Mischa Elman — violinist with roots in the Russian Empire
Mischa Elman, born Moses or Moishe Elman and known in Russia as Mikhail Saulovich, was born on 20 January 1891 in Talnoye, in the Uman district of the Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire, now Talne in Ukraine, into a Jewish family. His father, Saul, a teacher, gave him his first violin lessons and later published Memoirs of Mischa Elman's Father (1933). The boy had perfect pitch and played in public from the age of five.
At six he was taken to Odessa to study at the music school there, with Alexander Fidelmann. In 1902, after hearing him play, Leopold Auer accepted him as a tuition-free pupil at the St Petersburg Conservatory; because Jews were not allowed to live in the capital without special permission, the eleven-year-old received a residence permit by imperial assent. Auer arranged for him to appear with Édouard Colonne's orchestra at Pavlovsk without telling the conductor, who disliked child prodigies, how young he was.
In 1904 Elman made sensational debuts in St Petersburg and, on 14 October, in Berlin, followed in March 1905 by London, where he played Glazunov's concerto. On 10 December 1908 he made his American debut in New York, playing Tchaikovsky's concerto with the Russian Symphony Orchestra, and soon afterwards gave a recital at Carnegie Hall. From 1911 he made the United States his home, and he became an American citizen in 1923. In his early American years he sometimes gave more than a hundred concerts in a season, and he was among the first world-famous artists to tour East Asia.
His playing, known for its warm, rich and voluptuous sound, gave rise to the expression 'the Elman tone'. From 1924 to 1936 he also led the Elman String Quartet. He played three Stradivari violins, among them the 'ex-Burmester' of 1722, which he bought in London in 1907. In 1943 in Boston he gave the first performance of Bohuslav Martinů's Second Violin Concerto, written for him, and during the Second World War he often played for troops. He composed short pieces and made many arrangements for violin and piano, and his recordings, spanning more than six decades, sold more than two million copies.
He gave his last concert at Carnegie Hall in January 1967, and died in his apartment in Manhattan on 5 April 1967, aged seventy-six, a few hours after a rehearsal.
"Made his US debut in 1908, settled in the United States in 1911 and became a citizen in 1923."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Talnoye, Kiev Governorate (now Talne, Ukraine)
Born in Talnoye, in the Kiev Governorate, in 1891, he studied at the Odessa music school and from 1902 with Leopold Auer at the St Petersburg Conservatory, where he was admitted by special imperial permission, before his debuts in St Petersburg and Berlin in 1904.
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Talnoye, Kiev Governorate (now Talne, Ukraine). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.