Josef Hassid
Encyclopedia
Josef Hassid (28 December 1923 - 7 November 1950) was a Polish
violin
ist.
Born 28 December 1923 in Suwałki, Poland, as Joseph or Józef Chasyd, second youngest of four children, he lost his mother when he was ten and was brought up by his father Owseij who took charge of his career.
After lessons with a local violin teacher he studied from 1934 at the Chopin School of Music in Warsaw
under Mieczyslaw Michalowicz (1876-1965) and Irena Dubiska (1899-1989). In 1935 he entered the first Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition in Warsaw, but suffered a memory lapse; he received an honorary diploma.
His father arranged for him to play for fellow Pole Bronisław Huberman (1882-1947), who was much impressed and he arranged for Hassid to study under the Hungarian virtuoso Carl Flesch
(1873-1944) at his summer course in 1937 at Spa, Belgium, where fellow students included Ivry Gitlis
(b. 1922) and Ginette Neveu
(1919-1949). He developed a tremendous passion for a young lady there, three years his senior, but the liaison was broken up by her family (possibly because they were not Jewish), which had a disturbing effect on him.
with his father in 1938 at Flesch’s invitation, to continue studies with him. Flesch concentrated on his musical and interpretative development rather than technical skills. Musical celebrities who heard him play at Flesch’s house and were astonished at his ability included Joseph Szigeti
(1892-1973), Jacques Thibaud
(1880-1953), David Oistrakh
(1908-1974) and Fritz Kreisler
(1875-1962). In a passage supplementing his father’s memoirs Carl F. Flesch wrote that “Hassid was no doubt one of the strongest violin talents of his time. Indeed Fritz Kreisler, after hearing him at my father’s house, said: ‘A fiddler such as X [mentioning a very famous name] is born every 100 years; one like Hassid every 200 years.’” Kreisler loaned Hassid for the remainder of his career a violin of 1860 by the French maker J.B. Vuillaume (d. 1875), which was a great improvement on the instrument he had played up until then.
He gave a private recital with the pianist Ivor Newton
on 9 March 1938 as “Yossef Hassid” at the home of Mr L.L. Gildesgame, 41 Clifton Hill, South Hampstead, where the guests included Sir Henry Wood. After giving a private recital at the home of Sir Philip Sassoon
, Hassid made his public debut at a recital with Gerald Moore in the Wigmore Hall on 3 April 1940, billed as the “Polish Boy Violinist”, playing works by Corelli
(La folia variations), Debussy, Schubert (Sonata in G), Bach
(adagio & fugue from one of the unaccompanied Sonatas), Paganini (I palpiti) and others. The next day The Times said Hassid “showed imagination and musical insight” and that “his performance created a strong impression.” Many years later Moore commented that Hassid was “the greatest instrumental genius I’ve ever partnered. I don’t know how to explain his incandescence. He had technical perfection, marvellous intonation, glorious tone – but there was something above that which was quite incredible, a metaphysical quality. Sadly he had an unhappy love affair which literally drove him mad. But then maybe the unrest inside him made him play so fantastically.” (Interview in The Gramophone, April 1973.)
Three weeks later on the evening of 25 April he made his orchestral debut at the Queen’s Hall in a Polish Relief Fund concert (broadcast on the BBC Home Service) playing the Tchaikovsky concerto with the LPO under Gregor(y) Fitelberg (during which he suffered a memory lapse). The concerto was preceded by two short items by Chabrier & Kondracki and followed by Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The next day The Times reported that Hassid “showed some signs of nervousness at the outset”, but “the beauty of his tone was striking and the brilliance of the finale” earned him generous applause.
He also gave a few recital broadcasts on the BBC and played the Beethoven concerto during an afternoon concert in the Queen’s Hall with Sir Adrian Boult
conducting the LPO on 5 January 1941. On the 8th The Times commented of Hassid “a technically accomplished performance, but he has not yet attained to the purity of style, especially in the matter of sustaining an even tone throughout a phrase that the music needs.”
Hassid’s final concert was also at the Queen’s Hall, on the afternoon of 1 March 1941, where he played the Brahms concerto with the Sidney Beer Symphony Orchestra of about thirty players under Sidney Beer. The Times review (4 March) noted that the concerto was “the least satisfactory part of the concert, because neither the young violinist not the conductor seemed to have a determined view of Brahms to present to their hearers. The solo performance was scarcely more than that of a clever student who has worked hard to memorize the concerto but is still liable to be thrown off his stroke, even to the point of forgetting his notes occasionally. The rhythm throughout was indecisive and the last pages of the Finale became almost a race between soloist and orchestra.”
