Emanuel Feuermann

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Emanuel Feuermann (November 22, 1902, Kolomyia, in the then Austria Galicia (and in Ukraine since 1991) - May 25, 1942, New York City) was a celebrated cellist.

When Feuermann made his American debut in 1935, the hall was packed with fellow cellists, who had come to hear something truly extraordinary. Following the performance a critic wrote, "Difficulties do not exist for Mr. Feuermann, even difficulties that would give celebrated virtuosi pause." In 1938 an English reviewer wrote in The Strad, following a concert, "I do not think there can any longer be doubt that Feuermann is the greatest living cellist, Casals alone excepted...In Feuermann we have a spectacular virtuosic artist of the front rank, the Wieniawski, shall I say, of the cello." He settled in the United States as a refugee from Nazi Europe in 1937. He died in 1942 of an infection resulting from a minor operation for haemorrhoids. The pallbearers at his funeral included some of the greatest musicians of his time: the pianists Rudolf Serkin and Artur Schnabel, the violinists Mischa Elman and Bronislaw Huberman, and the conductors George Szell, Eugene Ormandy, and Arturo Toscanini. During the procession, Toscanini broke down and cried, "This is murder!"

In 1954, when asked which cellists he particularly admired, Pablo Casals said, "What a great artist Feuermann was! His early death was a great loss to music."

Many believe that Feuermann's interpretation of Antonín Dvořák's Cello Concerto and his performance of Johannes Brahms's Double Concerto with Jascha Heifetz rank among the best ever.

[edit] Feuermann's Cello

Feuermann owned and played a Gofriller cello, later owned by American cellist Joseph Schuster. From 1932 until his death, he also owned an instrument made by another Venetian master luthier Domenico Montagnana in 1735. This instrument, which continues to bear his name, is today in the hands of a Swiss collector^[1]. He later traded it in for the De Munck Stradivarius cello built in 1730.