COUP 004 - Johanna Martzy

Johanna Martzy: Beethoven and Dvorak Trios

Johanna Emilia Maria Martzy was born on the twenty-sixth of October 1924, the youngest of the Martzy’s five children by nine years.  Her gifts were evident from an exceptionally early age.  As well as possessing a remarkable memory, it became obvious that the child had perfect pitch (sometimes embarrassingly obvious).  Encouraged by her frequent displays of precocity, her mother Leopoldine decided that Johanna, (or Jancsi, as she was dubbed) should be set on a musical path.  It should be explained that Jancsi (pronounced Yonshy) is a pet name derived from Janos, the Magyar equivalent of Johan.  Another variant is Jancsika, a diminutive meaning ‘little Jancsi’.

 So Jancsi Martzy began formal violin lessons with a local teacher, Professor Josef Brandeisz, when she was six years old.  A respectable performer, he had just completed a private teaching course with Carl Flesch in Baden-Baden that year.  Between her lessons she practised, her mother often accompanying her on the piano.  Brandeisz was later to remark that she was like a sponge, absorbing everything he taught her.  Within a year she had reached the sixth position, but then inexplicably progress stopped, Jancsi feeling frustrated and disillusioned.  Convinced of her daughter’s talent and puzzled by this impasse she had reached, Leopoldine wrote to Jenő Hubay at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest.  Hubay was the foremost violin pedagogue in Hungary, director of the violin faculty since 1911 and current Director General of the Academy.  His pupils, who addressed him as ‘Excellency’, included such luminaries as Adila and Jelly d’Arányi, Joseph Szigeti, and Emile Telmányi.  So it was then, in 1932, just after her seventh birthday, that Jancsi was taken by her mother on the train to Budapest to audition for Hubay.

 After she had played him an Ave Maria, Hubay called in a number of his professors.  This was a child, he told them, to whom God had given everything.  Though she knew nothing, held her instrument badly and her posture was poor, if she were diligent and persistent she could become one of the ten finest violinists in the world.  He then told her mother that Jancsi deserved every sacrifice from her parents and her teachers.  She should return to Budapest every three months for a fortnight’s study and the local teacher dispensed with.  It would appear that Brandeisz had naively misinterpreted the signs, overestimated her talent and simply overloaded her.  Leopoldine alone should supervise her exercises at home.  Though Jancsi saw him at least once during each visit, Hubay placed her under the tutelage of Professor Nándor Zsolt.  Before the Great War Zsolt had spent some time in England, leading the Queens Hall Orchestra and befriending Elgar and Holst.  Though Hubay continued as Director of the violin faculty until his death in March 1937, the mantle of Director General fell to Ernő Dohnányi in 1934. When Zsolt passed away in June 1936 the responsibility for Jancsi’s development was passed to Professor Ferenc Gabriel.

 Gabriel, an early concertmaster of the Budapest Opera Orchestra, was a very fine violinist.  Unfortunately, despite his talent, he was unable to pursue a concert career because he suffered from stagefright.  However, when he eventually turned to teaching, he became Hubay’s second violin in his celebrated Quartet.  Gabriel’s great quality as a teacher was that he didn’t try to impose his idea of interpretation on his students, rather, he guided them.  So, while inevitably informed by ‘Hubay School’ methods, he encouraged them to develop their own individual personalities rather than turn them out like sausages from a machine.

 Jancsi only became an official full-time student at the Academy when she entered Gabriel’s third year class in September 1938.  Excepting her quarterly visits to the Academy over the last six years, she had never been to school in her life.

© Glenn Armstrong / Coup d’Archet 1998

Track listing

Ludwig van Beethoven

Piano Trio No. 3 in C Minor, Opus 1 no. 3

1. Allegro con brio
2. Andante cantabile con variazioni
3. Menuetto (Quasi allegro) and Trio
4. Finale (Prestissimo)

Piano: István Hajdu; 'Cello: Paul Szabo

Recorded November 10th 1969

Used with kind permission of WDR Cologne.

Antonin Dvorak

Piano Trio E Minor Opus 90 (Dumky)

1. Lento maestoso
2. Poco adagio
3. Andante
4. Andante moderato
5. Allegro
6. Lento maestoso

Piano: István Hajdu; 'Cello: Paul Szabo

Recorded November 10th 1969

Used with kind permission of WDR Cologne.