Maxim Jacobsen

Maxim Jacobsen (born June 26, 1887 in Mitau in Latvia , Russian Empire ; died 1973 ) was a Latvian violinist and violin teacher.

Youth and education

Maxim Jacobsen grew up in Riga . His father was a wealthy businessman. Jacobsen was an Orthodox Jew and served in the synagogue . When he was twelve years old, he heard his first violin concert with the virtuoso Bronisław Huberman . He was deeply impressed and decided to become a violinist himself. There was resistance from his father and he did not receive any financial support for his education. It was only after he had completed his studies with renowned artists in Saint Petersburg and Berlin that his father's opinion changed. That was in 1922, when he had already lost his fortune due to the Russian Revolution .

The pedagogue

Jacobsen had a large number of private students in Berlin and was director of the Kaiseralle branch of the Stern Conservatory . He married in the summer of 1919 and his first daughter was born. In 1932 the couple separated.

As early as the early 1930s, discrimination against Jews began and Jacobsen, as a freelance musician, suffered a lot. He went to Italy and received special permission from Mussolini to open a music school in Milan, the “Scuola Superiore di Musica”. He became the dictator's violin teacher.

When racial discrimination also increased in Italy , Jacobsen left school and went to Brussels . He applied for the position of violin teacher to Queen Elisabeth of Belgium . The queen took two hours of lessons a day, and the young princes also became his students. When the Germans invaded Belgium, she advised him to flee. Again he had to give up everything. Equipped with papers, he fled to the south of France, where he was interned. His Latvian passport could not be extended because of the war, and he was therefore considered stateless . He received permission to emigrate to Portugal . When he received an offer from Boston, he was stopped on board the ship because his son and daughter were working for the Germans in Brussels.

In Portugal he worked in the orchestra of the Emissora Nacional radio station . He also spent several months a year in London teaching. In Portugal he married a pharmacist widow. Jacobsen also gave master classes in New Zealand. Jacobsen was able to provide for himself until he was 86, although he did not receive a pension. As a "hardship" he received a small pension from Germany.

Services

As a soloist he did not have a major breakthrough, but Jacobsen was one of the best violin teachers of his time. His paraphrases about Kreutzer and about Kayser studies were considered by experts like Carl Flesch , Fritz Kreisler , Otakar Ševčík and Walther Davisson as educationally masterful works of study.

Fonts (selection)

Violin gymnastics (1960)

• 100 small technical paraphrases on Kayser études, Musikverlag Zimmermann, Leipzig 1931
• 25 daily concentration exercises for the violinist, Musikverlag Zimmermann, Leipzig 1930
• 100 technical paraphrases on Kreutzer etudes, Musikverlag Zimmermann, Leipzig 1929–1931
• Violin gymnastics: physical exercises as a preliminary to violin playing and for the advanced student . London: Bosworth, 1960

swell

• Tonkünstler-Lexikon, Ed. Frank Altmann, Gustav Bosse Verlag, Regensburg 1936
• Entry in the anti-Semitic lexicon of Jews in Music , ed. Theo Stengel / Herbert Gerigk , Bernhard Hahnefeld Verlag, Berlin 1940
• The Evening Post, Students Admire Famous Musician, April 13, 1970

Individual evidence

1. ^ Letter from Maxim Jacobsen to the publishing house AJ Benjamin dated September 22, 1931., s. Saxon State Archives Leipzig 21064, 682.