Good morning. I’m honored to be speaking to you at this 2012 Colburn School commencement and equally honored to teach at the school. I was born and raised in Los Angeles and it pleases me immensely to know that Colburn, with its faculty of distinguished musicians, is now the pride of the city and a magnet for some of the world’s most gifted young musicians.

Howard Pasamanick Photography

The streets directly surrounding Colburn are particularly meaningful to me. My father worked as a diamond setter in the jewelry district just a couple of blocks from here. When I was young, my mother often took me downtown by streetcar—yes, we had streetcars in those days—when she shopped at the Grand Central Market behind Colburn. We rode the Angels Flight railway down Bunker Hill—what a thrill that was! I had my first violin lessons at the G. Schirmer music store a few blocks away. And just a few years later, I made my debut at the age of 14 as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in Philharmonic Auditorium, the orchestra’s then permanent home across from Pershing Square.

One of the most significant events in my young life also occurred in Philharmonic Auditorium, and that leads me to what I’d like to talk about today—how music has had an impact on me, and how you in this graduating class can use music to have an impact on the world. When I was ten or eleven years old, my parents took me to hear a recital by Mischa Elman, one of the reigning violinists of that era. I only remember one work on the program—Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chaconne for unaccompanied violin. The magical sounds that poured out of Elman’s violin overwhelmed me, and tears unexpectedly filled my eyes. I had played the violin for four or five years by then, and quite honestly, the sounds coming out of my violin also made people’s eyes fill with tears, but for a very different reason. Not only Elman’s masterful playing touched me. It was also the heart clutching, almost frightening power of Bach’s music. I wondered for the first time what it would be like to learn the violin well enough to stand on a concert stage and perform such music for people.

Each of you graduating today undoubtedly has your own memorable first-time experiences with music. Maybe it was hearing a Beethoven symphony or Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring or a Gershwin tune or even Nirvana or The Rolling Stones. You probably remember tentatively picking up the instrument of your choice, then the exhilarating realization that you had a gift for it. And at some point you must have become aware that you held something more then a musical instrument in your hands, that you possessed the awesome ability to communicate indescribable beauty and emotion. It became the engine that drove you to put in the thousands of hours of practice necessary to nurture your abilities. And here you are, graduating from one of the world’s great music schools. Congratulations.

At this moment, poised for a career, you are the future midwives, so to speak, who will be delivering composers’ babies, their creations—and with it, you will have the heady power to affect your listeners in so many ways.

For one, you can entertain: That sounds so superficial, doesn’t it? When I perform in Canada, I have to fill out a form that lists me as an entertainer. I got a little huffy the first time. How dare they call me a mere entertainer. I’m an artist, I said to myself. But there is nothing wrong and everything right with the gift we have to make people smile in a world filled with much unhappiness. Think of that when you’re playing a Mozart Divertimento, a Beethoven Serenade, or when you land a fabulous job playing back up for Lady Gaga.

You can open hearts and minds: The Guarneri String Quartet, of which I was a proud member for its 45-year career, often performed Mozart’s D Minor String Quartet. Once, as we had just finished the work, an eight-year-old girl stood up from her seat and rushed up the aisle sobbing, followed by her concerned parents. To their relief, it turned out that their daughter was not ill at all, only overcome by the beauty of Mozart’s music. We had revealed something wondrous to this youngster.

You can heal: In Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, the American author, William Styron, relates his descent into depression and his thoughts of suicide. Quite by accident, Styron hears Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody for voice, viola, and piano at that moment and realizes that he cannot possibly end his life when such beauty exists in the world. Music becomes the turning point and the impetus for his eventual recovery.

You can comfort: On September 11, 2001, that terrible day in America, my family and I were in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. Three of us set out early on a hike, but when we returned later in the day, my wife, Dorothea, who had remained in camp, threw her arms around our son Alexej, and burst into tears. She had heard on our radio that the World Trade Towers had fallen, that the Pentagon had also been attacked, and that the United States was in an emergency state of alert. I found it impossible to put my brain around these shocking events, especially as we stood there surrounded by the most indescribable beauty. How could this have happened in our country, blessed as we are with such basic security and with no war on our soil in almost 150 years. For the first time in my life, I feared for myself, my family, and for all Americans. For the first time in my life, I had the awful feeling of facing a completely uncertain future. It was as if the ground had been removed from under my feet. Without knowing why, I went to our tent and took out the practice violin I’d brought along. For a good half hour I played Bach for myself by the little stream where we bathed daily. I hung on to Bach’s well-ordered world of beauty for dear life as a way to deal with the world that seemed to be falling apart all around me. Music comforted me, provided solace, began to put the ground back under my feet, and reminded me that it would always be there in times of need. That is the power that music holds for all of us.

You in this graduating class are now leaving the school’s nest and will soon step out into the professional music world. You might perform as soloist, play in an orchestra, form a chamber music group, or teach. You may surprise yourselves and be good at talking or writing about music or starting your own concert series.

But why am I suggesting all of these possibilities when classical music is dying? At least that’s what I’ve been hearing for the last thirty years. There was a drawing in the New Yorker magazine a long time ago depicting a desolate back alley littered with empty cans and bottles. The caption underneath was: “Life without Mozart”. I cannot imagine a life without Mozart or Bach or Beethoven or Schubert or Schumann or Mendelssohn or Brahms or Tchaikovsky or Bartok or Stravinsky. I refuse to believe that classical music is dying, but it certainly is changing as all things inevitably do. We live in a new world of breathtaking technological advances that are altering the way we think and feel; and also what music we listen to.

You’ve heard the joke about the so-called “new” Russians, Igor and Ivan, who meet on the street. The “new” Russians are the ones whose recently acquired wealth far outstrips their education.

“Ivan,” Igor asks, “do you know who Mozart is?”

“Nyet”, says Ivan.

“Well then, what about Bach and Beethoven? Do you know who they are?”

“Nyet again,” says Ivan. “Who are these guys, anyway?”

“I’m surprised at your ignorance, Ivan. They’re the guys who write music for cell phones.”

So, graduates, this is your world—the world of cell phones and the internet, of voice recognition and instant access on YouTube to everything from violinist Joseph Joachim’s 1903 recordings to present day composer Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir in which he brings some several thousand individual voices around the globe together in a cyber internet choir. Be curious rather than suspicious of this new world. Examine it! Accept it! Use it! And don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself when the spark of an utterly new idea suddenly hits you. If I told you that a deaf percussionist could have a brilliant solo career, you’d ask me to have my head examined. But that is exactly what Evelyn Glennie, the Scottish virtuoso percussionist has done. Mark Wood, who graduated from Juilliard as a traditional violinist, plays a seven string electric violin called “The Viper” with his rock band. Three students from the Curtis Institute of Music, Nicolas Kendall and Zachary de Pue, violins, and Ranaan Meyer, double bass, decided to turn their jam sessions for fun into Time for Three. The group’s charisma, enthusiasm, and seemingly limitless musical boundaries have made them a hot property on the concert circuit. And by the way, they can play Mozart beautifully.

