The Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet

4 The concert explosion and the age of recording

In the last years of the nineteenth century, the prototype of the modern string quartet ensemble emerged: democratic, virtuosic, well rehearsed and no longer tied to one locality but willing to travel in search of work. It was necessary to embrace the work ethic because concert fees had to be split four ways: a front-rank violinist such as Adolf Busch would receive as much for playing one concerto as his entire quartet would earn for playing the equivalent of three concertos in an evening. Summer festivals were virtually unknown in 1900 and artists lived for the whole year on what they could make in the winter season. Only a fortunate few ensembles had wealthy sponsors; hence the members of many quartets supported themselves partly by teaching or by orchestral playing – and it was common for the string principals of an orchestra to appear as a quartet, whether they matched well or not.

The almost obsessive perfectionism that would mark twentieth-century ensembles was still unknown; but before long, it was beginning to take shape in response to the demands of the new music. As with most developments in the history of string playing, technical progress was patchy and sporadic. However, two countries in particular, Bohemia and Hungary, consistently led the way in advancing standards. The emergence of the gramophone record, the proliferation of chamber music societies and the ease of modern transport, which made touring by professional quartets a viable proposition, all played their parts in these developments; and the two World Wars acted as watersheds for the introduction of new generations of ensembles. By midway through the century, festivals were beginning to spring up all over the world in the summer months; and the idea of having a resident quartet in an educational institution was catching on.

The last quarter of the century witnessed the development of ‘period-instrument’ ensembles, and it is now possible to see that the playing of string quartets has come full circle in the past one hundred years. For much of that time, the main story was the steady development of vibrato; but now quartets are making a good living by playing in a way that would have given the players of the 1940s and 1950s a severe toothache. Even the cello’s endpin, which was not universally adopted until well into the century, is being banished again by these ‘period-instrument’ groups.

Recording has had a vast influence on the quartet medium; it has disseminated the work of famous ensembles to millions of people who have never heard them in concert and has enabled great players to live on after their deaths in an eerie immortality. It has thus already been invaluable to students of performance practice. But recording, too, has come full circle. In the first half of the century, all recording was live and unedited, even if it was done in the clinical environment of a studio and in five-minute sections to suit the old 78rpm discs. The advent of tape machines and eventually digital technology enabled artists, in collaboration with technical staff, to achieve a level of perfection in their recordings which they could rarely, if ever, match in the concert hall. Significantly, many ensembles have reacted against this emphasis on perfection in recent years and have released live recordings, warts and all. The digital recording medium is now ubiquitous, as the cost of producing compact discs has steadily fallen. Young quartets can use CDs as visiting cards and can often submit tapes as their initial entries to competitions. They can record their rehearsals and performances as an objective check on their progress.

Film, television and video have still not been sufficiently exploited for bringing string quartets to wider audiences, although major ensembles such as the Alban Berg and Smetana have had videos released of their performances. The string quartet is ideally suited to presentation on television, and it can only be the fear of elitism that has restricted its appearances. The use of such media as teaching aids is also in its infancy and will surely increase.

