How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall? Apply

If words don’t work, try a sponge.

Master teachers carry many tools in their bags. The sage of string playing, Isaac Stern, pulled out a sponge from his to treat this patient’s condition: Eighteen-year-old Filip Fegus was using his left hand too much to support his fiddle rather than keeping his fingers relaxed and free to chase after the notes.

“You’re not holding the violin right,” the 80-year-old maestro told the young man with dark, spiked hair. “You are holding and playing. You can’t do that. It sounds perfectly nice, but you are robbing yourself of 60% of the amount of color you can get out of it.”

It’s not easy to change mechanics instantly, especially while playing an ocean away from home in front of Stern, pianist Joseph Kalichstein and cellist David Finckel--and at Carnegie Hall, no less. So Stern excused himself and returned with the sponge to place between Fegus’ violin and left shoulder.

Voila!

Welcome to the fifth biennial Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshop.

Blossoming students and young professionals who passed auditions were selected to study in intensive sessions with 14 of the world’s leading classical music performers. This year, 12 quartets and trios from as far away as South Korea are participating. The three-week workshop culminates Saturday with performances that will add the prestigious “made their Carnegie Hall debut” to the ensembles’ resumes.

The Fegus (FAY-goosh) Quartet’s resume is centered in Europe. Filip and his three brothers are from Slovenia, the former Yugoslav republic, and study at the Carinthian State Conservatory in Klagenfurt, Austria. Although he’s second-youngest, Filip is the first violinist. Oldest brother Simon is 22 and plays second violin, violist Andrei is 21 and Jernej (yer-NAY) is 17.

At their teacher’s urging, they sent in their video audition for the workshop in February. Two months later, they found out they had been accepted and would be making their first trip to America.

Recalled Filip: “We already forgot that we sent in this application form and then . . .”

“This was like a miracle,” Andrei said, finishing the sentence.

Each brother started playing string instruments at age 6. Until four years ago, the family lived in a three-room apartment, making it difficult to find room to practice. “So one of us would practice in the bathroom, in the hall or even in the kitchen,” Andrei said.

They first played as a quartet eight years ago--when Jernej was only 9. Their father, Maksimiljan, a composer, brought back a pile of inexpensive music he had purchased in Ukraine, and the boys tried some of the easier works.

Now, their repertoire includes works by the masters as well as their father.

At an open master class last week, they were working on Beethoven’s Opus 18, No. 6 quartet.

The classes begin with the ensemble playing through one movement. That’s the time for diagnosis. Next comes the surgery. The doctor-coaches remove layers of technique, analyzing it while getting closer to the heart before finally stitching the patient back together into a healthier performer.

The Feguses’ lesson began with a discussion of the proper tempo for the second movement--adagio ma non troppo, slow but not too much. Although this gets into the realm of speculation about Beethoven’s intention, the coaches were unanimous that the Feguses were playing too fast.

“You have to think what was in his mind,” Stern said. “No one has the answer. It can bear many different interpretations.”

Subsequent discussions included how to make repeated notes sound different, how to add more distinctions in volume and vibrato to add contrast to the musical palette. “Speed of the bow is one of the most powerful factors in making music,” Stern told them.

A short time later, an assistant to Stern entered with half a dozen sponges for the next patients.

Despite all the pointers during the 90-minute class, the Feguses were upbeat and enthusiastic afterward.

“For us it’s something really new,” Filip said. “We know these people only from their recordings and CDs, and then one day you meet everyone and it’s like the sky opens. [It’s] our big chance as musicians.”