3 From chamber to concert hall

Tully Potter

Although the first full-time professional string quartet ensemble did not emerge until 1892,¹ the nineteenth century saw a steady improvement in the standard of quartet playing. Several trends can be seen running through the century as a whole: a gradual strengthening of the actual sound emitted by the players; the emergence of Beethoven as the recognised king of quartet composers; and the espousal of the heritage or museum-style concert in which music of a previous age was presented. The last two of these developments were largely precipitated by Joseph Joachim (1831–1907), whose giant personality cast its shadow over the second half of the century.

The sound of the quartet

It is possible to make an informed guess at the kind of sonority produced by a typical string quartet ensemble at the start of the century. With rare exceptions, quartets were played in large rooms rather than halls, and there was no need to strive for a powerful sound. The tone of even the top violin soloists was not large. Bows had reached their evolutionary peak but most instruments still had their original shorter necks and the fingerboards ran more parallel with the bodies, so that the gut strings were under relatively light pressure.²

Full-time violists were unknown, although the Stamitz brothers both played the instrument to a high standard, and the viola in a quartet would invariably be played by a violinist who would adapt violin technique to a smallish instrument and would therefore make a quite narrow, nasal sound. The cello had no endpin and the cellist held it resting on his lower legs, partially muffling the tone. Although there is not complete agreement on how much vibrato was generally applied, it is likely that, especially in quartet music, the effect was used sparingly, like an ornament, and never in chordal passages. We therefore have in our mind’s ear a quite small, delicate, ‘straight’ sonority which various twentieth- and twenty-first-century period-instrument groups have striven to reproduce, with varying success.³

As the nineteenth century progressed, orchestral music was heard in larger halls and string soloists needed to make more sound. So, as described in Chapter 2, instruments were strengthened and placed under greater tension by the lengthening and tilting back of the neck and fingerboard and the tautening of the strings. As the same instruments were used for playing quartets, and as chamber music also moved into larger venues, the sound of the ensemble strengthened, although in other ways it remained fairly constant through the century until the introduction of more or less constant vibrato by such players as Ysaÿe. The second half of the century also saw the introduction of the endpin, which freed the cello to some extent from the embrace of the player’s legs, allowing a more unfettered resonance. The violist had to respond to the challenges of such works as Smetana’s E minor Quartet by playing with more weight. Lightness and grace still predominated, however.

The leader dominated the quartet, unless it was one of the all-star ensembles which arose from time to time. One famous Viennese group headed its programmes: ‘Hellmesberger Quartet with the assistance of Messrs Math. Durst, Carl Heissler, Carl Schlesinger’. The role of the primarius was often blatantly superior musically, as such composers as Spohr and Rode favoured the quatuor brillant in which the other three parts provided little more than a background for the first violin. If the players in professional quartets gradually became more equal, this change was due as much to the kind of music being written as to any democratisation of the musical profession.

The sight of the quartet

The classic nineteenth-century seating arrangement for quartets was to have the violinists facing each other at the front, with the cellist on the leader’s left at the rear and the violist on the second violinist’s right. A contemporary drawing (Fig. 3.1) shows Vieuxtemps leading a group in London; he and Alfredo Piatti, who unusually sits opposite him at the front, are seated on high stools while the players of the inner parts (Deloffre and Hill) are on ordinary chairs. A few ensembles stood to play; and Baillot in Paris stood to lead his group, while his colleagues were seated. But in general string quartets were played in public in a seated position.

Figure 3.1 A string quartet performance at John Ella’s Musical Union in London (1846) featuring Henri Vieuxtemps as first violinist

Vienna and the Beethoven phenomenon

Beethoven’s music was intimately bound up with the development of the string quartet ensemble and from 1804 it was closely connected with the career of Ignaz Schuppanzigh (1776–1830). Born and bred in Vienna, this fine fiddler led a number of privately sponsored groups, including one for Prince Lichnowsky from 1795 and another for Count Razumovsky from 1808. More importantly, perhaps, he started a series of public subscription quartet concerts in Vienna in 1804, at which Beethoven’s ‘Razumovsky’ Quartets, Op. 59, were premiered (1806). In this respect Schuppanzigh was ahead of his time, as the public concert did not catch on; but his ensemble continued to work with Beethoven under the auspices of Count Razumovsky – who sometimes took the second violin part, as the group’s membership was fluid. Similarly, Prince Lobkowitz sometimes played viola.

Stories of the composer’s dissatisfaction with Schuppanzigh and his colleagues are well known, but we should not be hard on these players. One has only to hear a student or young professional quartet struggling with Beethoven’s music to realise that, even in Op. 18, he was asking a great deal. The notes do not always lie easily under the fingers and Beethoven is always demanding a higher degree of expression than any other quartet composer. Being faced with such music when it was new was a fearsome challenge. And however much he may have grumbled, Beethoven clearly depended on Schuppanzigh: it is possible that he would never have written his late quartets, had the violinist not returned in 1823 after a six-year spell in St Petersburg (the Razumovsky palace had burnt down in 1814 and the quartet had more or less disbanded in 1816). The knowledge that this faithful servant was once again available was undoubtedly a stimulant to Beethoven, who always had performance in mind for even his most advanced music, and the ensemble’s second violinist at that time, Karl Holz, was a close friend of the composer.

