page_title: Eugène Ysaÿe
section_title: Early career
hierarchical_section_title: Eugène Ysaÿe / Early career
caption_attribution_description: English: Ber Zalkind. “Cartoon of Violinist Eugene Isaya.” 1913
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: After his graduation from the Royal Conservatory of Liège, Ysaÿe was the principal violin of the Benjamin Bilse beer-hall orchestra, which later developed into the Berlin Philharmonic. Many musicians of note and influence came regularly to hear this orchestra and Ysaÿe in particular, among whom figured Joseph Joachim, Franz Liszt, Clara Schumann, and Anton Rubinstein, who asked that Ysaÿe be released from his contract to accompany him on tour.
  When Ysaÿe was twenty-seven years old, he was recommended as a soloist for one of the Concerts Colonne in Paris, which was the start of his great success as a concert artist. The next year, Ysaÿe received a professorship at the Brussels Conservatoire in his native Belgium. This began his career as a teacher, which was to remain one of his main occupations after leaving the Conservatoire in 1898 and into his last years. Among his notable pupils are Josef Gingold, the viola virtuoso William Primrose, the violin virtuoso Nathan Milstein (who primarily studied with Pyotr Stolyarsky), Louis Persinger, Mathieu Crickboom, Jonny Heykens, Charles Houdret, Jascha Brodsky, Oscar Shumsky, Julia Klumpke, and Aldo Ferraresi. (See: List of music students by teacher: T to Z#Eugène Ysaÿe.)
  During his tenure as professor at the Conservatoire, Ysaÿe continued to tour an ever-broadening section of the world, including all of Europe, Russia, and the United States. Despite health concerns, particularly regarding the condition of his hands, Ysaÿe was at his best when performing, and many prominent composers dedicated major works to him, including Claude Debussy, Camille Saint-Saëns, César Franck, and Ernest Chausson. He arranged for violin and orchestra Saint-Saëns's Étude en forme de valse, which had originally been written for solo piano.
  Mention should be made of Franck's Violin Sonata in A, written as a wedding present for Ysaÿe and his wife in 1886, which Ysaÿe played wherever he went for the rest of his life; and of Chausson's Poème, which was his response to a request for a concerto. Joseph Szigeti considered those two dedications particularly stand out in demonstrating the enormous respect in which Ysaÿe was held.
  In 1886, he established the Ysaÿe Quartet, which premiered Debussy's String Quartet.
caption: Ber Zalkind. "Cartoon of Violinist Eugène Ysaÿe". 1913
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