JAVS Fall 2005

chamber music coaching sessions and where many musicians, younger students and older profes sionals, gathered to absorb her marvelous insights into the great quartets, quintets and other cham ber wo rks by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms. In her performing activities, she was frequently the only female in a largely male-dominated profession. As rhe only female member of the Perole Quarter, she was a driving, dominant force. The quarter had a preference for playing Brahms, perhaps a carryover from her stud ies with Kneisel, who had been a close friend of Brahms. During her long career she played on three wonderful violas - a Gasparo da Salo, a Goffriller and a Maggini -- and the reader will learn a bit abom each of d1ose instruments and how Fuchs used them during her long career. The author devotes an entire chap ter to Fuchs and her involvement with the Bach Suites. As a pupil of Svecenski and Kneisel , Lillian Fuchs knew the Bach violin sonatas and partiras and the Bach cello suites by hearing her brother Hany frequently play them. She had a special fondness for the Suire No. 2 in D minor, subsequendy worked out her own viola tran scription, and performed it in a Musician's Guild concert in 1947. 1 A reco rding company executive was presem at dlat performance and was impressed enough to invite her to record all six suites on viola. Over the next five years she learned and performed all six Bach Suites and ultimately recorded rhem on dle Decca label, using her

Gasparo da Salo viola. lt is docwnent ed d1ar she recorded those su ites wid1 her back to the micro phone. Acco rding to the author, Fuchs was d1e first violist ever to include the Bach Suites in concerts and to record them. Mr. W illiams

writes: "The med1od she devised for learning these Suites can best joseph Fuchs and Lillian Fuchs. Used by perrnission. be described

is not an easy instrument to manipulate and it tal<.es craftsman sh ip ro keep it interesting when it is unaccompanied. Miss Fuchs was equal to the occasion. She played with dignity, a well sustained tone and a grasp of Bach's music." fn the Herald Tribune, a reviewer wrote of the same performance: "No one has ever, in my experi ence, played d1e viola in so grand a manner as does Miss Fuchs. Her sounds have ar once the smooth voicing of a violin and the warmrh of a cello scale. She has tension, audlority and beauty, ~til widlin rhe most srraighrfotward presenration imaginable. Few artists give such rhorough audirory and intellectual sa risfactjon. "

as a d1oughtful , almost scientific, process. She wou ld spend hours working on a single phrase and was incredibly pat ient and atten tive to me slightest detail ... " l The author offe rs some historical background on the Bach Cello Suites and focuses on Pablo Casals' involvement with these pi eces. The reviews of Ms. Fuchs' performances of the Bach Sui res were generally ouLstandi ng. Arter one performance Howard Taubman wrote in the New York Times on March 8, 1949: "Lillian Fuchs, who is not much bigger rhan the viola she plays, appeared alone on the stage to play Bach's Suite in C minor. T he viola

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