Bohemia, Moravia and Hungary

The nursery of the modern string quartet movement was not Berlin, Paris, Vienna or even London but that part of central Europe taking in Hungary and the Czech lands, Bohemia and Moravia. By common consent the first quartet ensemble that was both democratic and virtuosic was the Czech Quartet, founded in Prague in 1892 by four brilliant students. The cellist, Otto Berger, soon withdrew owing to a fatal illness and for the first two decades of the group’s career his teacher, Hanu U+0161 Wihan, played in his stead. The other members were the violin soloist Karel Hoffman and the composers Josef Suk and Oskar Nedbal, both pupils of Dvo U+0159 ák. Although they premiered only one work by Dvo U+0159 ák, they were very close to him – Suk was his son-in-law – and they were all central figures in Czech musical life. In the 1890s they already toured widely and made a deep impression with Smetana’s E minor Quartet ‘From My Life’: several writers have left us impressions of Nedbal turning over the first pages of his part, then swivelling round to the audience to deliver the searing viola fanfares that open this work. With Nedbal, who quickly became a leading specialist violist, the viola in the string quartet finally came of age. He quit the group in 1906 in scandalous circumstances, but it continued with a first-rate substitute, Jií Herold – leader of both the Czech Philharmonic and an eponymous quartet – and later with Ladislav Zelenka in Wihan’s place (Fig. 4.1). The Czech Quartet was best known for its Czech interpretations but played a vast repertoire and, from 1909, enjoyed a close rapport with the German pianist and composer Max Reger, premiering one of his quartets. Among its many other first performances, Janá U+010D ek’s First Quartet – which it commissioned – stands out.

Figure 4.1 Czech Quartet: (rear) Josef Suk, Ladislav Zelenka; (front) Karel Hoffmann, Ji U+0159 í Herold

The Czech Quartet made numerous recordings; those it set down for Polydor in 1928 have had a particularly wide currency. By then it was clearly not rehearsing much, but the verve and musicality of its interpretations of works by Smetana, Dvo U+0159 ák and Suk himself make the records still worth hearing. By coincidence, virtually the same repertoire was recorded around the same time by the evík Quartet (Fig. 4.2) – which, although its members were only slightly younger, already represented a new generation. Named after the pedagogue who taught three of its members, the U+0160 ev U+010D ík did not play such a vital role in Czech musical life as the Czech Quartet but it did significantly advance the technique of quartet playing. Its records show broadly the same characteristics as the older group – a light, airy violin tone, sparing use of vibrato and liberal portamenti – but everything is tighter in ensemble and better organised.

Figure 4.2 U+0160 ev U+010D ík Quartet (1911–13): (left to right) Bohuslav Lhotský, Karel Moravec, Ladislav Zelenka, Karel Procházka

The death of its leader Bohuslav Lhotský in 1930 cut off the group’s career prematurely after less than three decades, but by then there were several other superb groups working in Prague and touring. Of these, the most exceptional was the Prague Quartet, which was founded just after World War I, played a leading role in bringing forward new music – such as the works of Schulhoff – and petered out in the early 1950s. Leaders and cellists came and went, but the players of the inner parts, Herbert Berger and Ladislav U+010C erný, remained constant virtually throughout. The violist U+010C erný, a contemporary of Busch and Szigeti, was one of the most extraordinary musicians of the century. Not above retouching scores to suit his own ideas, he was a friend of Hindemith and an inspiration to generations of Czech chamber musicians. The records of Dvo U+0159 ák, Schumann and Janá U+010D ek made by the Prague Quartet are exceptional, especially Dvo U+0159 ák’s G major, Op. 106, with the original leader, Richard Zika, and the outstanding cellist Milo Sádlo. Soon after that recording was made in 1933, Zika defected to the rival Ondíek Quartet, which as a result became almost as good as the Prague for a time. It made some beautiful records.

After World War II the finest of all Czech ensembles emerged in Prague. The Smetana Quartet came to play the same role in its country’s musical life as the Czech Quartet once had, premiering many Czech works and securing the places of Smetana’s D minor and Janá U+010D ek’s two quartets in the international repertoire. More than that, it became the first Czech group to make a worldwide reputation in the Viennese classics. Its spiritus rector was the cellist Antonín Kohout, and the other founder to remain constant was the second violinist Lubomír Kostecký. The conductor Václav Neumann was an early member. For many years the group played all its repertoire by heart and to the end of its days, it retained a central core of Czech warhorses which it performed from memory. By 1955 the personnel was finally settled, with Ji U+0159 í Novák as leader and Dr Milan U+0160 kampa – a pupil of U+010C erný – as violist. During the next three decades the Smetana Quartet (Fig. 4.3) played to a standard not surpassed before or since. All the Beethoven quartets were recorded, some more than once; and the ensemble’s Mozart, which included all the quintets with the younger Josef Suk as first viola, was superb. In the music of Smetana, Dvoák, Janáek, Novák, Suk, Martin and Eben it had no peer, even though Prague boasted other fine ensembles such as the Vlach, which was attached to Czech Radio and thrived on large-scale works such as Dvoák’s G major, Suk’s Second and Stenhammar’s Fourth.

