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for tons more albums and images, many from way back in 1996!
Not much of a game, actually, but you see so many “x drinking game” pages out there, that I felt this post needed such a title. This is actually much more than a game; if you decide to involve yourself in this it will consume a weekend. Akiko and I played this “game” a few [...]
I have never been this nervous before. The house lights dim and the applause fades, replaced with that peculiar stuffy silence that anticipates the first note of a concert. The four players on stage lock eyes. But I am in the audience, not one of them. So why is my heart pounding? Because the quartet [...]
I write this post on the morning of the finals for our latest violin audition. In just two hours, our hall will be filled with the concerti of Mozart, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and maybe even Beethoven (but probably not Mendelssohn). Hopefully by the end of the day we’ll get a new violinist for the orchestra. [...]
I’ve just added my Felix Galimir stories back to the site. They’re all tagged with “Galimir” and all under the “stories” category. I studied with Mr. Galimir at Curtis from 1996-1998 and had chamber coachings with him from 1996-1999. For those who knew him, these should bring back some great memories for you! And for [...]
The Beethoven concerto provided a significant intonation challenge for me. It combined the classical purity of a Mozart concerto with quite a few gymnastics that I was not accustomed to performing so cleanly. Those lessons were frustrating in the beginning, both for me and Mr. Galimir as he impressed upon me the importance of playing [...]
Most lessons with Galimir involved a lot of playing and very little talking. I would play a large section, get comments, then go over it again with more frequent stops. When the repertoire for the lesson was of a virtuosic nature, which was his preference, it made for a very tiring hour. I soon learned [...]
My lessons with Mr. Galimir always took place in Room IA, better known as the Zimbalist Room. Student groups loved to rehearse there because there was an adjoining bathroom, complete with original porcelain bathtub, basin and toilet. During one lesson, I had forgotten this fact. As I played, looking at the clock, I realized that [...]
For one lesson, I brought in Paganini’s 13th caprice. It begins with a fingered octave passage in e minor, then comes a variation of broken chords, played in a very high register. There is no room for error in finger placement, and I was leaving plenty of room in this particular performance. Perhaps it was [...]
An instructive comment from a quartet coaching: A few months after I formed the Grancino String Quartet with Zach DePue, Jessi Thompson and Priscilla Lee, we were fortunate enough to go up to New York for a quartet coaching with Mr. Galimir. At this point he had stopped coming down to Curtis except for rare [...]
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