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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 [...]
My last conversation with Felix Galimir took place at Marlboro, in the summer of 1999. Lunch had just ended, and musicians were meandering out of the dining hall. A voice caught my ear: “Nathan…” I turned to see him shaking a crooked finger at me. “What should we play together?” I was incredibly moved, since [...]
Every Wednesday at 3, musical activities at Curtis come to a halt and the common room is transformed into a tea parlor. Within a few minutes, the room fills with students, faculty and guests. For four years, it was a sure source of fresh fruit for all of us who were too lazy to buy [...]
Walking Mr. Galimir from lunch to Curtis one day, we asked him what he had next. “A coaching, of course.” “Who do you coach?” “I coach…you know, it’s a funny thing,” and here his pitch began to rise, “the names of the players now are so long, and I cannot remember a single one!” “Well, [...]
Finishing work on a piece was always an exciting time, because Mr. Galimir and I generally worked on only one piece at a time. The end of the lesson would become a discussion about the next project. On one such occasion, we decided to begin work on Paganini’s first concerto. “Next week, the first movement, [...]
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