Figure 4.3 Smetana Quartet (c. 1960): (left to right) Ji U+0159 í Novák, Lubomír Kostecký, Antonín Kohout, Milan U+0160 kampa

The main Moravian centre, Brno, also produced a superb ensemble after World War II. The Janá U+010D ek Quartet played its own part in disseminating the works of its name composer; and, taking its cue from the slightly older Smetana Quartet, – with which it often performed Mendelssohn’s Octet – it played from memory. The death of its leader Ji U+0159 í Travní U+010D ek in 1973 sent it into partial eclipse, but it is again playing superbly, having evolved into a completely different line-up.

In the 1970s and 1980s Prague had another splendid classical ensemble in the line of the Smetana. This was the Talich Quartet, which sometimes sounded too refined in its native repertoire but made an international reputation in Mozart and Beethoven, especially through its recordings. A rather brutal reorganisation in the late 1990s resulted in a complete change of membership within a few years, however. The example and the teaching of the Smetana Quartet have led to the emergence of a hugely talented new generation of ensembles. Among these the senior, and the most refined, is the Panocha, named after its leader. For some years it has played as well as any in the world and its tours have taken it to all major centres. Its series of Dvo U+0159 ák recordings has set the standard for the twenty-first century, but in Janá U+010D ek it has perhaps been surpassed by the more pungent, powerful artistry of the Pra U+017E ák Quartet.

Hungary

The work of the Hubay Quartet acted as a stimulus for chamber music in Budapest, as did the teaching of its members; but two decades elapsed before its successor emerged. The Hungarian Quartet – known at home by the names of leader Imre Waldbauer and cellist Jenö Kerpely – was a seminal twentieth-century ensemble, and it is tragic that it left no recordings. It came into existence to perform the works of Bartók and Kodály and the two concerts it gave in Budapest in March 1910 – after more than ninety rehearsals – ushered in a new era in Hungarian music overnight. The players were all major personalities: the second violinist János Temesváry, who stayed with the group throughout like Waldbauer and Kerpely, was a fine player and the first two occupants of the viola chair, Antal Molnár and Egon Kornstein, were musicologists. After the latter moved to America in the early 1920s (changing his name to Kenton) the Hungarian Quartet had several violists and lost its focus slightly, although it still toured. By the time it petered out in the late 1930s it had given the world or Budapest premieres of most of the important Hungarian chamber music of the era and its members had contributed to the superb education available at the Budapest Academy between the wars.

After the First World War several groups emerged from the orchestra at the Budapest Opera and left Hungary to make their fortunes, the most important being the Budapest and Léner. All eight men were pupils of Hubay or Popper. The Budapest began with a line-up of three Hungarians and a Dutch cellist but was bedevilled by personnel changes. By 1926 it was being infiltrated by a Russian, and a decade later it had metamorphosed from an athletic Magyar group to a rather solid Russian one (Fig. 4.4). The Léner, on the other hand, kept the same personnel for more than two decades. It played with a good deal of the wide ‘Hubay vibrato’, making a sound very different from the light, brilliant Budapest, and Jenö Léner’s own style could be a little soupy. Its ensemble could also be sloppy but its natural flair and warmth won it many friends. It was the first quartet to record extensively, taking advantage of the superior technology available in London, and by the mid-1930s it had sold more than a million 78rpm discs, an astonishing feat even though many of its performances required several discs. The backbone of its repertoire was the Beethoven cycle, which it recorded complete, even making two versions of some works. Its Beethoven cycles were important occasions, especially in London, until the Busch Quartet arrived on the scene. Like the Budapest, the Léner did not make a great effort to play modern music, but its series devoted to the history of the string quartet were influential at the time. Its playing style quickly became dated and its recordings were virtually ignored for the latter half of the century. Fortunately some of these performances have recently been revived and, with all their faults, have much to offer an informed listener.

