Felix Khuner

Who was Felix Khuner?

Felix Khuner was the second violinist of the Kolisch Quartet. He joined the quartet, then the Wien Quartet, in 1927 when the quartet needed a new second violinist. Khuner was reluctant, but when he visited Rudolf Kolisch, he was in conversation with Arnold Schoenberg. "Does the quartet rehearse with Schoenberg?" Khuner asked. When Kolisch answered yes, Khuner agreed to join the quartet.

Upon the quartet's visit to Berkeley, California in the mid-1930s, Khuner chose Berkeley as the ideal place to live. He liked the cool Mediterranean climate. He met his future wife, Gertrude, in New York, and they wed in California in 1942.

Months before he was too old for the draft, Khuner was drafted into the US Army. He served first as a musician, and was later sent to New Guinea.

After leaving the Army, he continued playing in the first violin section of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, and in the San Francisco Opera and in the orchestra of the San Francisco Ballet. After he retired from the San Francisco Symphony, Khuner did one more stint, joining them for their 1972 tour of Russia. He retired from the San Francisco Opera, which did not have a mandatory retirement age, a few years later.