Franz von Vecsey plays his Caprice #2, “Cascade“ in F#!

Franz von Vecsey (Hungarian: Vecsey Ferenc, March 23, 1893 -- April 5, 1935) was a Hungarian violinist and composer. He was born in Budapest and began his violin studies with his father, Lajos Vecsey, and at the age of eight he entered the studio of Jenő Hubay. Two years later, aged ten, he played for Joseph Joachim in Berlin and subsequently became known as a stellar child prodigy virtuoso. He became one of the pre-eminent violinists in Europe in the 1910s and ’20s, at one point touring with Béla Bartók as his piano accompanist. Aged only 12, he became the re-dedicatee of Jean Sibelius’s Violin Concerto in D minor in 1905, after the original dedicatee, Willy Burmester, refused to play the work after he was unable to appear at the premiere of the revised version and it was premiered by Karel Halíř instead. Vecsey championed the Sibelius concerto, first performing it when he was only 13, although he could not adequately cope with the extraordinary technical demands of the work. He was also the dedicatee of Hubay’s Violin Concerto No. 3. He also spent time composing, and wrote a number of virtuosic salon pieces for the violin. His career faltered somewhat after the First World War, as he grew tired of the constant touring involved in the life of a concert artist. He hoped to take up conducting, but he died suddenly in 1935 at the age of 42, in Rome.