Figure 4.4 Budapest Quartet (1920–6): (left to right) Emil Hauser, Imre Pogany, Istvan Ipolyi, Harry Son

In the mid-1930s the first really modern Hungarian ensemble was formed by students of the Budapest Academy. The New Hungarian Quartet made its name by collaring the local premiere of Bartók’s Fifth Quartet, which it studied with the composer. In 1937 early teething problems were solved by bringing in the virtuoso violinist Zoltán Székely as leader; and for a year his predecessor Sándor Végh played as second fiddle. During the war the group was trapped in Holland, in conditions of some privation; but it emerged in 1945, having learnt the Beethoven cycle and dropped the New from its name, to become one of the world’s leading quartets. A purist might complain that the violins were not well matched, as the second, Alexandre Moskowsky, was Russian and played in a different style; in addition the cellist Palotai, older than the others, was too dominant. Nevertheless, the group made a profound impression in the central repertoire and its interpretations of twentieth-century music were excellent. Changes in the second violin and cello positions ushered in its best decade, the 1960s. Playing in a more homogeneous but also more relaxed style, the Hungarian Quartet was as successful in its adopted home the United States as in Europe. The recorded cycles of the Bartók and Beethoven quartets that it made then will be heard with respect for years to come. Its members remained influential even after its dissolution.

Bartók and Beethoven were also the specialities of another expatriate Magyar group that Sándor Végh formed in 1940, not long after leaving the New Hungarian Quartet. He was able to keep his eponymous quartet together for more than three decades, even though his colleagues disliked him intensely. Végh himself could be an infuriatingly sloppy player – live recordings made as early as 1950 reveal him playing excruciatingly out of tune – and the group often sounded as if its members had not met before coming on stage (they lived in four separate cities). Végh’s outsize personality generally got them through, however. Records made in the 1950s and 1960s were variable and sometimes surprisingly dull; but in the early 1970s the players pulled themselves together long enough to make fine Bartók and Beethoven cycles. After the group fell apart, Végh soldiered on with two different formations, but with mixed success.

At home in Hungary, the post-war scene was dominated by the solid ensembles led by Vilmos Tatrai and Péter Komlós. The Tatrai Quartet, founded in 1946, lasted almost half a century. It will probably be remembered mainly for its sturdy Haydn performances; it achieved one of the first complete recorded cycles, although the recordings of the earlier works, done last, inevitably showed some deterioration in technique. Komlos’s group, founded in 1957 and known as the Bartók Quartet from 1963, has been highly effective in the works of Beethoven, Brahms and its name composer, all of which it has recorded with success.

The younger Hungarian quartets have mostly flattered to deceive, either failing to keep consistent personnel or lacking charisma; and yet the teaching of Andras Mihály has produced one promising group after another. The Takács, which in the late 1970s and early 1980s played very beautifully, always suffered from a rather laid-back cellist; and the acquisition of a major recording contract in the late 1980s coincided with a drastic loss of form. The leader resigned and the violist died; and since 1995 the group has consisted of two Hungarians and two Englishmen, a most unsatisfactory mixture.

The best hope for the Hungarian school is the Keller Quartet, which emerged in the late 1980s. At its best it plays with both brilliance and flair; and at the time of writing it seems to be getting over a period of upheavals. To the Viennese classics and the native classics of Bartók and Kodály it has added such specialities as Tchaikovsky and Dvo U+0159 ák; and in concert it has daringly juxtaposed the gnomic utterances of Kurtág with the counterpoint of Bach’s Art of Fugue.

