Isidore Cohen, a violinist who, as a member of the Juilliard String Quartet and the Beaux-Arts Trio, was an important chamber music performer and teacher, died on June 23 in the Bronx. He was 82 and lived in Manhattan.
A genial, energetic musician whose musical interests ranged from Haydn to Elliott Carter, Mr. Cohen can be heard on dozens of classic recordings by the Beaux-Arts Trio, including the complete Haydn and Beethoven Piano Trios and works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Ives and Shostakovich.
As the ensemble’s violinist, he held a pivotal position, physically as well as musically. Early in Mr. Cohen’s tenure with the group, the players decided that for acoustical reasons, the cellist — then Bernard Greenhouse — should face the audience directly. That meant, however, that Greenhouse could not make eye contact with Menahem Pressler, the group’s pianist. In what became a visual quirk of the Beaux-Arts style, Pressler regularly glanced over his shoulder at Mr. Cohen who, as the only player who had eye contact with both the other players, became a relay between them.
Mr. Cohen was born in Brooklyn on Dec. 16, 1922. He began studying the violin at 6 and continued his studies at Music and Art High School in Manhattan, from which he was graduated in 1940. At the time, however, he had not decided to seek a musical career, and he enrolled at Brooklyn College as a pre-med student. His studies were interrupted in 1943, when he joined the U.S. Army and fought in Europe. During his three years in the Army, Mr. Cohen performed in the GI Symphony and in jazz bands.
When he returned to the United States, Mr. Cohen became a student of Ivan Galamian at the Juilliard School, and began a career as a freelance violinist. Starting in the early 1950s, he was concertmaster of the resident orchestras at the festivals directed by the cellist and conductor Pablo Casals, in Prades, France, and in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was later the concertmaster of several New York ensembles, including the Little Orchestra Society and, for several of its early seasons, the Mostly Mozart Orchestra.
At the Casals festivals, Mr. Cohen met the violinist Alexander Schneider, who invited him to join the Schneider String Quartet as second violinist, in 1952. Among the Schneider Quartet’s accomplishments was a traversal, both in concert and on recordings, of the complete Haydn quartets. In 1958, Cohen joined the Juilliard String Quartet, also as second violinist. He performed with the group for a decade.
When the Beaux-Arts Trio’s original violinist, Daniel Guilet, retired in 1968, Pressler and Greenhouse invited Mr. Cohen to take his place. He was reluctant at first.
By the mid-1970s, the Beaux-Arts had become the world’s most prominent piano trio and was touring and recording plentifully. Mr. Cohen remained a member until his retirement in 1992.