Many years ago, a documentary film called High Fidelity was being made about our Guarneri String Quartet in rehearsal, travel, recording, and performance. The film crew seemed to show up everywhere—in New York City, Tampa, Florida, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Baden-Baden, Germany, and even Venice, Italy. I asked the producer, Wally Scheuer, who was putting up the money for High Fidelity as he had for many other documentaries, whether the filming wasn’t costing a great deal. Absolutely, Wally told me. Not only that, Wally confessed. He had lost money on every film he’d ever produced, including From Mao to Mozart which won an academy award. “Then why are you doing it, Wally?”, I asked. Wally thought about it for a moment and then he said, “I guess I just want to leave a few footprints in the sand before leaving this earth”.

I always remembered Wally’s words. Wouldn’t every one of us like to leave a few footprints in the sand before we’re gone? And I can’t help thinking that you young musicians with diplomas in your hands are about to make some significant footprints of your own.

Once again, graduating class, I congratulate you on this memorable day in your lives.

Now, get to work!

April 1, 2012
From the Music Desk: Arnold Steinhardt To Form New String Quartet

Arnold Steinhardt, first violinist of the Guarneri String Quartet that retired in 2009, has announced plans to form a new string quartet. Mr. Steinhardt recently told Hartz-4-Artz reporter N. Nam Trebor that he deeply misses the great string quartet literature after having played in the Guarneri Quartet for 45 years.

Steinhardt’s decision has caused some surprise in chamber music circles that he would again form a quartet after the Guarneri’s distinguished and long running career. There have also been lifted eyebrows over his choice for the new group’s name: The Steinhardt String Quartet. Steinhardt said that unlike the Guarneri and most other contemporary quartets that operate on a democratic basis, he plans to revert to a model more in fashion during the first half of the twentieth century. He pointed to the Busch and Capet String Quartets of that era that not only took their names from each group’s first violinist but also their powerful and unique musical vision. “Democracy is a messy and time consuming business,” Steinhardt explained at his Manhattan apartment where the interview took place. “After having played quartets for almost half a century, I feel that I have the wisdom and experience to run the show myself.”

One member of a high profile string quartet who requested anonymity expressed dismay over Steinhardt’s most recent quartet enterprise. “This goes against every democratic principal we hold sacred in the string quartet medium,” he said. “You’ve heard of the iPhone and the iPad. Never mind The Steinhardt String Quartet. Why doesn’t Arnold simply call his new group the iString Quartet since he seems to regard himself as the only one of any importance in the group.”

Steinhardt brushed off this kind of criticism with a laugh. “I’ve managed to find three people to join me who have voiced no objections whatsoever to the Quartet’s name or philosophy, and who apparently will agree without comment to all my musical ideas. You might call this a benign dictatorship but I call it the best of all possible worlds.”

The Steinhardt String Quartet, which plans to begin booking concerts immediately, has yet to release any information about its other three members. The press poster below is the first to be released by the new group. Arnold Steinhardt is second from the left with the sunglasses.

I don’t remember much at all about most of my teachers but I certainly remember the very best ones. Take Mrs. Kindall, my sixth grade elementary school teacher who was tall, slender, and could turn you to stone with a look. On the first day of class she told us that everything would be fine if we worked hard and lived up to her high standards, but if we didn’t, God help us. Scared and thrilled at the same time, I worked my little tail off for Mrs. Kindall and learned a great deal.

Sixth Grade Class Photo; Mrs. Kindall (middle right) and Arnie Steinhardt (back row, far left).

There was Mr. Allen, my wood shop teacher in Junior High School. He held up a hand that had two-and-a-half fingers missing and told us to be careful using the band saw. We were careful. But Mr. Allen also inspired me to make a ping pong table in class—something I thought way beyond my capabilities.

My first violin teacher, Mr. Moldrem, had a special way with children. He taught rhythm by fruit. A quarter note was a pear, two eighth notes an apple, and four sixteenths a watermelon. When I panicked over my first triplet rhythm, Moldrem put me at ease. The triplet was just a pineapple, he explained.

Another violin teacher of mine, Toscha Seidel, a fiery Russian virtuoso, yelled at me when my playing displeased him and even hit me with his bow occasionally for emphasis. It was the if-you-can-survive-me-you-may-have-a-chance-at-a-career school of teaching. But there was another side to that school when Seidel played the violin. The intoxicating warmth of his sound and the unbridled freedom of his music making revealed unimagined possibilities.

It was said of my next teacher, Ivan Galamian, that he could teach a table to play the violin. Step by incremental step, he patiently built violinists into solid, intelligent players, No yelling with Galamian! On the contrary, he spoke so quietly at lessons that the last words of a sentence were often hardly audible. And yet I hung on every one of those words, for when studies with him finished, I knew I would be able to call myself a violinist.

I spent the summer of 1962 with my last teacher, the Hungarian violinist, Joseph Szigeti. He talked of “speaking” music—he called it “parlando”—as a way of infusing notes with clarity and emotional meaning. He asked me to imagine the unique sound of a particular orchestra instrument—say, the bassoon, the clarinet, or the French horn—in order to help capture the essence of a passage. Szigeti encouraged me to use imagery and to reference other music while learning a work: He compared one phrase to an impassioned dialogue between lovers, another to a piano work of Chopin. He told me to differentiate between music that should sound effortless and music in which the audience must sense the performer’s heavy task—Szigeti likened it to the labor of kneading dense dough. To this day, a full fifty years later, I still feed off much that Szigeti said.

Which brings me to something told to me after a concert in Miami, Florida, some years ago. Julian Kreeger, the presenter, generously had invited musicians and friends as was his custom to the Versailles restaurant for some Cuban cuisine. I found myself seated next to a violinist whom I had never met before and have never seen since. We chatted amiably as sangria, shredded pork, fried plantains, black beans, and flan came our way. Soon, I learned that he (let’s call him Sam) had once studied with Jascha Heifetz. I asked Sam the inevitable question about the great violinist’s abilities as a teacher. In answer, he told the following story:

Sam was assigned to play Ernest Chausson’s inspired Poème for Violin and Orchestra in Heifetz’s weekly master class. Naturally, he prepared the work to the absolute best of his ability in the days before. Sam, like all the other students, was in awe of Heifetz as a violinist. That was pressure enough, but Heifetz was also a very strict, even forbidding, and unpredictable teacher. At the class, Sam had barely finished playing the solo violin’s very first note—one that tapered gradually from loud to soft—when Heifetz tapped on the table with his pencil and ordered him to play the note again. Sam did so. Heifetz tapped once more. Sam played the note once more. Heifetz kept tapping with his pencil and Sam kept repeating that single note over and over, at least fifteen or twenty times, without Heifetz ever saying what displeased him. Each time Heifetz stopped him, Sam tried something different in order to figure out what Heifetz wanted. He started the note louder. Then he started it softer. He played it longer, then shorter. He employed a more intense vibrato. Then he tried almost none. Still, nothing pleased the master. Sam began wildly searching for more uncommon ways to play the note in a desperate attempt to satisfy Heifetz—but he never succeeded. The lesson mercifully came to an end when Heifetz signaled for another student to play.