The Joachim tradition

By the time Joseph Joachim died in 1907, the string quartet recital had taken root in the concert hall in a way that the sonata recital had not – that development would take several more decades. Joachim himself had been largely responsible for the trend and, were he alive today, he would find things much as he left them. Recitals tend to be based on historical principles, so that a mature Haydn or Mozart quartet will often be placed at the start, to be followed by inferior music. It is still all too likely that the ‘modern’ work in the concert – placed just before the interval, in the approved Joachim way – will be the Ravel F major, written before Joachim’s death. Of course the literature has been expanded by a century’s worth of music – in particular Janá U+010D ek, Bartók, Berg and Shostakovich – but our knowledge of Haydn and Mozart, relatively few of whose works were common currency in 1900, has also increased. Thus, exposure of the twentieth-century repertoire is still restricted to one work per programme, except on special occasions.

One suspects Joachim would not have objected. Certainly those who followed in his footsteps, before the German tradition was fractured by Hitler’s insane aberrations, were content to follow his lead. The situation they inherited in Germany was a healthy one. A big network of chamber music clubs thrived, and the major centres such as Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt supported large numbers of concerts every season. In addition there was work to be found in Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Five quartet leaders in particular could lay claim to the Joachim succession: Edgar Wollgandt in Leipzig, Karl Klingler in Berlin, Carl Wendling in Stuttgart and two Dutchmen, Henri Petri in Dresden and Bram Eldering in Cologne. Petri died fairly soon himself and did not make records. Wollgandt’s recordings are interesting mainly because his Gewandhaus Quartet could call on a vast array of experience. He himself was Nikisch’s son-in-law and for many years the Quartet’s cellist was Julius Klengel, a friend of both Brahms and Joachim – it is possibly more important that this ensemble recorded a single Brahms movement than that it made one of the first complete sets of Beethoven’s Op. 131. The playing on all the Gewandhaus discs is old-fashioned – light in tone and vibrato, replete with portamenti – but deeply moving in its dedication.

Klingler and Wendling were active into the 1930s and left records which are probably the closest we can come to hearing the Joachim Quartet. Indeed, the cellist of the first Klingler formation (1906–14), the Welshman Arthur Williams, followed his teacher Hausmann in playing without an endpin. Apart from Karl Klingler himself, the mainstay of the Quartet was his elder brother Fridolin, who played the viola throughout the group’s career. The early Klingler records, of individual movements, are musically excellent, but one notes the rather spongy attack, soft-grained sound and lavish portamento. These traits are still in evidence in the one major work the ensemble recorded in the 1930s, Beethoven’s Op. 127. The sforzati are lacking in drama and it is the probity of the playing, rather than its excitement, that impresses. The slow movement of Haydn’s Op. 76 no. 5, done as a separate item, is interpreted with immense breadth. Wendling’s records are also mostly of individual movements, but they include the entire Mozart Clarinet Quintet and part of Reger’s Clarinet Quintet, dedicated to him, as well as the Adagio of Schubert’s C major Quintet. Again, it is the honesty of the artistry that hits home. Perhaps it is significant that both Klingler and Wendling behaved admirably in the Hitler era.