The Schuppanzigh Quartet duly introduced Op. 127 and although Beethoven virtually dismissed the leader after a rather disastrous premiere, giving the next performance to Josef Böhm, Schuppanzigh was back for Opp. 132 and 130. Böhm, a more secure but less improvisatory leader, gave the first private performances of Op. 131, which Schuppanzigh never played; and it was Böhm who led the single movement of Schubert’s G major Quartet that was played in public in that composer’s lifetime. Schuppanzigh had, however, given the first public performance of Schubert’s A minor Quartet (D. 804), in 1824, as well as private readings of his D minor Quartet (D. 810) and performances of his other chamber music.

Two important spin-offs from the Schuppanzigh Quartet were the ensembles led by Joseph Mayseder (1789–1863), who had been its second violinist from 1804 to 1816, and Leopold Jansa (1795–1875). The Mayseder Quartet ran from 1817 to 1860, while the Jansa Quartet (1834–50) more or less followed on from Schuppanzigh and at first included two members of his circle, Holz and Joseph Linke. The city also saw influential visits by such charismatic quartet leaders as Vieuxtemps (1842–3) and Ferdinand Laub (1863–5); but the dominant Viennese quartet of the second half of the century was that led first by Joseph Hellmesberger (1828–93) and then, for four seasons from 1887, by his son Joseph Jnr (1855–1907). Founded in 1849, it was the first regular ensemble – the personnel stayed pretty constant until the mid-1860s – and the first to be named after its leader. Its period in the limelight coincided with the first great decades of the Vienna Philharmonic, whose parent body, the Court Opera Orchestra, was led by Joseph Snr from 1855–79, and the codifying of what we think of as the Vienna string style – Joseph Snr’s father Georg had been a pupil of Böhm and himself an influential teacher. The cellist David Popper (1843–1913) was a member of the Hellmesberger Quartet from 1868 to 1870 and two other members later played in the group’s successor, the Rosé Quartet.⁴

The Rosé Quartet’s chief rival in its own time was another group from the Court Opera, the Fitzner, which gave a complete Haydn cycle in the city around the time of the Great War. Up to the war, the city could also boast the second of Marie Soldat-Roeger’s all-female groups, which was sponsored by a member of the Wittgenstein family and commanded such guest artists as Nedbal and Casals; its violist was Mahler’s friend Natalie Bauer-Lechner.

Germany

Berlin was not far behind Vienna in the quartet revolution, thanks to the violinist-composer Karl Möser (1774–1851), who began his chamber music career in Friedrich Wilhelm II’s house quartet. In 1812 he became concertmaster of the Court Opera and by the next year he was organising quartet concerts. He was one of the first to offer Beethoven’s Op. 132, in 1828; and his series, which lasted until 1843 and included orchestral concerts, was influential. A later high point in Berlin’s quartet life was the period 1856–63 when the Bohemian virtuoso Ferdinand Laub (1832–75) led an excellent group. Otherwise the city was dominated by Joachim.

The best-known German violinist of the first half of the century, Louis Spohr (1784–1859), was important in the development of ensemble playing; and although his quartet compositions were of the quatuor brillant type, his string quintets show that he was capable of a more restrained style. In fact, his own playing, while brilliant, was not unrelievedly virtuosic – he disdained bounced-bow effects and the use of vibrato, which he considered strictly an ornament. Spohr led a quartet in Gotha from 1805 to 1811 and after moving to Vienna in 1812 he got to know Beethoven. Although he never came to terms with that master’s mature works, he was a champion of the Op. 18 quartets, which he was the first to perform in Berlin and Leipzig. Spohr can be considered a ‘star’ leader of the old school, as can the Polish virtuoso Karol Lipiski (1790–1861), who was already an experienced quartet player when he settled in Dresden in 1840. The quartet he led there until 1860 played all the late Beethoven except the Grosse Fuge. On the other hand someone such as Ignaz Lüstner, who led various ensembles in Breslau throughout his career, from 1816 to 1872, must be considered the prototype of the local musician content to serve a particular audience. At one stage Lüstner’s colleagues comprised his sons Ludwig, Otto and Karl.

The most sensational group in Germany before the rise of Joachim was another family affair, composed of the brothers Karl Friedrich (1797–1873), Theodor (1799–1855), Franz (1808–55) and August (1802–75) Müller. Hailing from Brunswick, the Müllers clearly gained from playing together all the time; and they gained an early scalp when in their first year of public performance, 1828, they gave the public premiere of Beethoven’s Op. 131 in Halberstadt. A Berlin reviewer of an 1833 concert, at which they played a Spohr work and Beethoven’s Third ‘Razumovsky’, described their performances as ‘one bowing, one accent, one breath, one soul’. From 1830 they were based in Meiningen, where their patron Duke Bernhard I liked to hear them play Onslow’s music; but they toured assiduously throughout Germany and were the first truly itinerant quartet players. From 1855 they were succeeded by Karl Friedrich’s sons, under the leadership of Karl Jnr, who from 1860 to 1868 was replaced by Leopold Auer (1845–1930) when the group toured. This second Müller Brothers ensemble was not as successful as the first and ceased in 1873, although the cellist, Wilhelm, later played in the Joachim Quartet.

