There are certain challenges when you are earning a living as a string quartet. You have to travel a lot. For instance, the Library of Congress was wonderful but we always had to travel to Washington from our home in New York. During that time, I would be away from my family in fall and spring at least eight times, each trip lasting three to five days. I finally came to the conclusion, after close to 6,000 chamber music concerts on every continent except Africa and Antarctica, that I’d had enough of chamber music as a profession. I didn’t have to give up playing music. I could still get together with friends to read music. But I didn’t want to work constantly for three-hour rehearsals every day.
My last concert with the Juilliard String Quartet took place at Tanglewood in July of 1997. We played Beethoven, including Opus 130 with the “Grosse fugue” and, following a number of curtain calls, the slow movement from Beethoven’s Opus 135 that I dedicated to Lucy.
When I left the quartet it was my hope that the quartet would choose Joel Smirnoff to be the first violinist-luckily they did exactly that.
PHOTO CREDIT: BOWING OUT, A FILM BY ALAN MILLER, BROADCAST ON BRAVO
Bowing Out, documentary of Robert’s last performance with the Juilliard String Quartet
If people thought that leaving the Juilliard String Quartet was my move towards retirement, they obviously do not know me. More time to compose, still many opportunities to perform, and teaching, which has always been a pivotal part of my musical being, continues in full force. Coaching students, I’m just as involved as if I am playing it myself and I still get my musical addiction fix because I play a number of chamber music concerts a year with a makeup group, including my son Nicholas on viola. My ears are keen and my mind is active. I will continue to play and to teach as long as I can. My life has been a journey filled with deep conversation, musical, intellectual, and collaborative. And I have tried to live as I have counseled the many students who have graced my life and to whom I gave the commencement address in 2000, at the North Carolina School for the Arts:
“All my life I have operated on the principle that small is beautiful. Don’t fear being a missionary in a small geographical area. There is the right time for expansion and gratification. Don’t ever give up the search to discover that place and that opportunity which keeps your spiritual inside love alive . . . I still believe that the greater satisfaction lies in the effort and not the attainment . . . My wish is that when you reach my age, you can affirm as I do that this life of artistic involvement has been and still is the best of all possible lives.”
Robert Mann String Quartet Institute publicity