a very talented violinist, and Cécile Hansen, who attended the classes
at the same time I did. The Professor was a stern and very exacting, but
a sympathetic, teacher. If our playing was not just what it should be he
always had a fund of kindly humor upon which to draw. He would
anticipate our stock excuses and say: 'Well, I suppose you have just had
your bow rehaired!' or 'These new strings are very trying,' or 'It's the
weather that is against you again, is it not?' or something of the kind.
Examinations were not so easy: we had to show that we were not only
soloists, but also sight readers of difficult music.


A DIFFICULTY OVERCOME

"The greatest technical difficulty I had when I was studying?" Jascha
Heifetz tried to recollect, which was natural, seeing that it must have
been one long since overcome. Then he remembered, and smiled:
"_Staccato_ playing. To get a good _staccato_, when I first tried seemed
very hard to me. When I was younger, really, at one time I had a very
poor _staccato_!" [I assured the young artist that any one who heard him
play here would find it hard to believe this.] "Yes, I did," he
insisted, "but one morning, I do not know just how it was--I was
playing the _cadenza_ in the first movement of Wieniawski's F♯ minor
concerto,--it is full of _staccatos_ and double stops--the right way of
playing _staccato_ came to me quite suddenly, especially after Professor
Auer had shown me his method.


VIOLIN MASTERY

"Violin Mastery? To me it means the ability to make the violin a