More or less contemporary with the elder Müllers was Hamburg-born Ferdinand David (1810–73), a pupil of Spohr, who organised a private quartet in Dorpat from 1829–36 at the behest of Baron von Liphart. Initially it included the cellist Bernhard Romberg (1767–1841). From 1836 David was a colleague of Mendelssohn at Leipzig, where he led the Gewandhaus Orchestra and took over from Heinrich Matthäi – who had headed an ensemble there from 1809 to 1835 – the tradition of forming a quartet from the string principals. As a result David’s ensemble had a bewildering turnover of personnel – Joachim played second violin in 1847 and again in 1849 – and was not rigorously rehearsed. The group’s chamber concerts in the 400-seat Old Gewandhaus became famous and sometimes David ceded the leadership to a visiting celebrity – Heinrich Ernst (1814–55) in 1844 and Hubert Léonard (1819–90) in 1846. David himself was a transitional player and his editions indicate that he was among the first to employ ‘expressive portamento’. His last years coincided with the beginnings of the Russian violinist Adolf Brodsky’s first quartet, which was based in Leipzig and flourished from 1870 to 1891. Jean Becker was the original second violinist, Hans Sitt was the violist, Otakar Nováek played second violin and then viola in the 1880s and Julius Klengel was the cellist. One of the group’s warhorses was Tchaikovsky’s Third Quartet.

Frankfurt was a great centre for chamber music and its famed Museum Quartet was led by Hugo Heermann from 1865 until he was ousted by scandal in 1906 and went to the USA. A graceful player trained entirely in the Franco-Belgian school, Heermann (1844–1935) made solo records but none with the quartet, which from 1890 to 1905 included Hugo Becker. One of the cellist’s last performances with the group was its most famous premiere, of Reger’s D minor Quartet Op. 74.

Two quartettists who led restless lives were Henry Schradieck (1846–1918) and Willy Hess (1859–1939). Although neither man stayed in one place for long, Schradieck – who reputedly could play all the Beethoven quartets from memory – left his mark in his native Hamburg, Moscow, Leipzig, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and New York, while Hess had quartets in Manchester, Cologne, London, Boston and Berlin. Hess’s successor in Cologne as leader of the Gürzenich Quartet was the Dutchman Bram Eldering (1865–1943), who arrived in 1903 and not only sustained the impetus built up by Gustav Hollaender and Hess but made the group famous throughout the Rhineland. Known as the ‘Quartet of Professors’ because its members taught at the Conservatoire, the ensemble had its best period in the decade before the Great War when the line-up was Eldering, Carl Kürner, Josef Schwartz and Friedrich Grützmacher the Younger. Its repertoire included the new music, by Reger, Straesser and others, as well as the works of Brahms – whom Eldering had known well – and the Viennese classics. Eldering’s pupil Adolf Busch was much influenced by the group’s style and even played viola in it a few times when Schwartz was ill. Later Emanuel Feuermann was a member and it is sad that the Gürzenich made no recordings.

The age of Joachim

The dominant figure in the nineteenth century was Joseph Joachim, who counted Böhm among his teachers, and his influence spilled over into the twentieth century. During his Leipzig years (1843–50), he took part in chamber music performances and Hausmusik with his mentors Mendelssohn and David, and he played more chamber music than anything else on his extended first visit to London in 1844. At Radley’s Hotel in Blackfriars, for instance, three weeks before his thirteenth birthday, he opened an evening in Mendelssohn’s honour by leading Messrs Case, Hill and Hancock in Mozart’s D minor Quartet and closed it with Beethoven’s C major ‘Razumovsky’. He thus had a good deal of quartet playing with ad hoc groups behind him when he moved to Weimar as concertmaster at Liszt’s behest in 1850. With Karl Stör, Johann Walbrül and Bernhard Cossmann he instituted quartet evenings, either in his own rooms or at the Altenburg, which were so successful that from the 1851–2 season they were opened to the public. Liszt charged such high prices, however, that only the cream of music-loving society was present. Hans von Bülow joined the group in the Schumann Piano Quintet and one concert featured Beethoven’s Op. 18 no. 5, Op. 74 and Op. 131 – Joachim would always plan his Beethoven programmes in this ‘historical’ progression. In 1853 he moved to Hanover and there he formed an ensemble with the brothers Theodor and Carl Eyertt and the cellist August Lindner.

In his Hanover quartet activities one can see Joachim’s programming ideas in a fully developed form. On 28 April 1855 he and his colleagues opened their account with Beethoven’s Op. 18 no. 5, Op. 59 no. 1 and Op. 131. Mendelssohn’s Octet was played the following January and on 10 April 1856 they began a regular series at the Künstlerverein, in a tiny hall which has recently been restored. First came two private soirées and then a public series of three concerts. Of the eight concerts given in the first two years, four started with a Haydn work, although this composer’s C major Quartet, Op. 76 no. 3, ended another evening. Three concerts ended with a string quintet – Mozart’s K. 516 or K. 593 or Beethoven’s Op. 29 – and Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ was used as a closing piece in both years. Every concert included a work by Beethoven. Three quartets by Mozart were performed and one by Mendelssohn. Schumann’s A minor was played in both years; his death on 29 July 1856 came between these performances, and in his memory his other two quartets were played at a special concert. From the 1863–4 season the Joachim Quartet gave its public series in the acoustically superior Aula of the Lyceum.

