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 [...]
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 [...]
The Mendelssohn Octet is one of the first pieces that every chamber musician falls in love with. Fun to play, fun to hear, fun to study. Every measure reflects the idealistic side of the 16-year-old composer. It’s also one of the most popular pieces to read whenever large groups of string players assemble. However, since [...]
We stared at an empty coach’s chair. It was unusual, said the other three, for Felix Galimir to be late. So we brushed up a few passages, alternating playing with talking, mostly questions tinged with nervous anticipation. Our cellist asked if we thought Galimir would hear the entire Haydn quartet or just the first movement. [...]
