Ivan Galamian: hand of steel

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’Teachers don’t make pupils famous - it is the pupils who make their teachers famous,’ remarks David Nadien, one of the stars in the galaxy of great violinists to have been taught by the legendary pedagogue Ivan Galamian. Nadien’s point may seem obvious on reflection, but it is often confused with its opposite. Leopold Auer, for example, is remembered as the teacher of Jascha Heifetz (not to mention Mischa Elman, Efrem Zimbalist and Toscha Seidel). No one would say that it was Auer who made Heifetz famous.

Granted that Auer’s influence was immense, Heifetz would surely have become a world-renowned virtuoso no matter with whom he studied. And while Carl Flesch’s towering reputation rests in part on his two-volume work The Art of String Playing  and his editions of violin repertoire, his fame as a teacher began with Max Rostal in the 1920s and was later assured by such luminaries as Henryk Szeryng, Szymon Goldberg, Roman Totenberg, Bronislaw Gimpel and Ida Haendel.