When the kingdom of Hanover ceased to be independent in 1866, Joachim annulled his life contract. By this time he was engaged regularly as a quartet leader in London – this sphere of his activity is dealt with below – but after his move to Berlin in 1868 he was not long in forming the ensemble with which his name is now most closely associated. The Joachim Quartet, which existed from 1869 until his death in 1907, was a foursome of soloists and went through changes of personnel; but by nineteenth-century standards it was well integrated at any one time and was thought to be nonpareil in vigour of attack in fast movements, spiritual Innigkeit in slow movements, trueness of intonation and precision of ensemble. Among the second violinists were Heinrich de Ahna, Johann Kruse and Karel Halí, among the violists were de Ahna and Emmanuel Wirth, while the cellists were first Wilhelm Müller and then Robert Hausmann. The most celebrated formation was the last: Joachim, Halí, Wirth and Hausmann (Fig. 3.2). The violist was a dry player and the cellist was not really a virtuoso – a passage in one of Beethoven’s Razumovsky Quartets bothered him so much that when he knew he had to perform it, he would get his students to play it to him on the day of the concert. Nevertheless, even when Joachim was old and no longer playing as accurately as of yore, the ensemble made a remarkable impression. Today its programmes have a comfortably conservative look, but among the works it premiered were three by Brahms and three by Dvoák; and the quartet music by Mendelssohn and Schumann was relatively new when Joachim began playing it.

Figure 3.2 Joachim Quartet (1897–1907): (left to right) Joseph Joachim, Robert Hausmann, Emmanuel Wirth, Karel Halí

Great Britain

The nation which had embraced the viol consort from the Tudor age to the time of Purcell could be expected to appreciate the string quartet. As early as Haydn’s tours to England in the 1790s, Johann Peter Salomon’s (1745–1815) public quartet performances in London were attracting attention. Haydn wrote his Opp. 71 and 74 for these concerts at the Hanover Square Rooms but the quartets were interspersed with other works – as they were at Philharmonic Society events. Some forty years after Haydn’s visits, in 1835, quartet concerts really took off in London when the violinist Joseph Dando (1806–94) organised a benefit for a distressed colleague (expanded to a series, by popular demand). He led an excellent ensemble in programmes of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Spohr and others at the Horn Tavern in Doctors’ Commons. After two years these Quartett [sic] Concerts shifted to the Hanover Square Rooms, Dando taking the viola part and Henry Blagrove (1811–72; a pupil of Spohr) leading, with Henry Gattie as second fiddle and Charles Lucas as cellist. They had seven or eight rehearsals for each concert and were asked to play for the Philharmonic Society. In 1843 Blagrove started his own series (with his brother Richard on viola) and Dando moved to Crosby Hall in Bishopsgate, resuming the leader’s role with John Loder as violist. This ensemble continued until Gattie and Loder died in 1853; among the works Dando introduced to Britain were Haydn’s Seven Last Words, Mendelssohn’s E and Schumann’s A minor. Meanwhile Thomas Alsager of The Times, wealthy éminence grise of the Queen Square Select Society which had been giving British premieres since 1832, was developing the interest in Beethoven which had led to airings of the Op. 18 quartets in 1834. Spohr and Caillo Sivori (1815–94) led ensembles for him in the early 1840s, and in 1845 his Beethoven Quartet Society began its series at 76 Harley Street with the world’s first cycle of the composer’s quartets. The society would hijack any notable string player who was in town: Bernhard Molique was one leader, and in 1847, the year after Alsager’s death, Piatti appeared at a soirée given for Mendelssohn. Also important were the morning recitals of The Musical Union, led by the Philharmonic Society violinist John Ella from 1845 (see Fig. 3.1) and the first to issue analytical programme booklets.⁵

But the most illustrious quartets were those which appeared at the Chappell Brothers’ Popular Concerts from 1859. The venue was the 2,200-seat St James’s Hall, small enough for intimacy but large enough to hold a viable audience – one thousand of whom paid only one shilling. The ‘Monday Pops’ were held in the evening, the ‘Saturday Pops’ in the afternoon, and their varied programmes opened and closed with major chamber works. The first event featured a line-up of Wieniawski, Louis Ries, C. W. Doyle and Piatti, with Schreuss joining them in a Mendelssohn quintet; other eminent leaders were Blagrove and Prosper Sainton; and later a typical line-up might be Ludwig Straus (a Viennese pupil of Böhm), Ries, J. B. Zerbini and Piatti.