Bram Eldering, leader of the major ensemble in the Rhineland, the Gürzenich Quartet, made no records but, like Banquo, was destined to have many heirs – among his pupils at the Amsterdam and Cologne Conservatoires were innumerable quartet leaders, principally Adolf Busch, Willem de Boer, Ria Queling, Max Strub and Wilhelm Stross. Of these the most notable – indeed, the greatest quartet primarius of all time – was Busch (1891–1952). He gave an enormous number of concerts and managed to be Europe’s busiest soloist while devoting much of his time to chamber music. His Quartet, which performed from 1912 to 1951 with only two brief interruptions, was always composed of soloists, and if Busch himself dominated a little in the nineteenth-century manner, that was due to his gigantic personality. The Busch Quartet was recognised as the first in the German-speaking lands to rehearse exhaustively and democratically. Its first few years were spent in Vienna and it always had a Viennese violist – until 1944 Karl Doktor. The cellists were Paul Grümmer and then, from 1930, his pupil Herman Busch. From 1920 to 1944 the second violinist was the Swede Gösta Andreasson, from the same Joachim tradition as Adolf Busch (Fig. 4.5). Although considered Joachim’s successor, Busch departed from his pattern in certain ways. For example, he liked to place the Op. 18 quartets in the centre of the programme in Beethoven cycles, as points of relief from the heavier fare, and he often started with a late quartet; whereas Joachim would place an Op. 18 first, with a middle-period quartet second and a late quartet last. In general Busch liked to vary his programmes as much as possible, so that even if he were playing three cycles concurrently in three different cities, all three would be ordered differently. From 1921 he had his future son-in-law Rudolf Serkin as the Quartet’s resident pianist; and he would programme a duo, trio, quintet or sextet among the quartets to lend variety.

Figure 4.5 Busch Quartet (1930): (left to right) Adolf Busch, Gösta Andreasson, Herman Busch, Karl Doktor

The Busch Quartet toured indefatigably, basing its programmes on the Viennese classics and playing more Haydn than any of its peers, but also programming a certain amount of conservative modern music, including the leader’s own excellent compositions. Busch’s hero was Reger and we are fortunate that a radio recording of Reger’s E U+266D Quartet Op. 109 survives. It is also almost as important that Busch’s recordings of Beethoven’s late quartets exist as that the music itself exists, as Busch alone plumbed their full depths. He believed this rarefied music had to be taken to extremes and he possessed both the technique and the power to do it. His interpretations, for all their occasional tiny inconsistencies, are fit to be taught in music colleges and, once such institutions have caught up with the significance of historic recordings, perhaps they will be. Busch was hardly less effective in Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms and Dvoák. In the 1940s the Busch Quartet was based in the United States, where it was not fully appreciated; even there, however, Busch was responsible for bringing a leavening of the Old World to the New by founding the Marlboro Summer Music School. He has not yet had a German successor, but both the Strub and Stross ensembles left important records of Reger. Strub’s second of his three line-ups included Walter Trampler and Ludwig Hoelscher but collapsed in 1939 on Trampler’s emigration.

It is necessary, for historic reasons, to mention the Amar Quartet, which had Paul Hindemith as violist and played much new music in its short life (1921–9). Unfortunately its records are of almost negligible musical interest; and although those of Hindemith’s own works give certain clues as to how he may have wished the music to go, they have been surpassed many times over. The contrast with the other group in which he was involved, the string trio with Szymon Goldberg and Emanuel Feuermann, could hardly be greater. The Amar Quartet’s playing is almost shockingly direct and unnuanced, and one wonders what the players thought they were doing, essaying the piece by Verdi.

After the 1939–45 war Germany – by now split in two – was unlucky. In the West the excellent Schäffer Quartet, which played late Beethoven well, received little publicity and the Barchet Quartet, which commanded a fair amount of tonal colour, was eclipsed by its leader’s early death. Similarly, the Drolc Quartet from the Berlin Philharmonic, which changed three of its personnel halfway through its career, died prematurely with its leader. In the Eastern sector, polished ensembles flourished in Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden, often as adjuncts to the great orchestras. Among those who led notable groups were Karl Suske – who worked in Berlin and then Leipzig – and the Dresden concertmaster Rudolf Ulbrich; but their concerts and even their records had to be heard in situ. So the German flag has mostly been flown internationally by the terminally dry Melos Quartet of Stuttgart and, in more recent years, by the Brandis, the Auryn and the younger Petersen, Vogler and Leipzig.

