When I came to Berlin in 1905 thus inadequately equipped, I heard for the first time not only this phenomenal young violinist [Mischa Elman] but also Kreisler and Ysaÿe. To make clear the impact of their playing on me – a playing of a fire, an elegance, a rhythmic incisiveness which I had never even imagined- I should have to be able to convey the style of playing of the only virtuosos I had heard during my conservatory days: Burmester, Kubelik, Marteau, Hugo Heermann. It is obviously impossible to do this. These first impressions were too amorphous, too lacking in critical perception, too biased by schoolroom prejudices. In Berlin I was on my own, and I was bowled over by Ysaÿe, Kreisler, and Elman. / I lump them together because that was how, in my childish unpreparedness, I felt their individual revelations merge into one collective impact on me. This was not so childish as it would seem on the face of it. I sensed a dividing line between the violin-playing I had heard during my Budapest days and what I was hearing now. One I associated with the past, the other with the future. It was not until some years later that I was to hear Thibaud, Enesco, Huberman, and Casals- greatest of all string players, as Kreisler calls him; and Heifetz, of course, had not yet been revealed to the world. / In thus instinctively drawing a dividing line, I was making a no more arbitrary distinction than grown-ups do when they refer to styles of art in terms of centuries without taking into account the finer shadings caused by overlappings. But even as I see it now my instinct in roughly grouping my listening experiences into two camps was justified. << less