Sam stormed out of the class in a rage. Heifetz had to be the absolute worst teacher in the world. What stupidity to mindlessly make a student play a single note over and over with not a word of explanation. Whenever Sam thought about this experience over the next few years, he would get mad all over again. The Heifetz encounter had not only been mean-spirited but also pointless. Even much more time elapsed, and to Sam’s surprise, he began gradually to see things differently. As nightmarish as that single note trauma had been, there were actually redeeming features to it. Sam reluctantly conceded that Heifetz had proded him to think creatively.

As we sat in the restaurant, Sam told me that twenty years had passed since he had managed to play only one single note of Chausson’s Poème for Heifetz, but he had completely changed his mind about the experience. By saying nothing directly, Heifetz had forced him to open his heart and mind as never before to a much larger world of creativity. Sam told me that he now considered Heifetz to be a great teacher.

So, was Jascha Heifetz a terrible teacher, or a truly inspiring one?

You be the judge.

February 2, 2012

Dear Mr. Heifetz,

Today, February 2nd, is your birthday. Happy birthday, sir, and my deepest thanks for the miracle of your artistry. I have listened to you play the violin throughout my entire life—actually my entire life plus nine months to be exact, since mother attended your concerts and listened to your recordings throughout her pregnancy with me.

In my childhood, I first heard you performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto on our family’s records. The purity and shimmering tenderness of your playing brought unexpected tears to my young eyes. Then, as a young violin student struggling with the daunting difficulties of the instrument, your virtuosity astonished me. My teacher at the time, Peter Meremblum, you may recall had gone to school with you in Russia. Hardly a lesson went by without Meremblum’s making a comment about you. “Heifetz practices six to eight hours a day. Heifetz plays two hours of scales before he even looks at a piece of music.” The Heifetz campaign continued at home. My parents urged me to work harder so that I could become the next Heifetz. And when I slacked off they shook their heads sadly. How could I expect to be a Heifetz when I wasted time playing ball? At student concerts, “He’s no Heifetz” from my dad was the kiss of death.

The steady flow of comments was a testimony to your playing. You of all people know how difficult the violin is and that only a precious few have truly mastered it. Yet you had something beyond this. They say that an accident takes place when several unlikely things converge at the very same moment. You were the perfect example of a statistical improbability, or better said, a divine accident—the confluence of an ideal violinist’s body, an uncommon musical gift, and an obsessive need for perfection on every level. But there was something more. You seemed to have the nervous system of a humming bird: you could execute the minutest details at breakneck speed, shift moods in a split second, and recklessly dare all where others were prudently cautious. I listened to your recordings in disbelief. It was simply not possible for a human being to play with such wizardry. I despaired of ever even remotely approaching your level.

For a brief time as a teenager, though, I dared to think otherwise. I liked to play a little game with you, Mr. Heifetz, putting my assigned music on the stand and your rendition on the record player. It might be any number of pieces I worked on—Tchaikowsky’s Violin Concerto, Saint-Saëns’ Havanaise, or Sarasate’s Gypsy Airs. First I listened to you, shaking my head in wonder. Then I practiced the same piece myself. At the outset, the gap between us seemed too immense to cross, but with work I improved, and with improvement my spirits soared. I was catching up. Why, I was almost as good as you! Time to swagger over to the record player and listen to you again—you whose fingers moved so effortlessly, whose phrasing was like liquid mercury, whose playing seared with white heat one moment and teased playfully the next. “Jascha, Jascha”, I muttered despairingly as the record ended. You reigned over every would-be violinist, inspiring the industrious, crushing hope for those not supremely gifted, and stalking the lazy.

Finally, I heard you in person. Small, slender, but immaculately dressed, you stepped out onto the stage with a minimum of gesture. You did not accept our welcoming applause with deep bows but merely tilted your head in our direction. As you stood in front of the Los Angeles Philharmonic waiting for your solo entrance, you hardly moved, and even when you began to play, there were no excessive gestures, no grandstanding for the public, only those motions necessary to play the violin. Visually, you gave off a feeling of reserve, even aloofness, and yet the perfection of your delivery and the range of expression were astonishing. You challenged the most difficult of passages by rushing headlong into them—a display of fearlessness that took my breath away. Yet the lyrical moments had such tenderness and sensitivity that I wanted to weep. It was a performance of fire and shimmering light delivered in a container made out of ice.

Other violin virtuosos engaged me differently than you. When I listened to Fritz Kreisler, someone I know you admired greatly and who shares your birth date, I could easily imagine a benign and loving 19th century world lit by candlelight. The Hungarian violinist, Joseph Szigeti, my last teacher, affected me no less deeply but quite differently with his keen intellect and touching nobility. But when you played, Mr. Heifetz, my heart raced and the palms of my hands broke out in sweat. The improbability of your performances was almost too much to bear.

I risked listening to you only occasionally as my years in music school came to an end and I prepared for a concert career. Your playing was too seductive, too hypnotic. I wanted to sound like you—a common if forgivable trait in young players under the spell of a great artist. It was, of course, an impossibility, but also highly inadvisable. There could be only one Heifetz. My job was to become Steinhardt, whoever he might turn out to be and however long that would take.

Last February, a weekend seminar devoted to you took place in Athens, Georgia. Pianist Seymour Lipkin and I played a recital that included Dreams in the Twilight by Richard Strauss, an unpublished transcription of yours. The next day, God’s Fiddler, a new documentary about you, was shown. Afterwards, there was a panel discussion with Seymour Lipkin who had performed with you for U.S. soldiers during the Second World War (remember that scrawny but immensely gifted kid with the big glasses?), John and John Anthony Maltese, father and son, who are writing a book about you, Peter Rosen, the film’s producer, and yours truly. We had a lively enough discussion about you as a violinist, artist, and personality, but I couldn’t help thinking that you’ve been the subject of similar if less formal conversations over the course of my entire adult life. How many times have we musicians gathered together during rehearsal breaks, back stage before concerts, or over dinner and drinks to talk breathlessly about your performances of say, Paganini’s Perpetual Motion, Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, Brahms’ Violin Concerto, Bach’s Chaconne, or easily dozens and dozens of other works.

Several of us who revere you, Mr. Heifetz, have coined an expression for that rare individual in any field, be it music, sports, chess, dance, etc., who has reached your exalted pinnacle of excellence. “He’s a real Jascha”, we’ll say, conferring our highest possible praise. In your case, however, that pinnacle apparently came with a price. We rejoiced reading about your earliest days as a child prodigy and loved seeing the home movies of you as a wildly successful and fun loving young man. But then came painful stories about how you began to change over the years. Jack Pfeiffer, who was both our Guarneri String Quartet’s and your record producer at RCA for several years, told us that you once called him to discuss your latest recording project. When the conversation ended, Jack apparently asked you how you were. “I called you,” you said. “You call me if you want to know how I am”.

