Pablo de Sarasate
Pablo Martín Melitón de Sarasate y Navascues (March, 1844 - September 28, 1908) was a Spanish violinist and composer. He was one of the most famous violin virtuosi of his time.
Sarasate was born in Pamplona, the son of a military bandmaster, from his early years he displayed his aptitude for the violin. He gave his public debut at the age of eight, studied first in Madrid, and at the age of 12 he began to study under Delfín Alard at the Paris Conservatoire.
His first public appearance as a concert violinist was in 1860. He played in London in 1861, and in the course of his career he visited all parts of Europe and also both North and South America. His artistic pre-eminence was due principally to the purity of his tone, which was free from any tendency towards sentimentality and rhapsodic mannerism, and to the astonishing facility of execution which made him in the best sense of the word a virtuoso.
Although in the Beethoven and Mendelssohn concertos, and in modern French and Belgian works, his playing was unrivalled, his qualities were most clearly revealed in the solos which he himself composed, which were the spirit of Spanish dance translated into terms of the violin virtuoso. Sarasate died at Biarritz on September 20, 1908.
A number of pieces were dedicated to Sarasate, including Henryk Wieniawski's Violin Concerto No. 2, Édouard Lalo's Symphonie espagnole, Camille Saint-Saëns' Violin Concerto No. 3 and Introduction and rondo capriccioso and Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy.
Sarasate's own compositions are mainly flashy show-pieces designed to demonstrate his exemplary technique. Perhaps the best known of his works is Zigeunerweisen (1878), a work for violin and orchestra. Another piece, the Carmen Fantasy (1883), also for violin and orchestra, makes use of themes from Georges Bizet's opera Carmen. Probably his most performed encores are his two books of Spanish Dances, short little pieces designed to please the listener's ear and show off the performer's talent. He also made arrangements of a number of other composers' work for violin. In 1904 he made a small number of recordings.
James Whistler's Arrangement in Black: Pablo de Sarasate (1884) is a portrait of Sarasate.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson attend a concert by Sarasate in Arthur Conan Doyle's short story The Red-Headed League (1891).
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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