Women of the World

’Young women do not drink or smoke to excess; they therefore tend to be in better physical condition. It is also evident that they are more patient than men.’ So said Otakar Ševčík (1852–1934) of his female students, supposedly in an interview for Pall Mall Magazine in 1910, reproduced in The Amadeus Book of the Violin (1998).

As one of the most famous violin teachers in Europe at the start of the 20th century, Ševčík helped to launch the international careers of female soloists at a time when the violin was gradually becoming a socially acceptable instrument for women to play. Yet these women and their stories have so far received little attention from writers, in comparison with their male contemporaries.

Henry Roth’s enduring book Master Violinists in Performance (1982) offers a case in point. Following eight individual chapters on famous male violinists like Heifetz and Menuhin, Roth ends the book with a single chapter titled ‘Women and the Violin’, which only briefly covers some of the better-known female violinists, the bulk of the material consisting of photographs rather than biographical detail.