Emil Telmányi

Emil Telmányi (22 June 1892 – 13 June 1988) was a Hungarian violinist.

Emil Telmányi

Emil Telmányi demonstrates to Albert Schweitzer his curved bow ("Vega" Bach Bow) in 1954

Telmányi was born in Arad, Partium, Transylvania, then in the Kingdom of Hungary.

In 1911 he gave the Berlin premiere of the Violin Concerto of Sir Edward Elgar.[1] It was attended by the pianist Ignaz Friedman, who befriended him and arranged some of his early concerts in Copenhagen, where he later settled. He became an exponent of the composer Carl Nielsen, having recorded some of his violin sonatas and his violin concerto; he was also married to Nielsen's daughter, Anne Marie, from 1918 to 1933.

One of his most famous recordings is a 1954 recording of Bach's Sonatas and partitas for solo violin played using a violin with what was referred to as the "Vega" Bach Bow (recorded in November 1953 and March 1954, DANA CORD, DACO 147), which could be adjusted so the player could play three or even all four strings of the violin at once. He died, aged 95, in Holte, Denmark.