The extraordinary professional career of American violinist Joseph Fuchs (1899 - 1997) as both performer and professor spanned an astonishing seventy-plus years. He made his New York recital debut in 1920, shortly after having completed his studies with Franz Kneisel, founder of the famed Kneisel Quartet. In 1926, he was made concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra, a post he would retain until relinquishing it in 1940 to focus on a solo career.
Following successful recovery from experimental surgery on his left arm to alleviate serious complications stemming from a childhood accident, Mr. Fuchs began in earnest his fifty-year worldwide career as a soloist, recitalist, chamber player and professor.
In addition to the vast standard repertoire he both concertized and recorded, he championed much new and under-appreciated music all throughout his career. He premiered concertos by several contemporaries of his time, including those by the American composers Walter Piston and Ben Weber, the Italian composer Mario Peragallo, as well as the Estonian composer Nikolai Lopatnikoff.
Fuchs also recorded many newer works as well, including the concertos of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Paul Hindemith. The Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů composed his Three Madrigals for Mr. Fuchs and his sister, the violist Lillian Fuchs, with whom he often performed.
Chamber music was a lifelong passion of Joseph Fuchs. He partnered often with pianist Arthur Balsam; together they performed chamber music from across the repertoire, and recorded, among other works, the Beethoven Sonatas for Violin and Piano, in 1952.
Fuchs' professorial work included a fifty-year career at the Julliard School, a short tenure as a Professor of Music at Yale University, member of the Faculty at the University of Maine School of Music, and Co-founder of the Blue Hill Music School in Maine, USA. He gave his final Carnegie Hall recital in 1992, at the age of 93. He passed away on March 14, 1997.