Most of us would find it hard to imagine how much the public’s expectations and your self-imposed standards must have pressed in on you. Perhaps your iron-fisted resolve was what inadvertently began to separate you from people. Perhaps it led you, along with the devotion and kindness you often showed to your students, to become quirky, suspicious, and mistrustful of many of your friends and colleagues.

And yet, year after year, and despite whatever else was taking place in your life, you continued to play the violin like a God for me, for us. Seymour Lipkin said that despite the highly dangerous circumstances of the war raging nearby, not once in the dozens of concerts you generously gave for United States troops did you play less than your very best. Perhaps, it was only through the violin that you could truly communicate from your heart to each one of ours.

Although you passed away in 1987, I still listen to your records. Each time you play, my heart races, the palms of my hands begin to sweat, and I shake my head in wonder.

Happy birthday, and thank you, Mr. Heifetz. You are a real Jascha!

Well, yes. I must have been over forty years old at the time. But let me explain. I have very mixed feelings about the metronome, mainly because it’s so… metronomic. Is there anything in our lives that has the exact, undeviating pulse of a metronome? Even the beating heart at rest has a certain amount of variation to it—so does the stride of a long-distance runner, Ravel’s Bolero, a Rock and Roll beat, Old Faithful geyser, and even the earth’s daily turn around the sun, be it ever so minimal. Then why do we put such faith in the metronome?

It wasn’t always this way, at least not until 1815 when Johann Maelzel patented a device to be used as a tool for musicians under the title, an “Instrument/machine for the improvement of all musical performances called the metronome”. The word “metronome” is of Greek origin: metron = measure, nomos = regulating. How did musicians keep a steady beat before 1815? And did they even want to? There are accounts of Ludwig van Beethoven, ironically the first notable composer to indicate specific metronome markings in his music, playing his own compositions on the piano with extreme freedom—in effect defying the very gadget that he found so useful.

I suppose composers put down metronome markings in order to suggest an ideal tempo. But is there such a thing as an ideal tempo, and if so can a composer pull it out of thin air, or in Beethoven’s case, being stone deaf, out of his inner ear, especially after the notes are already written down on paper? Even more confusing to performers is the fact that many modern day composers such as Bartok and Shostakovich have often brazenly ignored their own works’ tempo markings when recording them. Worse still, you might not even like their tempos. I recently patrolled YouTube looking for performances of Edvard Grieg’s Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, a piano work I happen to love. To my surprise, I found a recording of Grieg himself performing the work—but much too fast!!!

It’s fun to bad mouth the metronome but I must confess having used one long before I ever considered buying the thing. The traditional tempo indications such as Adagio for slow, Andante for a walking tempo, and Presto for fast give one only a general idea, but a quarter note = 126 or 82 or any other number allows for no wiggle room. The metronome’s pulse is non negotiable. That steady tic-tic-tic-tic helped steady my rhythm at its shakiest and at least gave me an entry-level tempo to consider. Easiest, of course, was to shamelessly bum a metronome off my fellow musicians, or that being unavailable, to rely on the metronome by another name, the clock. Since 60, for example, indicates a beat of one second duration, musicians know the useful trick of saying or thinking “one thousand, two thousand, three thousand” to pretty much give “one second, two seconds, three seconds”. Sing John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever and voilà: 120 to the beat. Hum your favorite disco song and you should be at 126.

These days, I tend to regard metronome markings a bit more cavalierly. For example, I’ve been working on Bela Bartok’s Sonata for Solo Violin lately. In practicing Melodia, the Sonata’s third movement, I had carelessly ignored Bartok’s marking of 90-92 to the eighth note, but also his more traditional tempo indication of “Adagio”. I simply played what I felt. But when I checked, my tempo happened to fall quite close to Bartok’s metronome number. This leads me to believe that while 90-92 to the beat gives an exact tempo and “Adagio” a more general one, the intrinsic structure of music, its DNA if you will, has an inevitable tempo embedded in it as dictated by the notes alone. Of course, my “inevitable” tempo might not be your “inevitable” tempo, otherwise we would descend into a PC world of tempo sameness—a dreary thing to contemplate.

So is the metronome friend or foe? I’ll let the pianist Arthur Rubinstein weigh in with the last word on this. In the early stages of our Guarneri String Quartet’s career, we had the extreme good fortune to record ten different chamber music works with Rubinstein and to perform with him in New York City, London, and Paris. It was a chance of a lifetime to make music with a man who was more than a great pianist and more than a fine musician. Rubinstein was an artist who could create magic when he played. Yes, he produced a famously opulent sound and his musical taste was impeccable, but what struck me most was the unerring suppleness of Rubinstein’s phrasing and his ability to tease out the very essence of a rhythmic figure. Rubinstein possessed a kind of joyful daring in the way he played with time.

In preparation for our Paris concert, we rehearsed for an entire day at Rubinstein’s elegant Parisian home. With a backdrop of impressionist art hanging from the walls, we worked through the entire program, stopping only for a gourmet lunch served by Rubinstein’s wife, and for hugely entertaining stories that he showered on us between movements. As always, Rubinstein’s playing was alive with intelligence and fantasy, but often with a distinct disregard for the printed tempos. At one point, we in the Guarneri Quartet stopped playing, gathered around the piano, and pointed out to Rubinstein that we were not doing the indicated metronome marking in one particular movement of Fauré’s C Minor Piano Quartet. Rubinstein thought about it for a moment and looked up at us slyly. Then he said, “Fauré only meant the metronome marking for the very first measure, you know. After that, you’re on your own.”

Now that I myself teach, I try to look for fresh ways to pass on my teachers’ long ago advice about performing. At some point, it occurred to me that music making and acting have something in common, and that the similarities might be useful as a teaching tool. When a student plays solidly but too carefully, I might suggest that he is like an actor unwilling to take chances with his role. If a student plays a concerto with a timid sound, I encourage her to speak her lines to the very last row of a three-thousand-seat auditorium. If quiet notes tend to disappear for lack of articulation, I sometimes accuse the student of mumbling, or of carelessly dropping syllables, or of failing to cultivate a stage whisper. And when a student plays every single note clearly and solidly yet fails to make a musical impression, I occasionally challenge him to be the actor who looks into himself more deeply in order to tell his story with relevance and conviction.

But if acting and music making are indeed kissing cousins, shouldn’t a musician capable of turning a beautiful phrase also be able to deliver a few lines of dialogue successfully? I’ve never dreamed about being an actor but the idea of having an acting role of any kind intrigued me. Would I be any good at it, I wondered. The unanswered question dropped quickly out of my mind as being merely theoretical. When on earth would I ever have the opportunity to act?

Then, the movie “Music of the Heart” arrived on the scene. The film tells the true and inspiring story of Roberta Guaspari, a highly gifted and charismatic violin teacher in New York City’s public schools, who was let go when the city’s arts budget shrank. In gritty response, Roberta created Opus 118, a not-for-profit organization, to help her continue teaching and to start a Harlem community music school. Roberta was eventually reinstalled as a violin teacher in the public schools. My wife, Dorothea, served as both photographer and head of the music school’s board for many years, and I was able to enlist the participation of my violinist friends and colleagues in fund raising concerts. In the film, Meryl Streep played the role of Roberta, Jane Leeves played my wife, and to my astonishment, I was asked to play myself in two small scenes. After reading my lines for Wes Craven, the film’s director, I asked him how I had done. He regarded me quizzically. “You’re playing yourself, you know. You don’t have to do anything.”

