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Youth and Musical Education
Ignatz Waghalter was born on March 15, 1881 in Warsaw, the fifteenth of twenty children in an impoverished Jewish family whose musical roots ran very deep. According to the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Ignatz’s great-grandfather, Laibisch Waghalter (1790-1868), was an esteemed violinist known as the “Paganini of the East.” Both parents earned their livelihood as musicians. Ignatz’s eldest brother, Henryk, was to become one of most important cellists at the Warsaw Conservatory. Two other brothers, Joseph and Wladyslaw, also achieved prominence as musicians.
At an early age Waghalter displayed unusual talents and was performing publicly when he was only six years old in local music halls, at the circus, and for the entertainment of wealthy Polish aristocratic and bourgeois families at private parties. As he passed beyond adolescence Waghalter recognized that his development as a serious musician would not be possible without formal training. Waghalter decided to leave his home and make his way to Berlin. At the age of 17, he crossed the Polish border illegally into Germany.
After a brief apprenticeship with the composer Philipp Scharwenka, the young Waghalter obtained an audience with the great violinist and friend of Brahms, Joseph Joachim, who helped him gain admittance to the Academy of Art in Berlin. He studied there under Friedrich Gernsheim. Before long, Waghalter’s talent for musical composition—especially his exceptional melodic imagination—began to make an impression. His early String Quartet in D-Major was praised highly by Joachim. Waghalter’s next major composition, a Sonata for Violin and Piano received the Mendelssohn Prize, the highest award of the Academy of Art. He also composed during this early period of his musical career a Violin Concerto, a Rhapsody for Violin, and several song cycles. The intense lyricism of a Nottorno for Cello and Piano so impressed Joachim that he encouraged Waghalter to direct his gifts to the composition of operas.
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