Joel Krosnick, Longtime Cellist of Juilliard String Quartet, Dies at 84

Joel Krosnick, the admired cellist of the Juilliard string quartet, who helped to shape his defense of new American music as his commitment to the classics, died on April 15 at his home in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, was 84 years old.

His death, of pancreas cancer, was announced by the Juilliard School in New York City, where Mr. Krosnick was head of the Vilonlo department and had taught for 50 years.

The interpretation of Mr. Krosnick combined the two characteristics of the renowned style of the Juilliard string quartet: intensity and precision. It was ideal for inheriting the mantle of its two violist predecessors in one of the most pulmonary string quartets in the world, and was with the quartet, known as Juilliard, longer than any of 1974 until its retirement in 2016.

Since its inception, 70 years before Mr. Krosnick’s departure, Juilliard promised to play new music with the same devotion that brought to the classic repertoire and play the classics as if they were new. Mr. Krosnick accompanied, as at home with the abstract intensity of the Cadenza cello in the Elliott Carter Carter No. 2, as with the moving meditations of the quartet No. 16 of Beethoven in F (op. 135) or the pointed turbulence or the Bartak rooms.

He recorded the full quartets of the three composers with their fellow players, and won the Grammy Awards in 1977 and 1984 for their recordings as Schoenberg and Beethoven.

Typical of the evaluations of Mr. Krosnick’s contribution was that of the British magazine Gramophone, which he wrote in 1980 about the slow movement of Juilliard recording of the Schubert string quartet of Schubert No. 15 in G Major, pointing out, “the cellist coincides with the mood of perfection here, and the tempo is judged precisely.”

With his musical partner for a long time, pianist Gilbert Kalish, Mr. Krosnick also had an active solo career, giving recitals in the United States and Europe and the recording works of Prokofiev, Hindemith, Debussy, Janacek and others, general accusation to criticism.

His interpretations of contemporary artists were also held. From the recording that he and Mr. Kalish made the violoncelo sonata of Carter, Gramophone wrote that “the performance of both artists is magnificent.” And in 1992, the magazine described the recording of Mr. Krosnick of the Carter quartets with his monumentally authorized Juilliard “colleagues.

This devotion to the music of his time shaped the repertoire of recitals of Mr. Krosnick. In 1984, he undertook a series of six concerts at the New York Juilliard Theater, entitled “The Celoy: an American retrospective of the twentieth century.”

From the first concert, with Mr. Kalish, who had works by Ralph Shapey, Henry Cowell and Juilliard’s first violin, Robert Mann, the critic of the New York Times, Donal Henahan, wrote: “Both. The varied composition styles were sensitive and their joint virtuousness could hardly have been more thoroughly in the service of music.”

Mr. Krosnick deeply believed in the composers of his time, his daughter, Gwen, also a cellist, he said in an interview: “His music cared. He loved those languages ​​and changed the way they listened to Beethoven.”

Critics sometimes get used to him for letting his virtuosity overcome him. In a recital that included two Bach cello suites, Mr. Henahan wrote in 1975, Mr. Krosnick “established abrasing tempos that could not be handled without some stained steps.” At the same time, he acknowledged the skill of Mr. Krosnick, and pointed out that Hey “touches his instrument in a manner.”

In a short film carried out after the retirement of Mr. Krosnick of the quartet, Mr. Kalish called him a “complex and very intense person”, and both added it. Krosnick’s recordings and his statements about music made it clear that he carefully thought about the precise effect he wanted to produce.

“Once we determine what type of sound or feeling you want in a given place, so we have to discover how to produce it in the instrument,” Krosnick said in an interview with the Cello Society website in 2005. “We must experience completely.”

Violinist Samuel Rhodes, a colleague, said in an interview that Mr. Krosnick had brought to the quartet an “understanding of what the repertoire means, and emotionally what it means to us”, adding: “It is great a new direction for the quartet.”

Joel Krosnick was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on April 3, 1941, son of Morris Krosnick, pediatrician and professor at Yale Medical School, as well as an amateur violinist, and Estelle (Crossman) Krosnick, a concert pianist who took care of the family. Music permeated the home, and there were frequent camera music parties with members of the Faculty of Yale, said Mr. Krosnick’s daughter.

Joel begged playing the cello when he was 8 years old, and a year later he was playing a trio Haydn with his parents. At 9 years, I was studying with the Italian cellist Luigi Silva.

He attended James Hillhouse High School in New Haven and Columbia University, where he studied English and music, obtaining a degree.

After playing recitals in Europe and New York at the end of the 1960s, Mr. Krosnick begged to have Doubs about following a solo career, he said in the film made after his retirement. He leaned towards teaching, and had a position as a residence artist at the California Institute of Arts, in southern California.

But he had previously studied with Claus Adam, Juilliard’s cellist at that time, and one day his phone qualified: it was Robert Mann, Juilliard’s founding violinist, inviting him to audition for the quartet.

“I wanted the son of high -power musical life that I knew they had,” Krosnick told The Times in 1981. “The day I audition, my body woke me up at 4 in the morning and began to practice. I probably never wanted so much.”

After having played with the quartet several times, he recalled, said Mann: “Look, we better talk.”

Mr. Krosnick thought everything had ended. Instead, he was asked to join the quartet.

In addition to his daughter, Mr. Krosnick survives a son, Josh, and his wife, Dinah Straight Krosnick, a elementary school teacher retired. A previous marriage, with Judy August, ended in divorce.

When he retired in 2016, Mr. Krosnick was the last member of the Juilliard rope quartet to have played with Mr. Mann, who had left almost 20 years before.

Mr. Krosnick was “completely trained in all aspects of the game,” said his colleague Mr. Rhodes. “I had a passion for music, and I would show it.”