A keen quartet player was the Moravian virtuoso Vilemína Neruda (?1838–1911; Lady Hallé) (see Fig. 1.2), who often deputised for Straus as leader. Perhaps because of her example, women played a more prominent role in quartets than in some other branches of British music. In Victorian times Emily Shinner (Mrs A. F. Liddell) led an all-female foursome – the other players being Lucy H. Stone, Cecilia Gates and Florence Hemmings; later Gabrielle Wietrowitz acted as leader. And the Lucas Quartet, a foursome of sisters good enough to play octets with the visiting Rosé ensemble, flourished in the decade or so before the First World War. The tradition of all-female groups has survived in Britain to this day. Shinner’s teacher was Joachim, who had an enormous influence on British music-making. On his first visit in 1844 he played in Alsager’s concerts and in 1859 he was second fiddle to Ernst at one of these events, with Wieniawski on viola and Piatti on cello. He frequently led the quartet at the Popular Concerts (Straus, Doyle, Zerbini or Benoit Hollander playing viola) and later this loosely organised group included more local players, such as the violinist and violist Alfred Gibson or the cellist Arthur Williams.

In 1896 Joachim began to bring his Berlin ensemble to Britain, first for mixed programmes at the ‘Pops’ and then, from 1901 to 1906, for out-and-out chamber programmes under the auspices of Edward Speyer’s Joachim Quartet Concert Society. The scandalous replacement of the St James’s Hall with a hotel in 1905 meant that the series transferred to the elite 600-seat Bechstein (Wigmore) Hall for three seasons: a Brahms festival was held in 1906; Halí substituted for the ailing leader in 1907; and Joachim’s death that summer brought a further change of emphasis. Speyer’s Classical Concert Society continued the series until the Great War, but quartets were only a part of its remit.

From 1874 to 1893 a select London audience could hear chamber concerts organised by Edward Dannreuther at his home in Orme Square, Bayswater – late Beethoven quartets were played there – and from 1887 a more democratic assembly of Londoners could enjoy the Sunday Evening Concerts at the South Place Institute, which introduced works by Dvoák and Brahms; their Quartet was led by John Saunders with Charles Woodhouse, Ernest Yonge and J. Preuveneers (later Charles Crabbe). Nor were the regions left out. Gibson led the quartet at Oxford University Musical Club, while in Manchester the Hallé Orchestra acquired Adolf Brodsky as leader in 1894; he organised a Quartet (with Rawdon Briggs, Simon Spielman and Carl Fuchs) which lasted almost three decades. Glasgow and Edinburgh had flourishing chamber music seasons in which the best groups of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras were heard. Encouragement to native performers and composers came from that doughty champion of chamber music Walter Willson Cobbett (1847–1937).

London had several serious quartets at the turn of the century: Lionel Tertis (1876–1975) took part in those led by Willy Hess, Johann Kruse and the Viennese-born Hans Wessely, while Frank Bridge (1879–1941) played for nine years in the English Quartet. But the first British ensemble of international reputation was the London Quartet, discussed in Chapter 4.

France and Belgium

The reputation of Paris as a centre of Beethoven interpretation was hard won. Pierre Baillot (1771–1842) formed his quartet in 1814 specifically to perform the Op. 18 works but when he essayed Opp. 131 and 135 in 1829, all hell broke loose; Berlioz, who was present, was one of only a handful of people who appreciated the music. Baillot had more success with the works of Cherubini (which he premiered), his teacher Viotti, Mendelssohn, Haydn, Mozart, Boccherini and Onslow. He gave 154 public chamber music concerts before disbanding his ensemble in 1840, by which time his audience had increased from around fifty to several hundred. His pupil Delphin Alard (1815–88) continued the Beethoven campaign from 1835 with the Quatuor Alard–Chevillard and then from 1849 with the Société Alard et Franchomme, groups organised with the cellists Pierre Chevillard and August Franchomme. The first, which played under the auspices of the Société des Derniers Quatuors de Beethoven, mostly gave private concerts until 1849, when it was headed by Jean Pierre Maurin (1822–94), an even more remarkable figure who kept the quartet going until 1894 – during the Franco-Prussian War it decamped to London. With Chevillard in his group until 1865, Maurin made a great reputation in the late Beethoven quartets and passed the torch on to his pupil Lucien Capet (1873–1928). Some, however, including Clara Schumann, preferred the group led from 1855 by Jules Armingaud (1820–1900); it had Edouard Lalo taking both inner parts at different times and played at least three of the late Beethovens, although its stocks-in-trade were Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann. The credit for giving the first popular, inexpensive Parisian chamber concerts must go to the Quatuor Lamoureux, formed in 1860, which played at the Salle Herz and Salle Pleyel.

Brahms enjoyed the way the Quatuor Geloso played his music but this group was actually the resident quartet of a new Beethoven Society, founded in 1889 by Pierre Chevillard’s son Camille with Charles Lamoureux, Chabrier and d’Indy. Given the task of playing the late quartets every season, it was led by the Spaniard Albert Geloso; Lucien Capet was second violinist for a time; and it had a succession of brilliant violists including Louis van Waefelghem, Pierre Monteux and Louis Bailly.

Indeed, while it was in Paris that the iniquitous practice developed of naming a quartet after its leader and cellist, the city saw the emergence of the first specialist violists: Chrétien Urhan (1790–1845), who played the obbligato in the first performance of Harold in Italy and participated in the Baillot, Bohrer and Tilmant Quartets, and the enigmatic ‘Casimir-Ney’ (Louis Casimir Escoffier, 1800–77), who also played in various ensembles and for more than twenty years was a member of the Quatuor Alard–Chevillard. The viola parts of the Debussy and Ravel quartets bear witness to the raising of standards which culminated in the career of Maurice Vieux (1884–1957), a member of the Quatuor Parent and the Quatuor Firmin Touche in the early years of the twentieth century and founder of the modern French school of viola playing.