His condition improved for a time and he left the hospital on 2 May 1942, but on 9 December that year he was certified insane and admitted to Moorcroft House, a private asylum in Hillingdon, Middlesex, three days later, for further treatment. On 13 July 1943 Hassid was transferred to an asylum in Epsom (Long Grove Hospital
), morose, indifferent and evasive, either silent or laughing inanely. He remained there for the rest of his life. His father had died in 1949 and the following year after an unsuccessful brain operation (bilateral prefrontal leucotomy) on 20 October Hassid developed meningitis and died at 10.17 p.m. on 7 November 1950; he was not quite 27 years old. The hospital records show his height as 5ft 3¾in and his weight as 9 stone.
at the Abbey Road Studios on 9 Jan. 1939 when Hassid had just turned 15 and then Walter Legge produced a further eight recordings on 12 & 28 June and 29 Nov. 1940, this time accompanied by Gerald Moore. The delay was due to Hassid’s agent Harold Holt who thought he should continue his studies for another year. Some who heard Hassid perform live say that the records do not show him at his best. Even so, his performances of Joseph Achron’s Hebrew Melody, Sarasate’s Zapateado and Kreisler’s Caprice viennois in particular are superb and show virtuosity of the highest order in expressive phrasing. To quote from Bryan Crimp’s note with the Testament CD: “The moment Hassid puts bow to string he beguiles the ear via a captivating and uniquely individual sound . . ., a peerless technique and an arresting and frequently original interpretative approach. His technical security and cleanness of attack are awesome, his tone at once vibrant, virile and indescribably pure and sweet.” Hassid apparently thought that his vibrato sounded too fast on record, but this is probably just a matter of taste.
Based on notes with CD issues, Feinstein 1997, newspaper advertisements & reviews, etc.
Complete published recordings issued on CD:
(The Testament & Symposium CDs also include the test from 1939.)
Josef Hassid was one of several prodigies whose brilliant careers were short lived. Bruno Monsaingeon
's The Art of Violin commemorates Hassid.
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
ist.
Born 28 December 1923 in Suwałki, Poland, as Joseph or Józef Chasyd, second youngest of four children, he lost his mother when he was ten and was brought up by his father Owseij who took charge of his career.
After lessons with a local violin teacher he studied from 1934 at the Chopin School of Music in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
under Mieczyslaw Michalowicz (1876-1965) and Irena Dubiska (1899-1989). In 1935 he entered the first Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition in Warsaw, but suffered a memory lapse; he received an honorary diploma.
His father arranged for him to play for fellow Pole Bronisław Huberman (1882-1947), who was much impressed and he arranged for Hassid to study under the Hungarian virtuoso Carl Flesch
Carl Flesch
Carl Flesch was a violinist and teacher.Carl Flesch was born in Moson in Hungary in 1873. He began playing the violin at seven years of age. At 10, he was taken to Vienna, and began to study with Jakob Grün. At 17, he left for Paris, and joined the Paris Conservatoire...
(1873-1944) at his summer course in 1937 at Spa, Belgium, where fellow students included Ivry Gitlis
Ivry Gitlis
Ivry Gitlis is an Israeli violinist and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. He has performed with the world's top orchestras , and many of his recordings are considered classics.-Life:Born in Haifa, Mandate Palestine to Jewish immigrants from Russia,...
(b. 1922) and Ginette Neveu
Ginette Neveu
Ginette Neveu was a French violinist.-Biography:Born in Paris into a musical family, Ginette Neveu became a violinist and her brother Jean-Paul Neveu a classical pianist. She was also the grandniece of composer Charles-Marie Widor...
(1919-1949). He developed a tremendous passion for a young lady there, three years his senior, but the liaison was broken up by her family (possibly because they were not Jewish), which had a disturbing effect on him.
London studies & concerts
Hassid came to LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
with his father in 1938 at Flesch’s invitation, to continue studies with him. Flesch concentrated on his musical and interpretative development rather than technical skills. Musical celebrities who heard him play at Flesch’s house and were astonished at his ability included Joseph Szigeti
Joseph Szigeti
Joseph Szigeti was a Hungarian violinist.Born into a musical family, he spent his early childhood in a small town in Transylvania. He quickly proved himself to be a child prodigy on the violin, and moved to Budapest with his father to study with the renowned pedagogue Jenő Hubay...
