,
Pablo Casals, and
Walter Damrosch at
Carnegie Hall on March 13, 1917 Kreisler was born in
Vienna, the son of Anna (née Reches) and Samuel Kreisler, a doctor. Of
Jewish descent, he was however
baptised at the age of 12. At age seven, Kreisler entered the
Vienna Conservatory where he studied under
Anton Bruckner,
Jakob Dont and
Joseph Hellmesberger Jr., and studied composition and violin at the
Paris Conservatory between 1885 and 1887, where his teachers included
Léo Delibes,
Lambert Massart and
Jules Massenet. He graduated from the Paris Conservatory with the highest "Premier Prix" in violin at the age of 12, competing against 40 other players, most of whom were at least 20 years of age. He made his United States debut at the
Steinway Hall in
New York City on November 10, 1888, and his first tour of the United States in 1888–1889 with
Moriz Rosenthal. He then returned to Austria and applied for a position in the
Vienna Philharmonic, but was turned down by the concertmaster
Arnold Rosé. As a result, he left music to study medicine. He spent a brief time in the
army before returning to the violin in 1899, when he gave a concert with the
Berlin Philharmonic conducted by
Arthur Nikisch. It was this concert and a series of American tours from 1901 to 1903 that brought him real acclaim. Kreisler was also an excellent pianist, and his piano playing is preserved on
Ampico reproducing
piano rolls. During a concert tour of the United States in 1901, Kreisler met Harriet Lies, a New York-born divorcée who was a Vassar graduate and the daughter of a German American tobacco merchant. They fell in love immediately and were married a year later, though they repeated the ceremony three more times because of legal technicalities. They had no children, and Harriet devoted her life to his career. They were married for 60 years, until his death in 1962. In 1910, Kreisler gave the premiere of Sir
Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto, a work commissioned by and dedicated to him. He served briefly in the Austrian Army in
World War I before being honourably discharged after he was wounded. He arrived in
New York on November 24, 1914, and spent the remainder of the war years in America. He returned to Europe in 1924, living first in Berlin, then moving to France in 1938. Shortly thereafter, at the outbreak of
World War II, he settled once again in the United States, becoming a
naturalized citizen in 1943. He lived there for the rest of his life, giving his last public concert in 1947, and broadcasting performances for a few years after that. '' cover, February 2, 1925 On April 26, 1941, he was involved in a serious traffic accident. Struck by a truck while crossing a street in New York, he suffered a fractured skull and was in a coma for over a week. In his later years, he suffered from not only some hearing loss but also sight deterioration due to cataracts. Kreisler died in New York City in 1962 of a heart condition aggravated by old age. He was interred in a private mausoleum in
Woodlawn Cemetery,
the Bronx, New York City. == Legacy ==