Belgium boasted one of the pre-eminent quartets of the late nineteenth century, led by the virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe (1858–1931) from 1886. Each member was a soloist: second violinist Mathieu Crickboom led his own quartet at various times and toured performing Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante with the violist Léon van Hout, father of modern Belgian viola playing, while Joseph Jacob was a leading Belgian cellist. The ensemble seems not to have rehearsed overmuch, even for premieres, of which it gave a good number including works by Debussy, Fauré and D’Indy. Ysaÿe’s gigantic personality and the excellence of his colleagues always won the day, however. In 1899 Crickboom was replaced by Alfred Marchot. Having already stopped performing together, three of the players regrouped with a new second violinist, Edouard Deru, for the premiere in 1906 of Fauré’s First Piano Quintet.

César Thomson (1857–1931) led an excellent ensemble in Liège from 1898 and from the turn of the century to the First World War the Brussels Quartet flourished, touring widely; as it was composed of two Germans and two Belgians, it did not survive the invasion of Belgium by Germany.

Italy

Having produced the world’s first all-star quartet, plus a succession of charming music from two of its members, Cambini and Boccherini, as well as Paganini and the opera composers Paisiello and Donizetti, Italy was far from devoid of chamber music. But only in the 1860s was a concerted effort made to propagate it, as societies sprang up in Bologna, Milan, Florence and Naples. It took a while to accustom listeners to such fare, as Ottocento opera, with its shortish arias or ensembles and frequent moments of relaxation, was not conducive to concentrating over even a single sonata-form movement. When Antonio Bazzini’s 35-minute String Quintet, which had won a prize offered by the new Società del Quartetto di Milano for such a work, was first played at the Società in 1866, many of the audience left the hall before the performance was over.

In contrast, a slightly earlier performance in Florence had gone well. And it was in Florence that Italy’s only international quartet was formed, that very year. Even then, it was led by an Alsatian, Jean Becker (1833–84), and it never included more than two Italians. Nor did the Florentine Quartet consistently perform in its city of origin – it was more faithful to Vienna, where it appeared every season. It toured throughout Europe and was famed for its playing of the central repertoire. Indeed, along with the Müller Quartet, it was the closest approximation to a modern professional ensemble before the rise of the Czech Quartet. Among its commissions was Dvoák’s E major quartet, which it played a good deal, although it could not give the premiere. In 1875 Becker’s illness and a change of cellist brought a hiatus; but in the 1876–7 season the Florentine gave 149 concerts in seventeen locations across Europe. A change of violist owing to an accident to Luigi Chiostro in the 1878–9 season foreshadowed the end, which came in 1880. An all-Italian group founded by a recovered Chiostro did not reach the eminence of the first one.

Russia

Although public concerts were known in St Petersburg from 1746, at the start of the nineteenth century chamber music was largely heard in the great houses of the nobility and the nouveaux riches. Rode was active in the city as a quartet player from 1802 to 1805, as were Baillot from 1803 to 1805 and Schuppanzigh from 1816 to 1823. Lipiski was there in 1825 and again in 1838, the year that Böhm visited from Vienna. Vieuxtemps was much in evidence as a chamber music player from 1846 to 1852. Count Mathieu Wielhorski, who organised the first Russian performances of Beethoven symphonies at his palace, had a quartet from 1810 in which he played the cello; his brother was also a noted patron. Prince Nikolas Galitzin generally played the cello in his private quartet, which was in existence from at least 1822 – when, at the suggestion of the violist Zeuner, he commissioned from Beethoven the quartets we know as Opp. 127, 132 and 130.

The accomplished amateur violinist and composer Alexey L’vov (1798–1870) led a famous quartet from 1824 to 1865 which gave no public performances, as he held a high rank both in society and in the army – and in 1836 succeeded his father Feodor as director of the Imperial Court Chapel; the recitals were generally held at his own home, Count Kushelyov-Bezborodko’s or Count Wielhorski’s and the latter often played cello. Late Beethoven was not tackled but new music by such as Mendelssohn was presented; and when Robert and Clara Schumann were in St Petersburg in 1844, L’vov put on a performance of Schumann’s Piano Quintet in their honour. In 1849 L’vov visited Leipzig, where he gave his only public concerts – Schumann was impressed by his leadership of Mozart and Mendelssohn quartets. Best remembered today as composer of the Tsarist national anthem, L’vov wound down his activities in the 1860s, suffering from deafness.

Aficionados of chamber music in Moscow were equally dependent on wealthy private sponsors, but from 1817 the Silesian teacher and composer Franz Xaver Gebel (1787–1843) was a potent presence. From 1829 to 1835 Gebel organised concerts at which his own agreeable quartets and quintets (for string quartet plus double bass) were performed, as well as music by Beethoven and the other Viennese Classical masters. The quartet, drawn from the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra, was led by the concertmaster I. Grassi and included the outstanding cellist Heinrich Schmitt.

