Violinist, born 19 December 1882 in Częstochowa, died 16 June 1947, Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland.
Huberman took his first violin lessons with Mieczysław Michałowicz, Maurycy Rosen and Izydor Lotto. He first appeared in public at the age of seven, playing Pierre Rode's Violin concerto no. 7 with the orchestra of The Warsaw Institute of Music. In 1892 Huberman and his parents left for Berlin and he was introduced to Jozsef Joachim. Joachim audited him and accepted him to his class. Having worked on his playing technique under Joachim's assistant, Carl Markees, Huberman gave it up and left Berlin. In 1893 he played for the audiences of other German towns as well as taking additional lessons with Hugo Heermann in Frankfurt on the Mein. He also played concerts in Vienna, Amsterdam, Brusells and Paris, and took lessons with Martin Marsick. In May 1894 he went to London where his most notable performance was a concert played with Natalia Janotha, Józef Śliwiński and Józef Hofman. Meanwhile he received a gift of a 1773 Stradivarius from Count Jan Zamoyski, who supported him for a certain period of time, organizing concerts in Marienbad and Lvov.
At the end of 1894 he played for Berlin audiences, and in January 1895 took part in Adelina Patti's farewell concert in Vienna. The following year, also in Vienna, Huberman, who had not turned fourteen at the time, played Johannes Brahms' Concerto in D major in the presence of the composer. Brahms was delighted with his performance.
After a series of concerts in Austria, Germany, France and Romania, Huberman went on his first United States tour in 1897, and in December of that year set out on an artistic journey to Russia. In 1902 he gave a series of concerts in Munich, playing eighteen violin concertos in eight nights, and in 1903 he played in Genoa on a violin that once belonged to Niccolò Paganini. In December, on Huberman's twenty-first birthday, the Grand Duke of Weimar and Eisenach decorated him with the Medal of Arts and Science. In the following years he concertised in all European music centres to invariably enthusiastic audiences. He appeared a number of times in Poland, too. For a while he also devoted himself to theoretical work, which resulted in a collection of papers published in Vienna in 1912 as "Aus der Werkstatt des Virtuosen" (Polish edition "Z warsztatu wirtuoza" / "In the Workshop of the Virtuoso", Katowice 1964).
He spent World War I in Berlin, coming a couple of times with concerts to Warsaw and Łódź, notably in the spring of 1918 to perform with Eugene d'Alberto. The next surge of his artistic journeys came in the 1920s and included such countries as France, Italy, Austria, Germany, Spain, Holland, Czech, Scandinavia, Poland and South America (Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay). At that time his interest in chamber music intensified and the trio he set up with Ignacy Friedman and Pablo Casals proved the highlight of the 1927 season, performing, among other works, all Beethoven trios as part of the celebrations of the composer's death centenary. In 1929 Huberman first visited Palestine. The 1920s were also a period of his concentrated pedagogical activities, one of his students, albeit for a short period, being Irena Dubiska.
In addition to concerts, Huberman took to politics, his particular interest being the idea of Pan-Europe. He shared his political thinking in a book "Vaterland Europa", published in Berlin in 1932. The anti-semitic Nazi policy made him leave Berlin and settle in Vienna in late 1932. In 1933 he took part in the celebrations marking Johannes Brahms' birth centenary; he performed his piano trios and quartets with Arthur Schnabel, Pablo Casals and Paul Hindemith. In July of that year he declined Wilhelm Furtwängler's invitation to play concerts with Berliner Philharmoniker. From 1934 to 1936 he ran a violin master class at the Akademie für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna, in the meantime playing concerts in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, England, Switzerland, Holland, Italy and the United States.
In March 1936 the "Manchester Guardian" published Huberman's "Open Letter to German intellectuals". At that time he visited Tel-Aviv a number of times for the purpose of organizing an orchestra. His efforts proved successful, and on 26th December 1936 Arturo Toscanini first conducted The Palestine Symphony Orchestra, an ensemble made up of musicians of Jewish descent who had to leave Germany because of persecutions by the Nazi regime.
In 1937 Huberman embarked upon an artistic journey to the United States, Australia and West Indies. Coming back, in October 1937, his plane crashed in Sumatra, and both of his hands were injured. In 1938 he settled in Corsier-sur-Vevey and, owing to intensive physiotherapy, was able to resume his concerts in December of the same year. After World War II broke out, he got involved in the support of Polish refugees wandering around Europe. In 1940 he went to give concerts in Johannesburg. The war activities made his return to Switzerland impossible, and so he went to the United States instead where, in New York in May 1944, he took part in a concert of Polish music, performing Karol Szymanowski's Violin concerto no. 1 under Grzegorz Fitelberg. Having returned to Switzerland in 1945, the following year he went on a tour of Europe, Egypt and Palestine. In May of that year he broke his leg. The bone would not heal and had to be realigned twice; this seriously undermined Huberman's overall health. He spent the last period of his life in his villa in Corsier-sur-Vevey.
Huberman's artistic accomplishments, behaviour and social activity were recognized a number of times: he was named the Honorary Member of the Friends of Music of the City of Vienna and was awarded the Orders of King Leopold, Legion of Honour and Polonia Restituta. The Jewish Institute of Religion in New York conferred an honorary doctorate upon him.
Since 1997 The Częstochowa Philharmonic has been host to the biennial Bronisław Huberman Violin Festival.
Author: Małgorzata Kosińska, Polish Music Information Center, Polish Composers' Union, October 2006.