Word: pressler
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Before the players were one, of course, they were three. Pressler, 56, was the son of a German clothing-store owner who fled Hitler to settle in Tel Aviv. As a boy, he got splinters in his fingers from practicing, because the keys of the family up right were worn to the wood. At 17, he journeyed to the Debussy competition in San Francisco to see how he might do against his contemporaries. He won, and promptly launched a U.S. concert career...
...real estate broker, was nine when he heard a cello solo in the William Tell Overture and recognized "the sound that I wanted for the rest of my life." After scholarship studies at Juilliard, he spent two years with Pablo Casals in Europe. In 1954, he got together with Pressler and Daniel Guilet, concertmaster of the Symphony of the Air, for a projected recording of Mozart trios. The recording fell through, but the three decided to try their luck on the concert circuit...
When Guilet retired in 1968, Pressler and Greenhouse turned to Cohen, who is now 57. The son of a Brooklyn scrap-metal dealer, Cohen may have had music instilled in him by a grandmother who took him to the Yiddish theater and hummed through all the performances. He studied with Ivan Galamian at Juilliard and refined his chamber music skills during ten years as second violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet...
Between tours (they play about 120 concerts a year), the trio and their families are scarcely neighbors. Pressler is based in Bloomington, Ind., where he teaches at Indiana University. Greenhouse and Cohen are both on the faculty at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, but Greenhouse lives in Setauket, Long Island, Cohen in Manhattan. With luck, Greenhouse gets in some sailing, and Cohen plays tennis or tends his plants (he is a former member of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America). Pressler's recreation? "Playing and teaching, playing and teaching...
After such separateness, they renew their striving for greater togetherness. "There is never a plateau," says Pressler. "The masterpieces we play always force us to go that one step further." As in a performance, he cocks his head at the others, seems to get an unspoken assent. "The only plateau we'll reach is the cemetery...