He completed his "violin universities" at the age of 12 and studied nowhere else, but became one of the finest performers on the instrument in the 20th century.

He has written many small dance pieces, without claiming any particular depth, which have enjoyed enormous popularity. His arrangements of works by old masters, considered exemplary, turned out to be his own works, which shocked music lovers and connoisseurs alike.

On February 2, 1875, the outstanding Austrian violinist and composer Fritz Kreisler was born.

Friedrich-Max, or simply Fritz, was born into the family of a Jewish doctor whose parents had moved to Vienna from Poland and settled in the city's Wieden district, where Gluck, Brahms and Johann Strauss had once lived. Their home was frequented by the capital's elite, including his father's colleague Sigmund Freud, for whom music was often played, and the boy was interested in it from childhood.

At the age of 7, the young prodigy entered the Vienna Conservatory, becoming its youngest student in history, and after only three years he graduated with a gold medal. Then he improves a couple more years at the Paris Conservatory with the famous violinist Massar - the teacher of Wieniawski and Izaia - and with the composer Delibes. In 1887, the 12-year-old Kreisler receives the first prize at the final conservatory exam and completes, in fact, his professional training. The entire further creative career of the musician is the result of his own labor and talent. However, it did not develop smoothly.

After a year-long tour of the United States, though not very successful, the teenager graduates from grammar school in Vienna - after all, he does not yet have a secondary education! Then he enters the medical faculty of the university, continuing his father's tradition, and then is drafted into the army. No music is out of the question during these almost 10 years. To top it all off, he is not even accepted into the Vienna Opera Orchestra on the ridiculous pretext that the holder of two conservatory diplomas does not play the sheet music well.

The discouraged young man even thinks about changing his specialty, but does not give up. And indeed, soon everything falls into place. He performs brilliantly with the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras, tours the States again - now successfully, triumphantly conquering England and Russia. He develops a friendship with Rachmaninoff, with whom they will often perform duets, and the English composer Elgar dedicates his violin concerto to him, first performed in 1910 under the baton of the composer.

Kreisler's first compositions also appear - arrangements of classical works, his own violin miniatures and the very collection of works by ancient composers whom he supposedly "discovered" for modern listeners - Couperin, Pugnani, Francker, Boccherini and others. At the same time, he turned to sound recording - he was the first to record all of Beethoven's violin sonatas and concertos for violin by Bach, Brahms and Mendelssohn.

In the period of the 20s and 30s his fame increases even more. He is applauded not only in Europe and America, but also in the countries of the East, where he is one of the first European musicians - Japan, Korea and China. Everyone is amazed by his amazing manner of performance with its incredible expressiveness, lightness and technical flawlessness.

At the same time, he reveals his creative hoax and admits to authorship of "foreign" works. With Hitler's rise to power and the annexation of his native Austria to Nazi Germany, Kreisler was forced to emigrate across the ocean again, now permanently. In 1938 he finally moved to the United States, where he spent the last quarter of a century of his life, taking American citizenship.

The musician always refused all offers to visit the Old World, citing poor health, undermined by a car accident in 1941 in New York. There he died, not living only 4 days before his 87th birthday. He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, where Melville, Guggenheim, Pulitzer, Juilliard, Ellington and many other famous Americans are also interred.