I realize I go too far in claiming ownership of four string players at the Mimir Chamber Music Festival in Fort Worth, Texas. But I did coach them quite a lot over the last two weeks, and this is their only chance to show the audience of colleagues, coaches, family, friends and local chamber music lovers what they have learned this July.

The summer of 2005 was my third as an artist faculty member at Mimir. Along with eleven colleagues, I worked with approximately twenty students, almost all between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. All of them auditioned for the festival, either live or via recording. Like the students in years past, most had professional aspirations, but few had experienced anything like Mimir. Executive director Curt Thompson has focused the festival exclusively on chamber music, which provides the students an opportunity not found at festivals where they must also prepare solo repertoire and attend orchestra rehearsals. Of course, with such focus comes greater challenge. Since students study only two works during their two weeks here, and often perform only parts of those two works, both faculty and students desire to have all the rough edges polished smooth.

We began with a big block of stone. One player in my group had never played chamber music before, and the ones who had brought varying levels of experience and proficiency. The Debussy quartet was new to all of them. And even though I had performed the Debussy many times, I had never coached it. At our first meeting, they had had only two hours together to read through the piece and begin what would be, both for them and for me, a maiden voyage.

We were looking at less than a week—only three sessions of two hours each—before my group would perform some portion of the piece for students and faculty. We would then meet two or three more times before the culminating public performance. I knew that other faculty would see my group on the days I did not, but at the final performance, I would be the one in the audience receiving uncomfortable glances should there be any train wrecks on stage!

Rehearsal time without a coach was limited to two hours each day, the bare minimum for the Debussy. This was necessary because each student participated in two groups during the festival. Thus every day contained four hours of rehearsal with a coach, plus four hours without. Every session at Mimir, whether coached or not, must build measurably toward the performances.

For members of a permanent, professional ensemble, preparing a piece of chamber music is second nature: after the first reading, most of the major building blocks are in place. Such a group may jump immediately to the fine-tuning of phrases, the blending of sounds and the delicate balancing of dynamics. Not so at Mimir. The first reading, even by accomplished individual players, is likely to derail several times. As members of the faculty with long memories, we are responsible for warning the students that these things can and will happen to them. But I do not think we have ever shown them the video from the very first Mimir, where during a faculty performance of an obscure Scandinavian quartet, four brave souls fought desperately to keep things together while one (or more) were hopelessly lost. It’s not whether you fall in, but how artfully you dig yourself out!

As a coach, my job would be twofold: to guide my four players toward a performance of their work and to teach them how to teach themselves. I had to share my experience working with other players so that these four might work together. I remembered my frustration at age eighteen, berated for my every dynamic choice by the more experienced members of my quartet and by coach Felix Galimir alike. However, a fog was lifted with his words: “You must have three ears! Two where you sit and one where I sit.” From then on I learned to pursue and teach awareness. Only by honing a constant awareness of their group’s true sound could my students hope to recognize and solve problems.

At the first session, I was impressed with the spirit and energy evident in my students but dismayed by the rather shapeless mass of sound. I immediately shared with them my opening strategy for such pieces, what many call “wood-shedding”. Before the very first reading, I get a score and “read through” the piece in my head. While not particularly talented at score reading, lacking fundamental piano skills and totally inept while looking at more than four or five parts, I can still get a sense of the challenges that will confront me. I mark my part with simple directions for cues and balance. At this point in my narrative, the player without chamber experience broke in, “That sounds like homework!” “Yes it does,” I answered, “and you haven’t done yours yet! Why should you expect to get through Debussy on your first try, much less make sense of it?”

So we began the work together. We started with the premise that no problem left unrecognized could be solved. I asked them to rehearse as if I were not there, so that I could sense their style of communication. As a full-time symphony player, this is a hassle I have largely left behind! In my job, there is only one person stopping and starting the group, and while not always enjoyable, the process is efficient. My group quickly made the same discovery: when one player stopped the playing to make a comment, all was well. But if the playing simply broke down, the first priority was to figure out why. I generally favor solutions through playing over talking, and with my Debussy I sensed that I had a quartet reluctant to make bold and immediate proclamations. So I imposed the “fifteen-second” rule. Only fifteen seconds of talking allowed before the playing resumed. This left time for one person to recognize a problem, suggest a solution, and provide a starting measure number. If another player disagreed, he or she waited until the proposed solution was tried before suggesting another. This rule had three benefits: more problems were recognized, more solutions were tried, and the group best benefited from the most valuable resource it had: time to play together. I often tell my groups that they could do much worse than to spend their two hours playing a movement ten times in a row, from start to finish. My colleagues and I have all been members of groups where so much time was wasted on unproductive arguing that a series of playthroughs would have been absolutely therapeutic. As another of my coaches at Curtis (and Orion Quartet violist) Steve Tenenbom said, “Practice the language you will speak to the audience.”

