American cellist Bernard Greenhouse, one of the founding members of the Beaux Arts Trio, has died at his home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, at the age of 95. He played in the acclaimed piano trio from its formation in 1955 until his retirement in 1987, making more than 100 recordings, and performing around 150 concerts a year.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1916, Greenhouse began playing the cello at age eight. His first important teacher was Felix Salmond at the Juilliard School (then the Institute of Musical Arts). After graduating in 1939 he joined the CBS Symphony Orchestra as principal cellist and continued his studies with Emanuel Feuermann. During World War II he served as principal cellist in the US Navy Orchestra, and took lessons from Diran Alexanian. From 1946–7 he studied with Casals in Prades, Spain, before returning to New York to establish his solo concert career. In 1948 he became the cellist of the Bach Aria Group, a position he held until 1976.

Greenhouse founded the Beaux Arts Trio in 1955 with pianist Menahem Pressler and violinist Daniel Guilet. The trio made its debut at Tanglewood that year with an all-Beethoven concert, and began the first of many nationwide tours a few months later. The group's early recordings included Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert cycles, and after Guilet was replaced by Isidore Cohen in 1969, the trio recorded all Haydn's trios and the complete piano quartets of Mozart and Brahms.

Greenhouse taught at several leading music schools in the US, including Juilliard, the Manhattan School of Music, Hartt College and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. After his retirement from the Beaux Arts Trio in 1987, he continued to teach and perform into his nineties.

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