It wasn’t that simple, at least in my mind. The first of my scenes had me talking to the violinist Itzhak Perlman on the telephone. No words were indicated in the script. No words, no problem. In the second scene, however, I had two or three sentences of dialogue with my wife as played by Leeves. Practice makes perfect, you would think, but the more I practiced those simple sentences in the comfort of my living room, the more challenging they became. The words had to be clear, even the individual syllables. Most importantly, the meaning of those sentences had to be conveyed convincingly. It seemed strikingly like what I strive for on the violin every time I practice a concerto, a virtuoso showpiece, or a string quartet. Simply put, notes traded places with words, sentences with phrases, and the essential meaning of speech with that of music. Suddenly, parallels between music and acting that I regularly foist on my unsuspecting students had come home to roost.

One word in particular gave me trouble. My response to a line of Dorothea’s regarding the plight of Roberta and her young violin students was to be “Uh-oh”. It seemed bland to say “Uh-oh” in an even and neutral voice. I had to give it some character, some oomph. So I tried “UH- oh”. Was that better? I wasn’t sure. How about waiting a beat between “UH” and “oh”, as in “UH– oh”. It was certainly more forceful. What about waiting two beats, then. “UH— oh”. Hmmm. I was becoming confused. Let me try something completely different, I thought. I’ll place the emphasis on the second syllable: “Uh-OH”. At that point, Dorothea called out from the next room. “You sound absolutely ridiculous”.

During filming, we shot the telephone scene first—the one in which I expected no speaking lines. To my surprise, the director, Wes Craven, asked me to say something to Itzhak Perlman on the phone—something “conversational” as he put it. The cameras rolled and in my un-preparedness, I blurted out: “Hello, Itzhak. It’s Arnold. You know, the other fiddler.” as if, silly idea, we were the only two violinists in the entire world. I have no idea how the second scene went although we repeated it a few times. I was in a daze.

When “Music of the Heart” was finally released a year later, I sat in the movie theatre relishing that Roberta Guaspari’s inspiring story had made it to the big screen. But I was also nervous about my cameo appearances. Most specifically, how was “Uh-oh” going to come across? Would it have meaning, nuance, even a touch of humor, or irony, or drama? This was my acting debut, after all. Suddenly, there I was on the screen holding the phone and saying, “Itzhak. It’s Arnold. You know, the other fiddler.” to Itzhak. My delivery was passable enough. The next time I saw Itzhak in person he even greeted me as “The other fiddler”. But what about “Uh-oh”, my big moment? I waited and waited as Roberta’s story unfolded but “Uh-oh” never appeared. It seems that Wes Craven had deleted the entire scene. Was the scene ultimately unnecessary? Or was my rendering of “Uh-oh” (shudder) below par?

Too late now, but maybe I should have had an acting coach who would have told me when I mumbled, when I didn’t project, and where and how I should reach down deeper inside myself. Then again, the coach might have simply demanded that I speak my lines with the eloquence of a great violinist.

I’m often intrigued by people’s desire to have themselves serve as living billboards for places they’ve visited, personal philosophy, or downright silliness. Some writing is pointed: “Continue drinking until the economy improves”. Some merely goofy: “Up to now this is the oldest I’ve ever been”. So what exactly did the sanitation worker’s T-shirt say? For a split second, one odoriferous can remained still enough in his hands for me to read the words: “If the music is too loud, you’re too old”.

I stopped licking. Why, that T-shirt could be talking about me. I hate loud music. I’m quite old. Worse still, the T-shirt proclaimed that I was too old, or at least too old to enjoy loud music. But what’s so desirable about loud music? My friend, Jill, once complained to the manager of a trendy New York restaurant that she was unable to converse with her companion over lunch because of the blaring music and general noise ricocheting off the tiled walls. He told Jill that she had no idea about the restaurant business. Then he let her in on a secret. Young people are attracted to places with ear splitting music because they feel that’s where the action is.

Should I worry about these young people? After all, eating in restaurants with loud music can lead to drinking in bars with loud music and that, as we all know, can ultimately lead to the mother of loud things: rock concerts. I’ve only been to a rock concert once in my life. My son, Alexej, invited me to hear Radiohead and several other groups perform in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. I paid $115 to join 60,000 other people in this sold out event, proving the lie to the idea that young people don’t go to classical music concerts because tickets are too expensive. (Why weren’t there 60,000 people at our last Guarneri String Quartet concert?)

Frankly, I prefer Mozart’s Requiem or Schubert’s A Major opus posthumous Piano Sonata to Radiohead’s music, but no matter. Thom Yorke, the lead singer, crooned appealingly with his distinctive tenor voice and the band had personality to burn, but the decibel level overwhelmed me. Even with the earplugs that Alexej had thoughtfully provided, Radiohead’s amplified sound coming out of huge speaker banks stationed at regular intervals throughout the park was painfully loud. Was I too old for this? Maybe. Was I by far the oldest person at that moment in Golden Gate Park? Definitely. The throngs of young people standing tightly packed all around me weaved back and forth and mouthed the words to Radiohead’s songs for the entire night. They clearly loved the music. Between numbers, I overheard snippets of conversation comparing the merits of “The Bends”, “OK Computer”, and other of the group’s albums. This audience would probably go to many rock concerts throughout their lives.

Sound intensity is measured as sound pressure level (SPL) in a logarithmic decibal (dB) scale and noise can cause permanent damage hearing loss at chronic exposures equal to an average SPL of 85 dB or higher for an eight-hour period. A few dB examples:

Gunshot: 140 to 170 dB
Jet takeoff: 140 dB
Rock concert: 110 to 120 dB
Stereo headphones: 100 dB
Lawnmower: 90 dB

Our hearing is threatened at work, at play, at rock concerts, and even at the symphony orchestra. Orchestral brass players and those musicians sitting directly in front of them must be exposed to dBs not much below those during a jet’s takeoff. Come to think of it, who knows whether the clang of cans and the garbage truck motor’s constant drone didn’t put that driver with the T-shirt at hearing risk. Even I, playing this little thing called a violin all my life, may have suffered some hearing loss from the surprisingly loud and piercing sound that rushes day after day only inches past my ears.

I finished my ice cream cone just as the garbage truck noisily drove off. I’m comfortable with the driver’s “If the music is too loud, you’re too old” message. That’s me. But what about younger generations who willingly, even blissfully expose themselves to high decibel danger? Let’s hope that they won’t be sporting T-shirts in their old age with this sad message: “Rock concert fan. Can’t hear you!”; or with just a single word: “What?”

