page_title: Eugène Ysaÿe
section_title: Performing career
hierarchical_section_title: Eugène Ysaÿe / Performing career
context_page_description: Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe was a Belgian violinist, composer and conductor. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tsar".
context_section_description: As a performer, Ysaÿe was compelling and highly original. Pablo Casals claimed never to have heard a violinist play in tune before Ysaÿe, and Carl Flesch called him "the most outstanding and individual violinist I have ever heard in my life."
  Ysaÿe possessed a large and flexible tone, influenced by a considerable variety of vibrato — from no vibrato at all to very intense. He said, "Don't always vibrate, but always be vibrating". His modus operandi was, in his own words: "Nothing which wouldn't have for goal emotion, poetry, heart." The conductor Sir Henry Wood said, "The quality of tone was ravishingly beautiful.... He seemed to get more colour out of a violin than any of his contemporaries."
  Possibly the most distinctive feature of Ysaÿe's interpretations was his masterful rubato. Sir Henry Wood said, "Whenever he stole time from one note, he faithfully paid it back within four bars", allowing his accompanist to maintain strict tempo under his free cantilena. Incidentally, this kind of rubato fits the description of Frédéric Chopin's rubato.
  Although Ysaÿe was a great interpreter of late Romantic and early modern composers — Max Bruch, Camille Saint-Saëns, and César Franck, who said he was their greatest interpreter — he was admired for his Bach and Beethoven interpretations. His technique was brilliant and finely honed, and in this respect he is the first modern violinist, whose technique was without the shortcomings of some earlier artists.
  An international violin competition in Brussels was created in his memory: in 1951, this became the violin section of the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition.
caption: Ysaÿe with violin
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