The Imperial Russian Musical Society, founded in St Petersburg in 1859, had an excellent but loosely organised quartet, using whatever players were available. Early leaders were Johann Pickel, Wieniawski, Ferdinand Laub and August Wilhelmj. The year 1868 saw the arrival of the Hungarian Leopold Auer, who generally led the group until 1906. Pickel was now often the second violinist. Hieronymus Weickmann was the usual violist from the beginning until 1889 and the cellists included Carl Davidov and Alexander Wierzbilowicz. The repertoire took in works by Arensky, Borodin, Cui, Glazunov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky, frequently played from the manuscripts. Towards the end of the century there were complaints about poor performances, either through lack of rehearsal or because the players were getting on in years. In 1871 Eugen Albrecht, who had often played second fiddle in this quartet, formed a Chamber Music Society in which he led the quartet with his brother Constantin-Carl as cellist.

The quartet of the Moscow branch of the Russian Music Society was run on equally laissez faire lines from 1860 to 1900. The leaders were Karl Klammroth, Ferdinand Laub – who led the premieres of Tchaikovsky’s first two quartets – Ludwig Minkus and I. Grummann. Second violinists included Klammroth, Grummann, Hanu Himalý and Mikhail Press; among the violists were Vasily Bezekirsky and Minkus; and the last three cellists were Bernhard Cossmann, Wilhelm Fitzenhagen and Alfred von Glehn.

The first really professional Russian ensemble was active in St Petersburg from 1900 to 1922. Known at home by the name of its sponsor the Duke of Mecklenburg, it toured as the St Petersburg Court Quartet. From 1905 to 1918 it was led by the finest Russian violinist of the pre-Elman era, Karol Gregorowicz (1867–1921), the other members being Naum Krautz, Vladimir Bakaleinikov and Sigismund Butkevich. The group had the use of a set of Guarneri instruments and toured all over Europe, often coming to Britain. After 1917 its members fell on hard times. Gregorowicz ended his life teaching at the Vitebsk Conservatory and no one knows if his death in 1921 was caused by imprisonment, starvation or being shot while trying to flee the country – all three fates have been suggested. Bakaleinikov played for a few years in the Stradivarius Quartet, led first by David Kreyn and then by Alexander Mogilevsky (1885–1953) and including the cellist Viktor Kubatsky. In 1927 Bakaleinikov moved to the USA, where he was influential as a player and teacher as well as a conductor. Mogilevsky emigrated in 1930 to Japan, teaching at the Tokyo Conservatory from 1937 and passing on the secrets of his own teacher Auer.

Another significant group of the early Communist period which did not make records was the Lenin Quartet, comprising Lev Zeitlin, Abram Yampolsky, Konstantin Mostras and Gregor Piatigorsky. Zeitlin went on to set up the Persimfans conductorless orchestra and to become a notable teacher at the Moscow Conservatoire, its head of strings from 1930. His colleagues also had rewarding separate careers.

Bohemia and Hungary

Chamber music in Prague tended to be dominated by a few players, such as the violinist Friedrich Pixis the Younger (1785–1842), a Mannheim-born pupil of Viotti who came to the city of his ancestors in 1807 as leader of the Opera Orchestra and was professor at the Conservatory from 1811. His quartet played Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Spohr, Mendelssohn, Onslow and music by the Bohemian composer Veit. Pixis’s pupil Moric Mildner (1812–65) was his second violinist – the other members being Vincenc Bartók and Frantíek Hüttner – and took over from him as Prague’s unofficial chamber music leader. Meanwhile the shortlived virtuoso Josef Slavík (1806–33) led a notable family quartet in which his father and brothers joined him.

Mildner’s pupil and second violinist Antonín Bennewitz (Benevic) (1833–1926) succeeded him as leader and in 1876 was among the founders of the Kammermusikverein, whose nationalist ideals stimulated Smetana to start his famous E minor Quartet (‘From my life’). Ironically the piece was at first thought too difficult and ‘orchestral’ and was not even tried out properly until April 1878, when Antonín Dvoák tackled the fearsome viola part. It finally reached the public in March 1879, performed by an ad hoc group led by Ferdinand Lachner at a Society of Arts concert, and proved a watershed in Czech chamber music.⁶ Lachner, a friend of Dvoák, was often leader of the quartet at the Kammermusikverein, which, as its name suggests, was dominated by German-speaking music-lovers. In 1894 the Czech Society for Chamber Music was set up as a Czech-speaking counterblast and it quickly became known as a venue for even better performances. Visiting quartets would often play for the German and Czech societies on consecutive evenings. But by then Prague had its own professional quartets.

Some of the best Czech quartets of the early twentieth century were expatriate groups; in fact the evík and Prague Quartets started that way. In 1907–10 Jaroslav Kocian led a group in Odessa which became legendary, the other members being Frantíek Stupka, Josef Perman and Ladislav Zelenka. In the 1920s the New York Quartet, founded in 1919 by Mr and Mrs Ralph Pulitzer, achieved a rare standard but sadly was never invited to make recordings. Its members were Otakar adek, Jaroslav Siskovský, Ludvik Schwab and Bedich Váka.