My summers at Mimir have shown me that the ideal use of time in a coaching is similar to that in a rehearsal. My first summer, I often found myself looking at glazed eyes while in the midst of paragraphs of explanation. Finally it dawned on me that I was transgressing my own rule. Again and again, I found the violin to be my best friend as I picked it up to demonstrate exactly how I wanted a passage to sound. What could be more effective than distilling hours of my own practice into a few demonstrations? I found myself acting in coaching sessions as a “virtual quartet member”: unburdened with the responsibility of playing but sharing the same respect for efficiency. I possessed the “third ear” that Galimir had described. Many exchanges resemble this one: “Second violin, can you hear the viola?” “Yes.” “Something doesn’t match between you; listen as the four of you play it again and tell me what it is.” I learned that when I gave a student the task of listening to just one other player, even when four were playing, the concentration and results increased dramatically. The next step would be to decide who each player should listen to at any given time.

I showed my quartet how this question is often answered visually through a sign, or cue. This sign may signify the beginning of a phrase, a shift in tempo, or the release or cutoff of a long note. What difficulty most of us have in understanding just how sharp and incisive a cue must be! As a beginner, my cues were plaintive and questioning. After being browbeaten by my colleagues, I learned how to give any manner of sign, depending on the character of the music to follow. But it was a strange discovery that sometimes, a sharp sign must be given even when the music is not so. There are moments when the need for precision demands it. I often paraphrased Crocodile Dundee as I demonstrated increasingly obvious cues:

“That’s not a sign. This is a sign!”

Now that our signals were in place, we got to the real meat of rehearsal. The cellist may have successfully given a sign and the others followed it, but why the cello and not the viola? We could not ignore the subject of balance any longer. In early classical quartets such as Haydn and Mozart, the first violin line dominates most of the time. Is it any wonder that the quartets of the time were composed of a strong first violinist (who often lent his name to the group) and three supporters? Even though quartets rarely work this way today, such repertoire is helpful for the beginning quartet since its clean lines and relative scarcity of tempo changes promote confidence and good rehearsal habits. But the piece at hand was by Debussy, whose aim was often to blur the clean line. As a master of color, he knew well how instruments could combine to form a sonic impression independent of melody.

“We have a long way to go,” I said in one of our first sessions, stating the obvious. The time had come for action and results. The fifteen-second rule was in effect. I showed the inexperienced group members how I mark my quartet parts, and then we played the marked sections. A shape began to emerge. “I wish I had recorded yesterday’s playthrough so that you could hear what has happened to this section!” I cried. “No you don’t,” replied the cellist with a smile. A veteran of several summers at Mimir, he was familiar with the rapid gains most groups make in the first couple of days. The challenge then, as always, was to keep the group working as if they were still just beginning. I asked them to completely mark their parts for the two movements we would work on this week, and to spend tomorrow’s rehearsal continuing the kind of rehearsing we had just begun.

By equipping my quartet with efficient means of interacting and productive rehearsal methods, the preliminary work was dispatched as quickly as possible. And with efficiency would come solidity. Though the conventional wisdom “haste makes waste” was drilled into me from childhood, I had come to learn that solutions which come quickly tend to stick. No wonder those early quartets took not only the names of their first violinists, but their playing styles as well: like a symphony, a totalitarian regime is more efficient and unified than a democracy. But where is the art in that? My four players would soon have to make the painful transition from workers to artists of Debussy. The danger of conflict loomed, but with it appeared the promise of exploration and discovery. And while I would equip my quartet with more subtle and varied rehearsal methods to encourage this discovery, no method would prove more important than a practiced awareness of what was actually coming out of their four instruments. Just before their final performance, each of the four players had an answer for my last question: “If you were listening from here, what would you say?”

This article appeared in Chamber Music magazine.

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…”