tour Europe for one month a year – they could generally count on some twenty concerts in those four weeks. Sometimes, Harold Bauer substituted for Cortot; and certain works such as the Tchaikovsky were played only once. Hungarian composer Emánuel Moór wrote a triple concerto in 1907 and a trio in 1909 for Thibaud, Casals and Cortot; and Thibaud took up Moór’s G major Concerto op.62 soon after its introduction by Henri Marteau in 1906, playing it in a number of European cities. The trio flourished until March 1934, when their final performances were given in Florence – at Il Lecce (home of the musical patron Alberto Passigli) and the Pitti Palace.

Meanwhile, Thibaud’s solo career continued. He played the expected concertos by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Brahms; and he was one of the best exponents of the first two by Bruch. But he also championed Franco-Belgian repertoire such as Lalo’s F major Concerto and what he claimed was Saint-Saëns’s original intention for his First Concerto in A major, adding the Introduction et Rondo capriccioso to it. Chausson’s Poème, Vieuxtemps’s Sérénité, Milhaud’s Saudades do Brasil (originally for piano), Franck’s Sonata, Fauré’s A major Sonata and, after 1917, Debussy’s Sonata all found a ready interpreter in him. And he had sonatas written for him by Pierné (1900), Tailleferre (1920–1) and Granados (date unknown).

AT FIRST, THIBAUD, CORTOT AND CASALS PERFORMED FOR FUN – THEY ENJOYED EACH OTHER’S COMPANY AND LIKED PLAYING TENNIS TOGETHER

When the violinist was in London between 1912 and 1917 he would take part in the musicales at Muriel Draper’s Edith Grove home described in her book Music at Midnight (1929). He did not return to America until 1913, and when war came, he fought in the French army but was wounded in the arm at the end of 1915 and discharged. By 16 November 1916 he was making his rentrée to New York, at the Aeolian Hall, playing his composite Saint-Saëns concerto among other things. He had an awkward meeting with Kreisler, who had fought on the other side and had likewise been wounded, but their friendship survived.

Left–right Pablo Casals, Jacques Thibaud and Alfred Cortot

Thibaud returned to giving London concerts in 1920. On both sides of the Atlantic his career thrived, with his fame at its peak during the interwar years. He was a key figure in setting up the École Normale de Musique in Paris, teaching there when he could. In 1923, Ysaÿe dedicated his second Solo Violin Sonata to Thibaud, quoting the ‘Dies irae’ and the Prelude from Bach’s E major Partita, which the Frenchman used as a warm-up exercise; and in Paris on 12 June 1925, Thibaud led the first performance of Fauré’s String Quartet, with Robert Krettly, Maurice Vieux and André Hekking. That year, Russian violinist and musicologist Boris Schwarz heard him for the first time in Paris: ‘He made an indelible impression on me. His tone was of incredible sweetness, a kind of chaste sensuality, warm yet not cloying or overvibrated. His phrasing was subtle, graceful, and elegant; his bowing sparkled. To hear him play Mozart’s G major Concerto was an experience to be cherished, particularly the slow movement.’

In 1933 he toured the Soviet Union, returning in 1936 with Cortot; each time he made a great impression. He was well remembered from pre-war visits – in 1923 he turned down the offer of a professorship in Leningrad, and in 1924 Galina Barinova (1910–2006) became one of his pupils. In 1933 Thibaud, along with Casals and Arturo Toscanini, was one of the few non-Jewish musicians to follow Busch’s lead in refusing Wilhelm Furtwängler’s overtures for them to play in Nazi Germany. During the Second World War both of his sons, Roger and Philippe, served in the French army, and Roger was killed in 1940, and during the Occupation, Thibaud refused to play in Germany. In 1943, he and pianist Marguerite Long founded the competition which is named after them.

After the liberation of Paris, Thibaud played in Belgium with the touring Hallé Orchestra under Barbirolli in December 1944; made an emotional return to London on 17 February 1945 to play for the Royal Philharmonic Society at the Royal Albert Hall with George Weldon; gave a recital in Wembley on the 23rd; performed Mozart’s Concerto in D (K218) and the Mendelssohn at the Royal Albert Hall on 8 March with the LPO under Basil Cameron; and the next day played Beethoven and Brahms sonatas with Myra Hess at the National Gallery concerts.

On 2 January 1947, after a 14-year absence from America, he performed the Symphonie espagnole at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic-Symphony under Leopold Stokowski. ‘There wasn’t a measure that Mr Thibaud failed to treat with infallible taste and sense of style,’ Olin Downes wrote in the New York Times.

The great violinist was still looking to the future when he lost his life in 1953; enthusiasts in Saigon and Japan were awaiting his arrival. The ‘Baillot’ Strad is presumed to have perished with him. Dedicating his Edinburgh International Festival performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto on 2 September to Thibaud’s memory, Yehudi Menuhin told the audience: ‘He gave performances of Mozart concertos in Paris that I shall never forget.’

Thibaud in 1946

The conservatoire in Bordeaux that bears Thibaud’s name

THIBAUD PHOTO TULLY POTTER COLLECTION. CONSERVATOIRE PHOTO JEAN-LOUIS LASCOUX

Thibaud recorded in 1905 for Fonotipia, in 1916–20 for Pathé, and from 1922 for HMV and its associates. It is easy to name his most recommendable recording: the 1929 Franck Sonata with Cortot. I have said this before, but it bears repeating: the duo puts on the music like a pair of old slippers, yet without sloppiness. It is always Thibaud’s uniquely easeful phrasing that I hear in my mind’s ear.

Also essential are the incandescent Fauré G minor Piano Quartet with Vieux, Fournier and Long (1940); the Mozart K378 and K526 Sonatas with Long (1943 and 1934); the other sonatas with Cortot – Fauré A major (1927), Debussy and Beethoven ‘Kreutzer’ (both 1929); the Chausson Concert for violin, piano and quartet with Cortot (1931); and the Thibaud–Casals–Cortot trio recordings. The three men also collaborated in 1929 on a blistering Brahms ‘Double’ Concerto, Cortot conducting Casals’s Barcelona orchestra. The 1941 Mozart ‘Turkish’ Concerto K219, with Charles Munch and the Paris SO needs reissuing, along with the 1947 G major Concerto K216, with Paul Paray and the Lamoureux Orchestra and the spurious but charming ‘Mozart’ E flat with Malcolm Sargent.

Live recordings from Thibaud’s last years include concertos by Beethoven (with Thibaud’s own cadenzas), Brahms (with Kreisler’s cadenza) and Mozart (the G major with Ysaÿe cadenzas), the Symphonie espagnole, the composite Saint-Saëns concerto and Chausson’s Poème. Records of short pieces abound from all periods of his career, each one touched in some way by his genius. Fittingly, the conservatoire in Bordeaux now bears the violinist’s name.