PABLO

MARTIN MELITON DE SARASATE Y NAVASCUES (1844-1908)  , Spanish violinist, was born at Pamplona on the loth of March 1844 . From his early years he displayed his aptitude for the violin, and at the age of 12 he began to study under Alard at the Paris Conservatoire . His first public appearance as a concert violinist was in 186o . He played in London in 1861, and in the course of his career he visited all parts of Europe and also both North and South America . His artistic pre-eminence was due principally to the purity of his tone, which was free from any tendency towards sentimentality and rhapsodic mannerism, and to the astonishing facility of execution which made him in the best sense of the word a virtuoso . Al-though in the Beethoven and Mendelssohn concertos, and in modern French and Belgian works, his playing was unrivalled, his qualities were most clearly revealed in the solos which he himself composed, which were " the spirit of Spanish dance translated into terms of the violin virtuoso." Sarasate died at Biarritz on the loth of September 1908 .