I accepted John’s offer eagerly. Without quite knowing what I was getting into, I must have hoped for another late Beethoven experience. John asked whether we could choose the original last movement, the Grosse Fuge (Great Fugue) rather than the one Beethoven later wrote as a replacement. He explained that the Grosse Fuge was so shocking and unintelligible on first hearing that Beethoven’s publisher asked him to write a substitute movement. My pulse quickened. The Grosse Fuge might just be my next other-worldly adventure. John Dalley, first violin, I second, Jerry Rosen, viola, and Michael Grebanier, cello, four highly enthusiastic but inexperienced students, began rehearsing soon after. Opus 130 has six movements rather than the usual four. One by one we read as best we could through each of them.

Manuscript of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, arranged for piano four hands, 1832, Juilliard School of Music Manuscript Archive

Four slow, quiet, but suspenseful notes in octaves and unison opened the first movement’s introduction, Adagio ma non troppo. The voices blossomed gently into rich harmony and flowed forward in stately, almost processional fashion. Then the main Allegro burst forth with notes rushing headlong under a five-note figure that seemed like a military call to action. (Was Beethoven summoning us?) A second theme began as soaring melody and then veered into scurrying clusters of sound; and throughout the movement, shards of the opening introduction appeared again and again as evocative flashbacks. Imagination. Substance. Daring. This was the Beethoven of my dreams. I expected nothing less from the other movements as I turned the page.

To my surprise, I discovered that Beethoven had decided instead on fun and games for the second movement. The Presto’s mood was sparkling, giddy, even recklessly jaunty, but then came yet another surprise. The party mood was jarringly interrupted mid-way by unabashed buffoonery in the form of odd scales, eccentrically drawn-out notes, and peculiar outbursts—a circus clown played the fool for laughs here. The movement’s high spirits were irresistible at that first hearing, but also inexplicable. How could these first two starkly different, seemingly disconnected movements exist side by side?

The third movement presented us with an altogether different mood. Clippity-clop went the good-natured and affable opening rhythm. Fragments of good-natured melody surfaced here and there, interspersed with beads of playful running notes. We had left the circus (on horseback?) and were now traveling leisurely through bucolic countryside.

With the fourth movement, I braced myself for yet another surprise, but not much of one was forthcoming. The Allegro assai, subtitled Alla danza tedesca (In the manner of a German dance), was nothing more or less than a simple rustic melody repeated in various disguises. You might say that our horses had happened on a peaceful summer outing filled with singing and dancing by the local inhabitants. The movement exuded warmth and goodwill, but that unsettled me on first reading. Where was the visionary Beethoven, the man whose late quartets by reputation traveled into unexplored depths of feeling and experience?

The Cavatina, Adagio molto espressivo, the movement that followed, began with a simple rising and falling of the second violin’s first notes, and then eased into hymn-like four-voiced music of heart-felt beauty. The word Cavatina originally described a short song of simple character, but Beethoven re-imagined the form. The extended opening section, moving as it was, then led into one of the most deeply affecting moments in music. While the lower three voices laid down a ghostly pattern of repeated triplets, the first violin wove imploring but tentative notes far above, almost none of which coincided with the ongoing rhythm. The first violin served as a proxy for someone who seemingly had lapsed into disorientation and hopelessness. The effect was one of gathering desperation. Beethoven marked the word “Beklemmt” above this passage, loosely translated as “oppressed” or “anguished”. The music, almost unbearable in its utterly gripping message, finally released its hold and returned us to a slightly altered version of the original material. Then the movement ended with several pulsating chords dying away in melancholy resignation. Beethoven, although deaf at the time, was said to have wept upon hearing the Cavatina in his inner ear. This then, was my long wished for space travel—a voyage not outward bound but rather one into the recesses of the heart, mind, and soul.

Guarneri Quartet playing the Cavatina, Adagio molto espressivo

And then from this exalted state, Beethoven opened the trap door and dropped us four wide-eyed students into a world of near chaos for fifteen minutes. The Grosse Fuge, the sixth and final movement of Opus 130, began with a twenty-four bar Overtura that limped breathlessly with strange fits and starts to the fugue’s beginning. The fugue itself, actually a double fugue with two subjects, was violent and dissonant. Dramatically leaping tones and slashing cross-rhythms threatened to burst into anarchy. A series of extended sections in contrasting keys, rhythms, and tempos followed the fugue. Then small fragments of the fugue subjects made their quirky entrances before the movement finally gathered momentum and rushed with manic elation to its end. At first, critics called the Grosse Fuge “incomprehensible as Chinese” and an “indecipherable, uncorrected horror”. Much later, Igor Stravinsky saw it more clearly “as an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever”. In years to come, I would begin to understand the Grosse Fuge in sober structural terms, but as its last notes rang out for the very first time, a feeling came over me that no other work has elicited before or since. The Grosse Fuge was more than music. It was an overwhelming act of nature.

John, Jerry, Michael, and I worked on Opus 130 for the better part of the school year. We discussed, we argued, we reveled in the miracle this music was, and we groaned over the technical and musical challenges it posed. Finally, we performed Opus 130 in Curtis Hall. In the Menno mosso e moderato section of the Grosse Fuge, a moment of peace in the eye of the storm that surrounds it, I was suddenly overcome with emotion. We had worked hard and the performance was going reasonably well. I looked up in gratitude at my friends who had shared in this great adventure. Mistake. When I looked down again at the sea of notes before me, I had lost my place. For a few seconds that seemed like an eternity, I struggled to find my way back into the music. My lapse of concentration was embarrassing at the time but I look back at it now with different eyes. In 1964, only some six years later, John Dalley, Michael Tree, David Soyer, and I formed the Guarneri String Quartet that would perform Opus 130 and a host of other quartet masterpieces for the next 45 years. Without consciously realizing it, that first late-Beethoven encounter had changed my orientation and headed me toward the all-engrossing world of string quartets. I had not lost my place. I had found it.

The concept of other worldliness or outer space seems apt in describing the uncommon elements of Opus 130 but in fact, the Cavatina is literally traveling away from earth to distant parts of the universe as I write. The Budapest String Quartet’s rendition of the Cavatina was chosen by NASA as the last piece on the “golden record”, a phonograph record containing a broad sample of Earth’s common sounds, languages, and music. The record was sent into outer space with the two Voyager probes in the hope that intelligent extraterrestrial life would eventually discover it. I can’t help wondering what the aliens will think about that “Beklemmt” moment.

Over the years, things having little or nothing to do with the case’s original protective function gradually have slipped in. Something insignificant—a minor headache before a rehearsal perhaps—might have started it. Why cram a bottle of aspirins in my pants pocket when it could be stashed in my violin case so easily, I thought. There was, after all, plenty of room amidst all that violin paraphernalia. Once a beachhead had been established with the aspirins, however, a new world of possibilities opened up. What about my vitamin pills? They fit cozily in the aspirin bottle. And what about my cough drops, after-dinner mints and later, cholesterol pills? I managed to squeeze them all into that humble little bottle. In time, the pharmacy department in my case expanded to include toothbrush and toothpaste, extra comb, nail-clippers, file, safety pins, band-aids, facial tissues, reading and sunglasses, sewing kit, cuff links, and razor—all without appreciatively increasing its weight and relieving me of carrying around an extra bag.

