Felix Galimir

Felix Galimir (born May 12, 1910 in Vienna ; † November 10, 1999 in New York City ) was an American violinist of Austrian descent who achieved widespread importance as a chamber musician and music teacher .

Life

Felix Galimir was born in Vienna to Sephardic-Jewish parents. Like his siblings, he received music lessons from an early age. At the age of twelve he began his studies at the New Vienna Conservatory with Adolf Bak (violin) and Simon Pullman (chamber music). Together with his sisters Adrienne, Marguerite and Renée, he founded the Galimir Quartet in 1927 . With the special support of Simon Pullman, this soon developed into an excellent ensemble specializing in new music . After graduating from the conservatory and attending a summer course with Carl Flesch in Baden-Baden (1929), the siblings began intensive concert activities. She tours all over Europe, including Egypt .

The repertoire of the Galimirs mainly included works by composers of the Second Vienna School ( Arnold Schönberg , Alban Berg , Anton von Webern etc.), but also those by other contemporary composers. At Pullman's initiative, they developed Alban Berg's Lyric Suite, which was considered difficult to play, at an early stage . The Galimir Quartet received the Grand Prix du Disque for their first recording (1935) . Before that, Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F major and Darius Milhaud's 7th String Quartet were recorded for the first time under the guidance of the composer.

In addition to being a chamber musician, Felix Galimir was temporarily engaged in various orchestras, such as the Volksoper Orchestra or the Vienna Concert Orchestra founded by Hermann Scherchen . A permanent position with the Vienna Philharmonic failed in 1936 - despite winning the selection process - due to the anti-Semitic attitude of the orchestra members and the board, and the State Secretary for Culture, Hans Pernter , appointed a National Socialist instead.

Invited by Bronisław Huberman to play first violin in the newly founded Palestine Orchestra , Felix Galimir emigrated to Palestine in the same year , which also meant the end of the sibling quartet. A start-up (among others with his sister Renée) in Tel Aviv did not last long, because in 1938 Felix Galimir emigrated to the USA .

From 1939 he played in the NBC Symphony Orchestra in New York , led by Arturo Toscanini . He was a concertmaster until 1954 , interrupted only by his service with the US Army. Soon he founded a new Galimir Quartet, which celebrated successes with different line-ups until 1993.

At the beginning of the 1950s, Felix Galimir began his fruitful activity as a teacher for violin and chamber music, which he practiced with enthusiasm practically until the end of his life. So at City College in New York (1953–1975), at Marlboro Summer College in Vermont (from 1954) and partly in parallel at the Juilliard School of Music in New York (from 1963), at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia (from 1972 ) and at the Mannes College of Music in New York (from 1975).

Felix Galimir died in 1999 at the old age of 89. The many commemorative and tribute events and competitions that have been dedicated to him since then make clear his formative influence on several generations of instrumentalists and ensembles in the USA.

literature

• Regina Thumser: Displaced Musicians: Fates and Networks in Exile 1933–1945. Dissertation. Self-published, Salzburg 1998.
• Josef Reitler : 25 years of the New Vienna Conservatory 1909–1934. New Vienna Conservatory, Vienna 1934.
• David Blum: A violinist already a Legend but still a Dynamo. In: The New York Times . November 3, 1996.
• Allan Kozinn : Felix Galimir, 89, a Violinist Who Taught Generations, Dies. In: The New York Times. November 12, 1999.

Web links

• Works by and about Felix Galimir in the catalog of the German National Library