The life of Petr Rybar.

29th of August 1913--4th of October 2002 (recorded by Ales Brezina on the basis of conversations 1996--2002, with additions from the booklet to the CD In memoriam Duo Rybar).

My Parents

I was born on the 29th of October 1913 to Czech parents in Vienna My father was killed at the very beginning of the 1st World War and sol was brought up just by my mother Virginie, an outstanding violinist. Playing the violin was a family tradition, since my maternal grandfather had been an excellent violinist and my father, even though his main profession had been as a builder of railway bridges in the K.u.K. Army (Oberstleutnant) had been a violinist with a European reputation. Every year the emperor had give him 4 months, leave so that he could tour, with his wife Virginie, also an excellent pianist, accompanying him on the piano. Virginie had originally studied under Sevcik, but with her "more or less revolutionary temperament" she rebelled against Sevcik's methods, said to herself that "this beautiful life is too short for those thousands of exercises written by Sevcik" and went off to Brussels to study under Cesar Thomson. She also studied in Hamburg, where she met her future husband.

Mother came from an old Prague family, while there are Hungarian roots deep in Father's genealogy. In Prague mother's family was considered Czech by Czechs and German by Germans. For a time mother was president of the German literary club in Prague whose members included Franz Kafka and Max Brod. When I later gave recitals, I was often advertised in the press as a Czech-German violinist

Life

Three days before the outbreak of the 1st World War my mother took me to England, where we to spend nine years. That's why my native tongue is English--it was only later that I learned to swim in seven languages (Czech, German, French, Portuguese, French, Italian, Swiss Dialect). My mother's brother Fred lived in England; he promised Virginia he would organise a Sevcik-School" but he never did. Mother therefore put together a benefit orchestra that played at concerts for the war wounded - everyone played free of charge, she conducted, and she managed to get soloists like Szigeti, for example, a whole three times. Jacques Dalcroze, the famous creator of the rhythmic astounding method, came to one of her concerts to hear her and invited her to teach at his institute onm Geneva, where Virginia spent a year (1922).

In 1923 we returned to Prague because grandfather--mother's father--was ill. Here I started to attend Czech general school, but I only went for three weeks, because I didn't understand a word (I learnt Czech later in Paris from my flatmate, the painter Frantisek Reyn). Anyway, my mother then sent me to a school in Leipzig for a year (1924), where I learnt German with such a strong Saxon accent that it drove my mother, who hated dialects, right up the wall. In 1925-1931 I studied in Prague again, this time at a German gymnasium, and also took private lessons in Czech. But I just couldn't get anywhere with the Czech and so everyone thought I was a chauvinist who didn't want to learn the language.

In 1931-19341 attended the Masters School in Prague--before then my only violin teacher had been my mother, a very strict teacher. I studied with all the members of the Czech Quartet--violin with Hofmann, composition with Suk, chamber music-sonatas with Herold and string quartet with Zelenka For a joke I and some friends founded a "Group of Six" there, like the Six in Paris. Its members were Dalibor Vackar, Rafael Kubelik, Rudolf Firkusny, Hans Walther Susskind, Frank Polak-Pelleg and me. In Prague I was already giving solo recitals, in which for example I presented the Czechoslovak premiere of Igor Stravinsky's Violin Concerto (at a New Year concert in 1932), and the world prelude of Bohuslav Bohuslav Martinu's Rhythmic Etudes. In 1933 and 1935 I played the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the Czech Philharmonic.

After graduating from the Conservatory I left for Paris in October 1934 to study under Carl Flesch--and there I stayed until March 1936. Through the soprano Charlottee Osuska, wife of the Czechoslovak ambassador, I got to know the painter Frantisek Reyn, with whom I immediately rented a flat and with whom I first fell in love with Czech. I gave recitals in Paris too. At one of them I again played the Stravinsky Violin Concerto in the Salle Pleyel in the rue St Honore--the composer himself accepted my invitation (he lived in the same street) and afterwards came to my dressing room to congratulate me on my great success. But I didn't recognise him, and he had knicker bockers on and I thought, 'a sportsman and he understands music". Only after he had left did my friends tell me it was Stravinsky.