These were practical and therefore, one could argue, justifiable additions that filled the pockets in the lower half of my violin case. But as time went on, the case’s upper half traditionally reserved for bows began to acquire things of less obvious use—photos and postcards to be exact. It began when my friend and mentor, the violinist Alexander Schneider, sent me a postcard portrait of Niccolo Paganini. Sascha, as Schneider was called, scrawled on the back of the card for my entertainment: “If you want to be the next Paganini, why are you reading this? Go practice!!” Without exactly knowing why, I placed this atmospheric portrait by Eugéne Delacroix amongst the bows of my case. Perhaps, a role model awaiting me every time I opened the case plus Sascha’s exhortation to “Go practice!!” would do some good. Soon, a publicity shot of Jascha Heifetz I picked up somewhere in my travels joined Mr. Paganini. Not longer after, came photos of violinists Eugene Ysaÿe and Fritz Kreisler, and then in the last remaining space I propped up a snapshot of the cellist Pablo Casals conducting the Casals Festival Orchestra with Alexander Schneider as concertmaster and a bearded skinny young man (me) standing next to him. Being greeted by this panoply of great artists every morning as I prepared to practice did as much for my morale as aspirins did for my headaches.

There was more, however. A Chinese violin student one day gave me a lovely little Buddha carved from grayish stone. She told me that rubbing the Buddha’s belly would bring me good luck. In it went next to the aspirin bottle. Then came a present of a beautiful hand fashioned out of silver. Many Jews believe this so-called hamsa hand brings its owner happiness, luck, health, and good fortune. It slipped in nicely under my cake of rosin. Soon after came an interesting looking piece of clear quartz from my wife, Dorothea. She showed me an article stating that clear quartz harmonizes and balances, enhances energy and thought, and purifies the spiritual, mental, and physical. I wedged it in nicely between the mute and strings. Then, at an outdoor market in Mexico, I found a lovely little pair of hands delicately fashioned out of silver. Someone once told me that keeping such an item would protect me from injury, not a bad thing considering my profession. I placed the hands next to the tuning fork.

Photo: Dorothea von Haeften

When I go places with my violin case, I have the confidence of knowing that I’m prepared for just about anything. No problem if I pop an E string while flailing away at Beethoven’s Grosse Fuga. I’ve got two or three extras on hand. Lose a button on my concert shirt and the sewing kit comes to the rescue. Then there’s that gallery of musical heroes looking down at me from between the violin bows. It is not that hard to conjure up their playing in my inner ear. Jascha Heifetz’s improbable combination of technical perfection and searing heat makes my heart race and my hands sweat. Fritz Kreisler’s loving sound renders the world benign and open-armed. Eugene Ysaÿe exudes style and flair while Niccolo Paganini with the aid of Sascha Schneider whispering impishly in his ear urges more practice. Lastly, there is Pablo Casals whose noble vision of music has the authority and inevitably of something sculpted in stone for the ages. When I open my case, they are all there coaxing me to stretch the limits of my fingers, my brain, and my heart.

These items ranging from the mundane to the more serious have been permanent fixtures in my violin case for years. I would be loath to let them go. But then I think about the Buddha, the quartz, the hamsa, and the silver hands. Do I really need them? Some of my friends tease me about these objects. They say I’m superstitious, something I strongly deny. I bravely walk under ladders. I let black cats cross my path without getting upset. Still, under my smug cloak of modern-day skepticism may lurk buried feelings I know little about. Perhaps that Buddha and those other comforting objects will come in handy some day. I’ll keep them for a while longer. Just in case.

In August, 1957, Jaime Laredo and I, two young violinists hoping for a career in music, visited the Marlboro Music School for the first time. We wanted to see for ourselves the place where outstanding musicians young and old, famous and unknown, gathered in idyllic surroundings to play chamber music all summer long. Jaime and I had driven from Meadowmount, a string camp in the Adirondack Mountains where we had just spent the summer. Listening to the concert that evening in Marlboro’s unprepossessing dining room, I was struck by the difference between the two places. At Meadowmount, we spent hours daily learning to play the violin as well as possible. At Marlboro, the magic of the performances we were hearing brought home why any of us learn a musical instrument to begin with. Such was the impression left with me that now, over fifty years later, I can still remember the program: Brahms Horn Trio, Opus 40, Beethoven Clarinet Trio, Opus 11, and Schubert Octet, Opus 166, and I remember some of the concert’s performers as well: Rudolf Serkin, pianist, Alexander Schneider, violinist, Herman Busch, cellist, Harold Wright, clarinetist, and Myron Bloom, French horn. The next afternoon’s closing summer concert was also indelibly etched in my mind with a performance of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, Opus 80. Rudolf Serkin, one of the school’s founders, was the piano soloist. Serkin’s playing seemed more like an awe-inspiring act of nature rather than simply a fine performance. I left the concert that day feeling as if I had arrived at a place inhabited by musical giants.

Rudolf Serkin, pianist, and Arnold Steinhardt, violinist, in conversation at Marlboro, 1980. Photo by Dorothea von Haeften.

Two years later, I was invited to be a participant at Marlboro, and to my astonishment, the school expected me, an inexperienced violinist of twenty-two, to make music with those very giants. Almost immediately, Alexander Schneider, Sascha as he was known to everyone, informed three of us that we were to study Bartok’s Second String Quartet, Opus 17, with him, a work none of us knew. As second violinist of the Budapest String Quartet, Sascha had performed the Bartok innumerable times. During rehearsals, Sascha coaxed, advised, admonished, and sometimes yelled instructions concerning complex rhythms, shifting tempos, and the music’s essential nature. The three of us were swept along by his energy and forceful vision of the work. Not long after, we walked out onto the dining room stage and implausibly gave a creditable performance of Bartok’s Second String Quartet. The great Marlboro experience had just begun for me. Over the next eleven years, I studied innumerable works with innumerable musicians and performed thirty-eight times.

The images of my past Marlboro experiences come flooding back easily if I let them: Flutist Marcel Moyse, another founding member, leaning over my viola part of the Debussy Trio for Flute, Harp, and Viola and instructing me to ignore a printed crescendo. Debussy himself had told Moyse that he changed his mind about the marking. Violinist Felix Galimir critiquing bar for bar and by memory a performance we had given of Alban Berg’s Quartet, Opus 3. He had worked with Berg personally and knew every note of the quartet intimately. Pablo Casals, the great Catalonian cellist, exhorting me to play Bach with the kind of freedom usually reserved for gypsy violinists. Reading through Beethoven Sonatas with Rudolf Serkin in the great German violinist Adolph Busch’s studio on a hot late summer day, all the while hoping that some of the magic of Serkin’s playing and Busch’s aura would somehow rub off on me.