(1892-1973), Jacques Thibaud
Jacques Thibaud
Jacques Thibaud was a French violinist.Thibaud was born in Bordeaux and studied the violin with his father before entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of thirteen. In 1896 he jointly won the conservatory's violin prize with Pierre Monteux...
(1880-1953), David Oistrakh
David Oistrakh
David Fyodorovich Oistrakh , , David Fiodorović Ojstrakh, ; – October 24, 1974, was a Soviet violinist....
(1908-1974) and Fritz Kreisler
Fritz Kreisler
Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian-born violinist and composer. One of the most famous violin masters of his or any other day, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately...
(1875-1962). In a passage supplementing his father’s memoirs Carl F. Flesch wrote that “Hassid was no doubt one of the strongest violin talents of his time. Indeed Fritz Kreisler, after hearing him at my father’s house, said: ‘A fiddler such as X [mentioning a very famous name] is born every 100 years; one like Hassid every 200 years.’” Kreisler loaned Hassid for the remainder of his career a violin of 1860 by the French maker J.B. Vuillaume (d. 1875), which was a great improvement on the instrument he had played up until then.
He gave a private recital with the pianist Ivor Newton
Ivor Newton
Ivor Newton CBE was an English pianist who was particularly noted as an accompanist to international singers and string players. He was one of the first to bring a distinct personality to the accompanist's role. He toured extensively to all continents and appeared at music festivals such as...
on 9 March 1938 as “Yossef Hassid” at the home of Mr L.L. Gildesgame, 41 Clifton Hill, South Hampstead, where the guests included Sir Henry Wood. After giving a private recital at the home of Sir Philip Sassoon
Philip Sassoon
Sir Philip Albert Gustave David Sassoon, 3rd Baronet, GBE, CMG , was a British politician, art collector and social host, entertaining many celebrity guests at his homes, Port Lympne, Kent, and Trent Park, Hertfordshire, England.-Family:Sassoon was a member of the prominent Sassoon family and...
, Hassid made his public debut at a recital with Gerald Moore in the Wigmore Hall on 3 April 1940, billed as the “Polish Boy Violinist”, playing works by Corelli
Corelli
Corelli may refer to:*Arcangelo Corelli , Italian violinist and composer of Baroque music*Marie Corelli , British novelist*Franco Corelli , Italian tenor*Correlli Barnett , English military historian...
(La folia variations), Debussy, Schubert (Sonata in G), Bach
Bạch
Bạch is a Vietnamese surname. The name is transliterated as Bai in Chinese and Baek, in Korean.Bach is the anglicized variation of the surname Bạch.-Notable people with the surname Bạch:* Bạch Liêu...
(adagio & fugue from one of the unaccompanied Sonatas), Paganini (I palpiti) and others. The next day The Times said Hassid “showed imagination and musical insight” and that “his performance created a strong impression.” Many years later Moore commented that Hassid was “the greatest instrumental genius I’ve ever partnered. I don’t know how to explain his incandescence. He had technical perfection, marvellous intonation, glorious tone – but there was something above that which was quite incredible, a metaphysical quality. Sadly he had an unhappy love affair which literally drove him mad. But then maybe the unrest inside him made him play so fantastically.” (Interview in The Gramophone, April 1973.)
Three weeks later on the evening of 25 April he made his orchestral debut at the Queen’s Hall in a Polish Relief Fund concert (broadcast on the BBC Home Service) playing the Tchaikovsky concerto with the LPO under Gregor(y) Fitelberg (during which he suffered a memory lapse). The concerto was preceded by two short items by Chabrier & Kondracki and followed by Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The next day The Times reported that Hassid “showed some signs of nervousness at the outset”, but “the beauty of his tone was striking and the brilliance of the finale” earned him generous applause.
He also gave a few recital broadcasts on the BBC and played the Beethoven concerto during an afternoon concert in the Queen’s Hall with Sir Adrian Boult
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...
conducting the LPO on 5 January 1941. On the 8th The Times commented of Hassid “a technically accomplished performance, but he has not yet attained to the purity of style, especially in the matter of sustaining an even tone throughout a phrase that the music needs.”
