Nathan, Galimir and Tina Qu

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 those who didn’t, I hope to introduce you to a very special man and a great chamber musician.

“Play it again, it is not in tune.”

After another attempt, then another, and another, he leaped to his feet, grabbed his violin from its open case on the couch, and played the passage. To my astonishment, though the sound was rough, the notes were pure!

“Now, look at my hands! Look at my fingers!” I tried hard not to take a step back as he thrust them in my face. Each finger was twisted like an oak that had battled drought, wind and rain for a hundred years. How could he play in tune?

“You see, even I can play this in tune, and I am…three thousand years old!”

I think that beats even the hardiest tree.

I soon learned to anticipate these lessons. As we were exchanging pleasantries at the beginning of such an hour, I put down my violin and began stretching my forearms, hands and fingers. Mr. Galimir’s conversation trailed off as he watched my demonstration, and finally he fell silent. I looked over at him, and he looked at me as though I were growing a third arm out of my head. “What–is–is this a modern dance?”

I laughed, “No, I’m just stretching.” Seeing that his face was blank, I continued, “You know, it’s like athletes. I’m about to play Paganini, and my muscles have to be warmed up just like an athlete’s.”

“Are you going to the Olympics?”

I endeavored to explain further. “Well, if the muscles are cold, they won’t work the way they’re supposed to, and you can get hurt. I’m trying to stay healthy.”

His eyes and mouth at this point were drooping, and he simply shook his head. I barely heard, “I just don’t understand you.”

The thought of relieving myself with my nearly 90-year-old teacher sitting in silence a few feet away was not appealing, but I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I agreed and visited the Zimbalist bathroom. I emerged, walked over to the desk where I had placed my violin, picked up my instrument and turned to face Galimir. He was staring at me openmouthed with an expression approaching horror. I froze, then my mind raced: my fly was up, I had washed my hands, I hadn’t made any particularly strange sounds. Then he spoke: “Young man, in this country…we close the door all the way!” I looked at the door, and indeed it wasn’t securely closed. It was an inch ajar. Then he got up from his chair, walked over to the door, and inched it open bit by bit, peering inside the bathroom as he did so. “Unless,” he turned, with a look of wonder on his face, “you want to show me what you did.”

After listening for a minute, Mr. Galimir stopped me and leaned back in his chair. “You know…you learn the opposite of how I learn.”

“What do you mean?”

His pitch rose considerably, forecasting some blistering words. “I mean–that when I have a new piece, I first practice it slowly and carefully in tune. Then I play faster in tune. You–start fast and out of tune and then you play faster and more out of tune!”

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 visits to hear one or two people or groups. I remember that he hadn’t heard any groups yet that year, so we were excited to play a Haydn Quartet, Op. 55 No. 1, that we had been working on.

We played for him in the very room in which I had had my first lesson, and it somehow seemed smaller this time. It was indeed a cozy room, and four people could easily fill it with sound. After one too many of our exuberant dynamic changes (which we thought were exciting and daring), he let out a yell! He breathed hard for a few seconds; evidently he had been getting worked up for a while and we had failed to notice.

“You don’t have to–blast me out of the room! Yes, I know that this measure you have piano and the next you have forte. But this is Haydn, and piano and forte are next-door neighbors!”

As it happened, his yell was louder than any forte we made before or since.

I still had to address his question, however, and I was at a loss. What could I suggest that he would find interesting? “I don’t know…what have you always wanted to play here?”

“What?” he asked, squinting at me.

“I mean, what have you not played that you’ve always wanted to work on?”

“You know,” he started laughing, “in my long life, I have played just about everything.”

I never got to play with Mr. Galimir, though I am one of the few who studied violin with him in addition to chamber music. A few days later, Mr. Galimir left a Marlboro concert in an ambulance. After recovering at a hospital in Vermont, he returned to his home in New York. Plans to play for him in September and October never materialized, and he died in early November while I was on tour with the Curtis Orchestra in Vienna.

As I said above, the room was always packed, and some jostling was inevitable. One day during tea, I felt a poke in my lower back which had to have been intentional. I turned around, and at first saw no one. Then I realized that Mr. Galimir was indeed behind me, but had compacted himself further by crouching! He looked up with an evil grin, and said very deliberately, “Knife–in your–back!”

“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, who plays violin in the group? What does she look like?”

“It’s the girl…she is short, dark hair…she is Japanese.”

Of course that helped us not one bit, but eventually he described the cello player sufficiently that we ventured a guess. “Is that Kaori Yamagami?”

“Yummy gummi?”

As we laughed, he continued, “Ja! What happened to all the good Jewish names? Goldberg, Greenbaum…now the students come in with these names, and they have…five or six syllables, and it is impossible!”

We laughed again, knowing that his failure to remember the girls’ names was not because they were Asian. It was because he called any female younger than him “the girl”. And since he was in his upper 80’s, that meant just about every female. When asking about my lessons with Pam Frank (who was like a grand-daughter to him) it was, “what did the girl tell you here?” Or looking for his other student Tina Qu, “where is the girl?” Or sometimes, out of the blue, “How is she?”

“Who, Mr. Galimir?”

“The girl.”

“Which girl?”

“You know, the girl…”

The lesson unfolded as usual, with me playing and Mr. Galimir interjecting comments and criticisms. It seemed to me that there were more “good!” or “very good!” comments this week than usual, so I was pleased. When I reached the end of the movement, where the cadenza would normally be played, I stopped. “And the cadenza?” he asked. I said, “I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t prepare it as well as I wanted to. It isn’t ready to be played.” Then Mr. Galimir leaned forward, cupped a hand to the side of his mouth, and whispered as if telling me a secret about someone else. “Truthfully…the rest of it wasn’t ready either.”