At Marlboro, we learned from these great mentors, from the inspired chamber music repertoire, and inevitably from each other. Chamber music taught us how to wear many hats—that of a brilliant soloist, of a team ensemble player, and of a humble accompanist—and it demanded that we be able to change those hats quickly and nimbly. It taught us the art of suggesting rather than demanding in rehearsals, and the value of accepting criticism gratefully rather than with hurt feelings. Out of Marlboro’s fertile soil, participants not only became more complete musicians but many crafted life-long chamber music careers as well. Jaime Laredo and I, the two young and curious kids who visited Marlboro in 1957, were among those who eventually formed long lasting professional chamber music ensembles. In 1964, four of us, with Marlboro’s encouragement and guidance, became the Guarneri String Quartet, a group that would perform on the world’s concert stages for the next forty-five years.

Not once in all the years I studied the violin did any of my teachers mention chamber music as an essential part of a young musician’s education. Indeed, I entered the Curtis Institute of Music at the age of seventeen without ever having studied or performed even a single string quartet. I learned years later that several of my violin teachers played chamber music for their personal enjoyment, but my lessons were only about the solo repertoire—concertos, challenging and brilliant etudes, and dazzling show-pieces. That was fine with me. Like many of my violin-playing friends, I wanted to be the next great soloist. And Curtis, geared to be the ultimate training ground for future soloists and top-notch orchestral players, did nothing to dispel that notion. I entered the school in 1954, a time when chamber music was considered more an elective than anything else. My first chamber music experience there, studying Mozart’s G Major String Quartet, K387, with Jascha Brodsky, the first violinist of the Curtis String Quartet, was not a completely happy one. The music was unquestionably attractive, but despite Brodsky’s expert advice and encouragement, I found it highly uncomfortable to play well while having to fit in with three others who often had maddeningly different ideas about Mozart. And Brodsky not only demanded a unified musical concept but he also expected us to play together and in tune at all times. After we had finished studying the work, I concluded that playing string quartets was the equivalent of being put into a musical straight jacket. Better to plug away at those scales, etudes, and the virtuoso repertoire, and dream on about a solo career. Still, chamber music began to surreptitiously sneak up on me and on many of my school friends. It was surprisingly satisfying to gather for music parties in which we read through music late into the night—in the process discovering one by one the miraculous creations of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and on and on. Two of the students with whom I shared those very first encounters with chamber music, John Dalley and Michael Tree, were to become future founding members of the Guarneri Quartet. Having become superficially acquainted with these masterpieces, the natural next step was to study them more seriously at school. How moving it was to finally perform a Brahms two-viola quintet, the Two Cello Quintet of Schubert, or a late Beethoven string quartet.

Once the applause for these student performances had died down, however, it was back to hours of solo repertoire practice in preparation for the competitions we planned to enter and hoped to do well in. Winning a major competition was an important first step for a would-be soloist. Playing chamber music might be deeply gratifying, but not once did I hear any of us planning to play string quartets professionally, and for good reason. You could count on less than the fingers of one hand the number of string quartets making a living in America solely from concert fees. There was the Budapest Quartet, perhaps the very young Juilliard, and then many others that had to supplement their quartet income with teaching and other work.

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of Marlboro in the formation of many professional chamber music ensembles including the Guarneri Quartet. But even more significant is the role it played in changing people’s attitudes about chamber music in general. The classical music profession was a somewhat segregated place when I was in school. Concert managers strongly advised musicians trying to nurture a solo career not to play chamber music in public. They warned that it would send the wrong message. After all, those who performed chamber music were failed soloists, weren’t they. But then Marlboro, established in 1951, arrived on the scene. Word spread quickly amongst music lovers but also to music students everywhere that there was a place in the verdant, rolling hills of Southern Vermont where chamber music of the highest order was being played. What’s more, three of its founding members, Adolph Busch, Rudolph Serkin, and Marcel Moyse were not only great musicians but internationally known and venerated soloists as well. The powerful message broadcast by Busch, Serkin, Moyse, and such revered artists as Pablo Casals who followed at Marlboro was that it was fine to be a soloist, fine to be a chamber musician, and even better to be both.

John Dalley, David Soyer, Michael Tree, and I, four musicians with separate professional lives, kept returning to Marlboro year after year in the early 1960s. It was hard to keep away given the golden opportunity we had to study the great chamber music repertoire thoroughly and at leisure without the pressure of performance, an unheard of phenomenon at most music festivals. (Then and now, only a small percentage of works studied at Marlboro make it to the concert stage.) Often, I would find myself in a group with David, John, or Michael. We admired each other’s playing and got along very well. At some point, the four of us began talking over lunch and between pranks that were an endearing Marlboro fringe benefit about the possibility of forming an ensemble together—but not just any ensemble—a string quartet. Each of us harbored a special love for the string quartet’s enormously rich repertoire and a reverence for the impact that a mere four voices could wield when they joined forces. Albert Einstein once said that things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. That, exactly, is what I felt so acutely years earlier at Marlboro when Sascha had drafted three of us into the study and eventual performance of Bartok’s Second String Quartet. The emotional and substantive effect of four individual voices brought together by a master such as Bartok was staggering. Wouldn’t it be a dream-come-true to start a string quartet?

Rudolf Serkin promised us time the next summer at Marlboro to rehearse on our own, and also presented us with a bottle of champaigne. Sascha Schneider advised us on the dos and don’ts of quartet life (no critiquing after concerts, for example), and offered us a debut concert in New York City for the next season. Four individuals who were drawn into Marlboro’s powerful gravitational field had finally decided on forming what was to become the Guarneri String Quartet. On a late summer day in 1963 when the leaves were already beginning to turn color, the newly constituted quartet, but one still nameless, without a manager, and with no guarantee of a future career, sat down in a tiny music room at Marlboro and read through Mozart’s String Quartet in D Minor, K421. I remember thinking that I had died and gone to heaven, such was the beauty of Mozart and the sense of our four voices bound together in glorious music making. John Dalley laughed when I recalled my memories recently. He thought that those first notes out of our quartet had sounded terrible. It was such a Marlboro moment. At Marlboro, opinions are always flying about along with wadded napkins in the dining hall. A visitor might at any moment overhear: “Must we make that ritard,” or “What? You think Poulenc is a great composer?!”, or “The last movement sounds like we have a train to catch,” or “You’d take Bach if marooned on a desert island? Definitely Schubert for me.” All this—the music making, the discussions, the countless interactions with musicians I deeply admire—is the Marlboro I know and love, the Marlboro that in large part has shaped who I am as a musician.

After an absence of over three decades, I am again a participant in Marlboro. By some sleight of hand, many of us who were once youngsters here are now mentors to the next generation. It is a heavy responsibility but a fulfilling one. Marlboro’s newest young musicians are as gifted as ever. Since returning, I have again and again heard moving performances that transcend polished ensemble and solid musicianship. This “goose bump factor” as I like to think of it is what Marlboro is all about, and this is what the present directors, Mitsiko Uchida and Richard Goode, represent. They are wise and vastly experienced musicians, but above all, they are artists. When all is said and done, it is the magic of their performances at the school (as with Rudolph Serkin’s in past years) that will inspire the new crop of young musicians to search for their own brand of magic. As the Marlboro School prepares to celebrate its sixtieth birthday this year, I have the same feeling I had over a half a century ago. The place is inhabited by musical giants. But I have another thought. Marlboro is the perfect training ground for our future musical giants.