Hassid’s final concert was also at the Queen’s Hall, on the afternoon of 1 March 1941, where he played the Brahms concerto with the Sidney Beer Symphony Orchestra of about thirty players under Sidney Beer. The Times review (4 March) noted that the concerto was “the least satisfactory part of the concert, because neither the young violinist not the conductor seemed to have a determined view of Brahms to present to their hearers. The solo performance was scarcely more than that of a clever student who has worked hard to memorize the concerto but is still liable to be thrown off his stroke, even to the point of forgetting his notes occasionally. The rhythm throughout was indecisive and the last pages of the Finale became almost a race between soloist and orchestra.”
Illness & death
Although originally shy and introverted Hassid was described as a carefree, likeable young man when he first came to London, but by February 1941 it became apparent that he was suffering from a severe mental disorder with violent mood swings, often becoming sullen and withdrawn, turning against his violin, his father and his religion. An inability to recognise close friends rapidly led to complete withdrawal from the world at large. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and on 19 June, withdrawn and uncooperative, he was admitted to St Andrew’s Hospital in Northampton for insulin coma therapy and electroconvulsive therapy. Hassid’s agent, the impresario Harold Holt, wrote to the superintendent of St Andrew’s: “He is nothing short of a violinistic genius and of such exceptional quality that we want to make the greatest effort possible to cure him. I would particularly like to stress that he is most exceptional, and might have – had this illness not developed – been one of the greatest figures in the violinistic world.”His condition improved for a time and he left the hospital on 2 May 1942, but on 9 December that year he was certified insane and admitted to Moorcroft House, a private asylum in Hillingdon, Middlesex, three days later, for further treatment. On 13 July 1943 Hassid was transferred to an asylum in Epsom (Long Grove Hospital
Long Grove Hospital
Long Grove Hospital used to be a mental hospital in Epsom, Surrey in the United Kingdom.It was designed by George Thomas Hine. Patients include Josef Hassid , Ronnie Kray and George Pelham .The hospital closed in 1992 and has since been converted into Clarendon...
), morose, indifferent and evasive, either silent or laughing inanely. He remained there for the rest of his life. His father had died in 1949 and the following year after an unsuccessful brain operation (bilateral prefrontal leucotomy) on 20 October Hassid developed meningitis and died at 10.17 p.m. on 7 November 1950; he was not quite 27 years old. The hospital records show his height as 5ft 3¾in and his weight as 9 stone.
Recordings
Fred Gaisberg of EMI arranged for a test recording of Elgar’s La Capricieuse (Op.17) with accompanist Ivor NewtonIvor Newton
Ivor Newton CBE was an English pianist who was particularly noted as an accompanist to international singers and string players. He was one of the first to bring a distinct personality to the accompanist's role. He toured extensively to all continents and appeared at music festivals such as...
at the Abbey Road Studios on 9 Jan. 1939 when Hassid had just turned 15 and then Walter Legge produced a further eight recordings on 12 & 28 June and 29 Nov. 1940, this time accompanied by Gerald Moore. The delay was due to Hassid’s agent Harold Holt who thought he should continue his studies for another year. Some who heard Hassid perform live say that the records do not show him at his best. Even so, his performances of Joseph Achron’s Hebrew Melody, Sarasate’s Zapateado and Kreisler’s Caprice viennois in particular are superb and show virtuosity of the highest order in expressive phrasing. To quote from Bryan Crimp’s note with the Testament CD: “The moment Hassid puts bow to string he beguiles the ear via a captivating and uniquely individual sound . . ., a peerless technique and an arresting and frequently original interpretative approach. His technical security and cleanness of attack are awesome, his tone at once vibrant, virile and indescribably pure and sweet.” Hassid apparently thought that his vibrato sounded too fast on record, but this is probably just a matter of taste.
Based on notes with CD issues, Feinstein 1997, newspaper advertisements & reviews, etc.
Complete published recordings issued on CD:
- Pearl GEMMCD9939 (1992)
- Testament SBT1010 (1992)
- Symposium SYMPCD1327 (2003)
(The Testament & Symposium CDs also include the test from 1939.)
Josef Hassid was one of several prodigies whose brilliant careers were short lived. Bruno Monsaingeon
Bruno Monsaingeon
Bruno Monsaingeon is a French filmmaker, writer, and violinist. He has made a number of documentary films about great twentieth-century musicians, including Glenn Gould, Sviatoslav Richter, David Oistrakh, Piotr Anderszewski and Yehudi Menuhin. His interviews with Richter and with Nadia Boulanger...
's The Art of Violin commemorates Hassid.
