Background
Galimir, Felix was born on May 20, 1910 in Vienna, Austria. Son of Mosco and Elsa (Russo) Galimir. came to the United States, 1938.
music educator musician violinist
Galimir, Felix was born on May 20, 1910 in Vienna, Austria. Son of Mosco and Elsa (Russo) Galimir. came to the United States, 1938.
He studied with Adolf Bak and Simon Pullman at the Vienna Conservatory from the age of twelve and graduated in 1928. During the early 1930s Galimir studied with Carl Flesch in Berlin In 1936, the Galimir Quartet recorded the Lyric Suite of Alban Berg and the String Quartet of Maurice Ravel under the supervision of the composers, who were present during the rehearsals and recording sessions.
Born in a Sephardic Jewish family Vienna. His first language was Ladino. In 1936, he joined the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
He was harassed because of his Jewish ethnicity - at one performance, writes the New York Times, "just as the lights went down, the principal clarinetist called out, in a voice audible throughout the theater, "Galimir - have you eaten your matzos today?"".
The next season, the orchestra expelled him because he was Jewish. He then emigrated to Palestine to join the newly founded Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 1976 he began teaching at Mannes College of Music in New New York In 1952, after the death of Adolf Busch, pianist Rudolf Serkin asked Galimir to join the faculty of the Marlboro Music Festival, where he was in residence every year from 1954 until his death in 1999.
Galimir died on November 10, 1999 of natural causes and has since been honoured with memorial concerts and competitions in his name.
Quotations: "My mother was Austrian, but as my father was Romanian, we were considered enemy aliens and lived in fear of internment,".
In 1938, Galimir moved to New York, where he founded another quartet and served as member of the National Broadcasting Company Symphony Orchestra from 1939 to 1956.(later, when the National Broadcasting Company ensemble was disbanded, Galimir was concertmaster of the Symphony of the Air) In the 1950s he began acquiring a reputation as a music teacher and began teaching at The Juilliard School in New York in 1962 and from 1972 at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Married Suzanne Hirsch, February 18, 1945.