“Do the thing, and you shall have the power,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said. Master violinist Ilya Kaler is the embodiment of this idea: He has the ability to do the thing.
While some may dispute the importance of contests to ferret out true talent, Kaler has won top prizes in the world’s largest contests: first prize in the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow, first prize in the Paganini Competition in Genoa, Italy, and first prize in the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition in Helsinki. This is an unbelievable feat; his many judges, unanimous across these competitions, certainly indicate victory for a major talent.
I heard Kaler in a recent Chicago concert performance playing the fiendishly difficult Paganini Concerto, as arranged by the great Austrian violinist Fritz Kreisler (1875–1962). The work brought a twinkle to my eye, especially after hearing the harp enter during the brigade of violin leaps and arpeggios at the onset.
This work based on the Paganini D major concerto was transformed by Kreisler into a delightful work—it could almost serve as a prelude to a Franz Lehar opera. Incredibly difficult, it needs to be played with a charm that few but Kreisler could imbue it with, all while displaying trapeze feats of a daredevil sort.
The recordings of Kreisler playing his own works seem to evoke vignettes of his life. The elegance of a bygone age and heart-rending nostalgia of a childhood alive with sensibilities and filled with wonder are clear in these masterful performances. The adjective “jaded” is not even in his musical vocabulary.
