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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 [...]
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, [...]
Mr. Galimir was constantly forgetting my hometown. He knew it was somewhere in the South, which was like a foreign country to a New Yorker. Of course, New York was once a foreign country to him, but musicians tend to adopt New York as their home quite readily. To remind the readers, I’m from Lexington, [...]
Before we started work on Prokofiev’s first violin concerto, I told Mr. Galimir that I didn’t know the piece at all, and had in fact never heard it. He wanted to keep it that way, to make sure that I had no damaging influences. “Good!” he exclaimed. “No recordings, and don’t buy the music and [...]
When Mr. Galimir’s part to Prokofiev 1 did appear the next week (although not before causing me much pain), it nearly crumbled in my hands. It looked as though it should have been kept under glass! He must have had it for 70 years, and it contained all of his valuable bowings and fingerings. Before [...]
The fall of 1998 was a time of transition for me at Curtis. I was beginning my third year, which meant that half of the people I met when I entered Curtis were gone. In addition, the Montagnana Quartet, the group I had played in since coming to Curtis, was no more. Luckily the other [...]
The day of my first lesson with Felix Galimir was a horribly complicated affair for someone who had spent most of his life in one city. This was the first day of school, September 1996, and I had just moved from Lexington, KY to Philadelphia the week before. I had had a few days to [...]
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