Violinist Isidore Cohen, renowned as a member of both the Juilliard String Quartet and the Beaux Arts Trio, and an important teacher of generations of chamber musicians, died in the Bronx on June 23. He lived in Manhattan and was 82.

Violinist Isidore Cohen was a Juilliard faculty member from 1958 to 1966. (Photo by Whitestone Photo Inc.)

Born in Brooklyn on December 16, 1922, Cohen began studying violin at 6 and graduated from the High School Music and Art in Manhattan, though his intent was to become a doctor. But his pre-med studies at Brooklyn College were interrupted by a stint with the United States Army in Europe during World War II. When he returned to civilian life in the U.S., Cohen—who had played in the Army's orchestra and jazz bands and had decided that he wanted to illuminate people's lives through music—became a student of Ivan Galamian at Juilliard. Galamian had some misgivings about accepting the nearly 24-year-old Cohen as a student, but didn't want to turn down a returning war veteran.

At Juilliard, Cohen drew the attention of Stravinsky with a performance of the composer's L'Histoire du Soldat. As of the 1950s, he was serving as concertmaster of the orchestras at the Casals festivals in France and Puerto Rico, as well as of several New York ensembles. It was while playing for Casals that he met Alexander Schneider, who invited him to join his string quartet as second violinist in 1952. During Cohen's tenure, the quartet recorded the first complete set of Haydn string quartets, a milestone noted in Time magazine.

Cohen was second violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet for nearly a decade, beginning in 1958 when he replaced the late Robert Koff. As a member of the J.S.Q., Cohen was also on the Juilliard faculty from 1958 to 1966. He was reluctant at first to join the Beaux Arts Trio, whose other two members (pianist Menahem Pressler and cellist Bernard Greenhouse) wanted to recruit him when that ensemble's original violinist, Daniel Guilet, retired in 1968. But he did—and by the mid-'70s, the ensemble was touring and recording as the world's best known and busiest piano trio. Dozens of classic recordings by the Beaux Arts Trio—including the complete piano trios of Haydn and Beethoven, as well as works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Ives, Dvorak, and Shostakovich—feature Cohen's playing. After performing with the group for 23 years, he retired from the Beaux Arts Trio in 1992 and was succeeded by the violinist and Juilliard alumna Ida Kavafian.

Read a tribute to Isidore Cohen.

At various points in his career, Cohen taught at the Aspen Festival, the Curtis Institute of Music, Juilliard, Princeton, SUNY at Stony Brook, and the Manhattan School of Music. But his longest association was with the Marlboro Music School and Festival, where he taught for nearly 40 years (beginning in 1966). He toured frequently with Musicians From Marlboro, a group of performers drawn from the festival's roster of both faculty and students.

Cohen was married for 55 years to Judith Goldberg, who died in 2002. He is survived by their children: daughter Erica Cohen, who lives in Mexico, and son Allen Cohen, of New York.