Carl Flesch was born in Hungary in 1873 and began to learn the violin at the age of six. After studying at the Vienna and Paris Conservatoires, he became the leader of the Queen of Rumania's private string quartet at twenty-three. While in Rumania he taught at the Bucharest Conservatoire and since then he has held professorial appointments at the Amsterdam Conservatoire, the Curtis Institute,. Philadelphia, and the Berlin State High School of Music.