I got to know Martinu sometime in 1935, or perhaps the beginning of 1936. I played his music and often visited him in his tiny little flate in the Malakoff quarter--well known for its thieves and jailbirds. We would sit in his flat chatting and drinking red wine, and just having a good time. After one time when I played his Arabesque on the Paris Radio Martinu came to get the part back off my pianist and then wrote a small dedication into my part.

In 1936 I left for a tour of Portugal. Meanwhile the Spanish Civil War broke out and I remained in Portugal for a year and a half, up to 1918. On a tour of England I met Amelia Roentgen--Trevelyan, who invited me for three months to Winterthur to visit her brother Joachim, the concert master of the orchestra there. After one concert I was sitting with all the musicians from the orchestra in some bar and Joachim asked me to play on the violin. I did so, and then a man came to me--it was Werner Reinhart--and asked me whether I wanted to be concert master after Joachim, who was soon to leave Winterthur to go and teach in the conservatory in the Hague. I had never played in an orchestra, but in the end I accepted because this orchestra only played for six months of the year and the rest of the time played in Karlovy Vary, and so it gave me enough time for solo play: I presented--often in premiere or as the first performance in a particular country--works by Bartok, Stravinsky, Martinu, Prokofiev, Hindemith, Honeg ger and Schibler. Apar from that I played all six Bach solo sonatas and partitas a total of fifteen times (aleays in two concerts one after the other). I performed the Bach Triple Concerto ten times-- my partners were Edwin Fischer and Antonio Tusa I appeared regularly in many European countries at all kinds of festivals with outstanding conductors--in Paris I was often the soloist at the New Year concerts of the Czech Philharmonic, at which I always played Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. Among the musicians with whom I performed were Clara Haskil, Joseph Keilbert, Rudolf Kempe, Geza Anda, Edwin Fischer, Henryk Szeryng, Rafael Kubelik, Carl Schuricht, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Aurele Nicolet, Peter Lukas Graf, Frank Pelleg, Wolfgang Sawalisch, Fritz Busch, Charles Munich, Hans Rosbaud, Wilhelm Backhaus and others.

I spent 28 years in Winterthur and it was a beautiful time. Winterthur people are a wonderfully educated public, who have just three kinds of activity: working, eating, and going to concerts. The duties of the concert master also included leading the string quartet and teaching at the conservatory. Apart from that I was also often concert master of the Luzerner Festspielorchester - the orchestra of the Luzerner Musikfestwochen--and I continued with solo and chamber work. As a member of the jury I took part in competitions in Geneva, Pretoria, Sion and Vercelli, and taught at master courses in Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Italy. In 1966 I said goodbye to Winterthur and then devoted myself entirely to chamber music, especially with my wife Marcelle Daeppen (from 1956), appearing as the Rybar Duo, but also with Clara Haskil and others. In 1970, however, the conductor Wolfgang Sawalisch persuaded me to become concert master in the Orchestre de la Suisse romande in Geneva I stayed there with him for the whole period of his engagement there - up to 1980, and having come with him I also left with him. In Geneva I also led the Classe de virtuosite at the conservatory there.

Four television portraits of my life have been made for Swiss Television (Plans Fixes Geneve--a fifty-minute documentary, which exists in German (Rita Wolfensberger) and in French (Rene Schenker) versions, an amateur film Em Tag mit Peter Rybar) and one documentary for Czech Television. I have recorded records for Philips, Westminster, Whitehall, Concert Hall Society and Le Chant de Mond of many chamber pieces and violin concertos (Vivaldi, Viotti, Nardini, Tartini, Mozart--The Haffner Serenade with Fritz Busch, Bach's Concerto for Two Violins with Henryk Szeryng, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Goldmark, Suk's Fantasia (with the Wiener Symphoniker), Hindemith, Martinu and others. Some of my recordings are now being released again in new editions.