Hungary also exported many players but wonderful chamber music could be heard in the great country houses and in the salons of the twin cities on the Danube, especially Pest. In 1886 the now-unified city acquired the Budapest (or Hubay–Popper) Quartet led by Jenö Hubay (1858–1937), who had just returned to teach at the Academy. Although this pupil of Joachim has gone down in history as an arch-conservative, because of his directorship of the Academy from 1919, he was more of a radical in his youth: he and his cellist colleague, David Popper, laid the foundation of the Hungarian quartet tradition. The other original members were Victor Herzfeld and Bram Eldering; the latter did not stay long but took away priceless experiences of performances with Brahms – who thought the group the best he had heard.

In contrast to the refined playing of Hubay and Popper, the violist in the quartet from 1898, Gustav Szermy, had a booming tone and was the first Hungarian to make a real impression on the instrument – Popper said of him: ‘He is a string-trombone player!’

The USA

One comes across evidence of chamber music in late eighteenth-century America – for instance, the set of six string quintets written in 1789 by the Dutch-born John Frederick Peter (1746–1813), a member of the Moravian sect. As for public performance, research by Karen A. Shaffer has turned up a series of six subscription concerts given in New York – probably in 1792 – by a quartet from London led by the English violinist James Hewitt (1770–1827).⁷ But it was in Boston that the first regular group, the Mendelssohn Quintette Club, was formed in 1849. Its two violists were able to double on other instruments, Edward Lehmann on flute and Thomas Ryan on clarinet. August Fries was the leader until 1858, when Wilhelm Schultze took over, and his brother Wulf Fries was the cellist throughout the ensemble’s existence, until 1898. Tours were made as far afield as California, Hawaii and the Antipodes. The violinists Sam Franko and Gustav Dannreuther (younger brother of Edward of London fame) were among many musicians who played or toured with the club.

New York was not far behind, with its Mason and Bergmann Chamber Concerts begun by the pianist William Mason and the cellist Carl Bergmann in 1855. After a slight hiatus they resumed in 1857–8 with the violinist Theodore Thomas, German-born but American-trained, joining Mason as organiser. Although it continued only until 1868, this group was influential, giving some six concerts a season. Thomas (1835–1905), best remembered as a conductor, was an outstanding fiddler; and he persuaded his sometimes reluctant colleagues to play late Beethoven quartets as well as Schumann, Schubert, Franck, Volkmann, Brahms, Rubinstein and Berwald. The second violinist was Joseph Mosenthal, the violist George Matzka and the cellist Bergmann until 1861, when Frederick Bergner replaced him. The altruistic Mason made up the inevitable financial shortfall of the concerts himself.

Gustav Dannreuther (1853–1923), who though Cincinnati-born had studied with Joachim and De Ahna, ran the Buffalo Philharmonic in upstate New York from 1882 and started his Beethoven Quartet in 1884 – taking the name from the Beethoven Quintette Club of Boston, in whose quartet he had played. His ensemble, which eventually gave concerts under his name, was highly influential as it toured a good deal until 1917.

Two pupils of Schradieck and Joachim who led excellent quartets were Maud Powell (1867–1920) – thought to be the first woman to head a group otherwise composed of men – and Theodore Spiering (1893–1905), who racked up more than 400 concerts and toured Canada as well as the USA. An important all-female quartet was led by Olive Mead (1874–1946) from 1902 to 1917.

Apart from the Mendelssohn and Beethoven Quintettes, Boston could boast an all-female quartet, formed in 1878 by pupils of Julius Eichberg and named after him. Lillian Shattuck led it for some fifteen years but her colleagues changed several times, owing to the usual pressures on female players in those days. The group studied with Joachim in Berlin in 1881–2.

But the most celebrated ensemble to emerge from Boston was also the top American group of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Kneisel Quartet (Fig. 3.3) was formed when the Bucharest-born fiddler Franz Kneisel (1865–1926), a pupil of Grün and Hellmesberger Snr in Vienna, became leader of the Boston Symphony in 1885. Henry Lee Higginson encouraged the young man to start a quartet; and Kneisel and the Croatian violist Louis Sveenski were to stay in place for thirty-two years. They and their colleagues were friends of both Brahms and Dvoák, giving many important local premieres as well as the world premieres of Dvoák’s ‘American’ Quartet and Quintet – they were also virtually the first to perform his Op. 105. They would spend their summers back in Europe, so that they kept in touch with musical developments there; and in 1896 they toured there to acclaim. Later summers were spent in Blue Hills, Maine, which developed into an artists’ colony. The Kneisel Quartet gave subscription series in Boston, New York, Washington, Baltimore, Hartford and the universities. Beginning in the small Chickering Hall, Boston, by the mid-1890s they had to move to the Association Hall, with double the seating capacity. Kneisel devoted himself entirely to the quartet from 1903 and from 1905 he taught at the Institute of Musical Art (later the Juilliard School) in New York, where he was a potent influence. A number of superb players filled the second violin and cello chairs at various times and the last second violinist, Hans Letz, started his own ensemble after Kneisel’s final concert in 1917.

Figure 3.3 Kneisel Quartet: (left to right) Hans Kneisel, Alwin Schröder, Louis Sveenski, Otto Roth