Simon Pullman

Simon Pullman (1897 – August 1942) was a violinist, founder and Director of the Pullman Ensemble and Orchestra, and a seminal figure in the evolution of chamber music performance.

Born in Porozno, near Volkovisk (now in Belarus), he was a nephew of the famous Yiddish actress Esther Rachel Kaminska and cousin of Ida Kaminska. He received his diploma from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and then studied with Martin Pierre Marsick at the Conservatoire de Paris. In the 1920’s and 30’s he taught violin, viola, and chamber music at the New Vienna Conservatory (Neues Wiener Konservatorium), where he coached many famous groups including the Galimir String Quartet (lead by Felix Galimir). In 1930 he founded the Pullman Ensemble, consisting of 17 string players (4 string quartets with a double-bass), of which the specialty was their performance of Beethoven’s Große Fuge Op. 133 and String Quartet in C# minor Op. 131. Later, 10 windplayers were added to form the Pullman Orchestra, which performed regularly in Vienna and throughout Europe until 1938, when Pullman was able to escape to Paris.

According to his students and colleagues, Pullman was a visionary musician; his desire for a kind of revelatory ensemble playing led him to make use of the widest possible range of string tone, to demand a perfect legato, and to search out highly unorthodox fingerings to match his conceptions of phrasing. Rehearsals were intense and long — however, they functioned as rolling all-day affairs where members came and went as their schedules permitted. Through his pupils Felix Galimir, Richard Goldner, and others, his ideas influenced the training of generations of chamber music performers in the U. S., Australia (Musica Viva Australia), and elsewhere.

In August 1939, he visited Warsaw, Poland, in an attempt to sell a house belonging to his wife, and was trapped there by the German invasion. Imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto, he founded and directed the Warsaw Ghetto Symphony Orchestra which performed often for the next two years. He was transported to Treblinka extermination camp with all the members of the orchestra early in August 1942.