Music: Last of a Breed

"The world," Violinist Fritz Kreisler once explained, "is a great child and tires easily. You cannot make friends for long with all the world." But Violinist Kreisler must have had second thoughts. No musician of his time carried on a longer musical friendship with the world—and none left behind a less jaded audience when he finally withdrew from the concert stage. Kreisler was not only the greatest violinist of his generation, but also the last of a once common breed: his death last week, of a heart attack, just four days before his 87th birthday, marked the end of the long...

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