Josef Wolfsthal

Who was Josef Wolfsthal?

Josef Wolfsthal was an Austrian violinist.

Wolfsthal was born into a musical family in Vienna. At the age of 10, he began study with famed violin teacher Carl Flesch, and at age 16 he began giving public performances.

Wolfsthal gave the premiere of Karl Weigl's 1928 Violin Concerto. He playing in a string trio with cellist Emmanuel Feuermann and violist and composer Paul Hindemith.

After attending a funeral in Berlin in the winter of 1930, Wolfsthal caught a cold; he died several weeks later from pneumonia, aged 32.

Wolfsthal's sound has been described as "tightly concentrated" and "sweet"; his style—which eschewed portamenti—as having a "spruce modernity". Reviewing Wolfsthal's 1929 recording of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, the Penguin guide to compact discs wrote of his "breathtaking mastery, making one regret that this pupil of Carl Flesch died in his early thirties".