‘I try to teach the students to think for themselves’ – the singular teaching legacy of Dorothy DeLay

The following is an extract from The Strad’s September 2017 issue cover story – to read the full article, click here

Where DeLay stood in sharp contrast to [her Juilliard mentor Ivan] Galamian was in her way of conveying … technical concepts and interacting with students.

Her manner with her pupils contrasted so acutely with the conventions of the time that even [Itzhak] Perlman, who studied with both Galamian and DeLay, was at first baffled by her approach. ‘Galamian was more of an old-fashioned teacher, like my old teacher in Israel,’ says Perlman, who moved to the US in 1958 in order to study with Galamian. The first person he met and played for, however, was DeLay.