Edith Eisler, 1925-2011
Violinist, violist, teacher, journalist, and 'Strings' contributor dead at 86
Violinist, violist, teacher, and journalist Edith Eisler—our longtime corresponding editor based in New York City—died July 18 at her home in Manhattan. She was 86.
She was an active chamber and symphony player, teacher and coach, and presenter of chamber concerts. During her career as a music journalist, Eisler interviewed the giants of the violin world: the violinists Joshua Bell, Anne Sophie-Mutter, and Midori; the violist Kim Kashkashian; the cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Steven Isserlis (whom she adored); the Emersons; and many others. Her byline has graced dozens of features and master class articles, as well as hundreds of stage, book, and CD reviews in which she shared her encyclopedic knowledge of classical music, especially of chamber works.
She also contributed to Stereophile, New York Concert Review and Andante.com.
Further Resources
Read a PDF version of Edith Eisler's 1986 article, "Never a Mock Turtle: Unconventional Chamber Music," from the debut issue of Strings magazine.
As those who knew this bright, quirky, often charming woman can attest, Eisler was a fixture on the New York classical-music scene. As a young adult, she received a violin performance certificate from the Juilliard School of Music and was an active chamber player. More recently, she attended concerts at Carnegie Hall even in the icy winter and after a fall a few years ago had contributed to her frail health.
She was unswerving in her devotion to her greatest love—classical music, both standard repertoire and the most challenging modern works.
Eisler once told a friend that she was the kind of child who had to be told to stop practicing and to go to bed.
Music may have been her refuge: during World War II, the Vienna-born Eisler’s family fled the terror of the Nazi regime, moving from her native Vienna to her father’s homeland of Czechoslovakia, and then on to London, where Eisler studied with Max Rostal and endured the German Luftwaffe’s deadly aerial bombing campaign.
Moving to New York, she studied violin with Joseph Fuchs. A storied career as a performer eluded her, though Eisler was a member of the landmark New World Symphony. She taught chamber music at the Harlem School of the Arts and elsewhere as well as the Turtle Bay Music School, where she met our publisher, David A. Lusterman, then a beginning cellist. In 1978, she moved on to start a popular chamber-music workshop held at her mother’s Manhattan apartment. Later, for 11 years, she hosted a popular series of house concerts there called Music Among Friends.
When Lusterman founded Strings magazine 25 years ago, Eisler joined him from the start, contributing a lively account of her chamber-music workshop (you can read it online at AllThingsStrings). Seldom has an issue passed in which you couldn’t find her byline, often in multiples.
In the end, after injuries had impeded her playing, she lived only to write and to enjoy an occasional concert. Eisler continued to share her wit and wisdom right until the end—just hours before her death, she submitted a handful of CD reviews and a Master Class on her beloved Schubert’s epic “Death and the Maiden” string quartet.
Eisler wanted no memorial service, but in the coming months you’ll see her byline as Strings publishes these last works. But that won’t be the final word from the slightly built, feisty, brilliant woman who devoted her life to sharing her knowledge, her skills, and her passion for string music—she will live on with generations of string players who have benefited from her coaching.
For those of us at Strings, Eisler was a friend, a colleague, and a fellow traveler.
She will be missed.
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My friendship with Edith considerably pre-dates the launch of Strings; I had the great fortune of studying chamber music, theory, and composition with her. Her dedication was immense and truly selfless. She would happily translate the text of Beethoven's sketch books into English with no other motive than to illustrate a point to me. There were many times when our lessons ran over because she insisted that I complete a bit of dictation or an unresolved progression.
Not surprisingly, Edith's teaching studio often seemed like Grand Central Station, with incessant comings and goings, improvised adjustments to seemingly fixed schedules to accommodate a shifting cast of players, much opening and closing of baggage, and, of course, hasty last-minute conversations among the students who treasured this rare haven of serious, coached chamber music, catering primarily to the dedicated adult amateur.
Her greatest love was playing chamber music. She certainly had as great a gift for it as anyone I've ever heard (though she was surprisingly diffident as a soloist and sonata partner), as well as a Guarneri del Gesu violin that was fit for any musical task. For many years, she organized and performed in a salon-style Manhattan series called "Music Among Friends," bringing exquisite performances to the private homes of several Upper West-Siders. I still miss those afternoons, when New York seemed to have become Vienna, but I will miss their director, producer, and principal player much, much more.