Regarded as the greatest violin pedagogue of the 20th century, Leopold Auer taught of three of the most renowned violinists in the 20th century: Elman, Heifetz and Milstein. Benno Rabinof and Toscha Seidel, the two Auer pupils featured on this CD, may not have had the stellar careers of his three most famous pupils, but are regarded as two of Auer’s most outstanding students and are deeply revered by string players.

Born in the Lower East Side of New York City, Benno Rabinof became a pupil of Leopold Auer after the legendary teacher left St Petersburg and emigrated to New York in 1918. Auer declared that Rabinof was ‘the most gifted of all the students he taught in America’, and sponsored Rabinof ’s début at Carnegie Hall in which he performed the Elgar and Tchaikovsky Concertos. The distinguished New York Times critic Olin Downes wrote that Rabinof was ‘a violinist of exceptional attributes, including a fluent and even spectacular technique, and a tone prevailingly warm and brilliant’. Rabinof had the good fortune to play on two remarkable instruments: the 1734 ‘Lord Amherst’ Strad that formerly belonged to Fritz Kreisler and a 1742 Guarneri del Gesù.

Toscha Seidel was born in Odessa, the hotbed of violinistic talent, in the Ukraine in 1899. Seidel and Heifetz were regarded as the most talented pupils in Auer’s class during the First World War and their teacher dubbed Heifetz ‘the angel’ and Seidel ‘the devil’. Seidel made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1918 and made his first solo recordings for the American Columbia label. He is immortalised in the 1921 popular song ‘Mischa, Jascha, Toscha, Sascha’ by George Gershwin. Seidel eventually settled in Los Angeles and established his career in Hollywood, where David O. Selznick engaged him to be the ‘ghost’ violinist for the solos in his 1939 popular romantic film Intermezzo. Seidel’s only LP record on the ‘Impresario’ label was made in his mid-50s and features the legendary ‘Da Vinci’ Strad of 1714, on which he performed throughout his career.