More interesting than any of these worthy ensembles is the Orpheus Quartet, a polyglot group (a Frenchman, a Dutchman and two Romanians) based in Düsseldorf and already, after little more than a decade, of world class. The Orpheus has brought forward interesting repertoire such as the Malipiero cycle and has shown itself equal to all styles from the classics to Bartók and Dutilleux. A recording of Schubert’s C major Quintet with Peter Wispelwey displays remarkable freshness and originality.

Vienna and Salzburg

Although Vienna has produced many marvellous quartets, nearly all of them have been tied to the city’s orchestras. Only with the emergence of the Alban Berg Quartet in the 1970s did it become possible to run a full-time ensemble. The towering figure in the closing years of the nineteenth century and the first four decades of the twentieth was the Romanian-born Arnold Rosé (1863–1946), whose group performed from 1882 to 1945 (Fig. 4.6). Although it always played to a high standard, it suffered innumerable personnel changes and Rosé, whose word was law in Viennese string-playing circles, was dominant. The Rosé Quartet gave six to eight subscription concerts every season in Vienna and toured Europe when its members could get leave from their work in the Court/State Opera. Its most famous concerts, for which it rehearsed assiduously, were those at which it introduced Schoenberg’s early chamber music. The Second Quartet in particular caused a scandal and Rosé made no attempt to export the music to other centres. He also rejected Wolf’s powerful D minor Quartet. He did have curiosity about new music, however; and in the early 1940s, when he had been forced to emigrate to England and reconstitute his ensemble in London, he played Shostakovich’s new First Quartet. Most of his ensemble records featured single movements, but in the late 1920s he set down three Beethoven quartets, one early, one middle-period and one late. At this point his group was well worn in, having changed only its cellist since the early years of the century; and, although the violist suffered from Parkinson’s disease – as can be heard at his first entry in Op. 131 – all four men were playing to a high standard. What we hear is virtually nineteenth-century style, with many slides and modest use of vibrato, but the way the players tear into the development of the first movement of the ‘Harp’, Op. 74, proves how well the nineteenth-century approach could work in Beethoven.

Figure 4.6 Rosé Quartet (in the late 1920s)

The next big name to emerge – in the early 1920s – was Rudolf Kolisch (1896–1978), who played the violin left-handed and therefore sat on the right wing of the quartet, an ideal solution for classical works and for disseminating the sound in all music. The first occupant of the chair opposite him was Fritz Rothschild, a former member of Busch’s ensemble, and at first the two shared the leadership; but too much democracy has never been good for quartets and Rothschild soon departed. Other Kolisch innovations, such as rehearsing from scores and playing from memory, lasted longer. Kolisch was Arnold Schoenberg’s brother-in-law and unlike Rosé was bent on propagating music of the Second Viennese School beyond Vienna. With his various colleagues he presided over the world premières of many works, including Berg’s Lyric Suite, Schoenberg’s last two quartets and Bartók’s last two.

By the late 1920s the group, by then named after its leader, had settled down with a Viennese second violinist, a Hungarian violist and a Russian cellist (Fig. 4.7). This mélange did not make for ideal balance, as the cellist patently played in a different style from everyone else and inner parts were weakly projected. Once one has heard such groups as the Busch, the Kolisch approach to Schubert sounds feeble. Nevertheless, enough sound documents have survived to show that the group, in its very Viennese way, had something to say. Recordings of Wolf’s Italian Serenade and Mozart’s Musical Joke are almost ideal in their lightness and airiness. The legendary records of the Schoenberg quartets were made in Hollywood, under less than ideal circumstances, and should be heard with an awareness of the limitations of the group’s style in other music; they are still of historical interest; indeed, the recording of the Fourth Quartet was either the world première or the second performance. Soon after, in 1939, the group disbanded and the two violinists found new partners who were better attuned to their style. Sadly, for various reasons, this line-up did not prosper, but it did make a recording of Mozart’s ‘Dissonance’ that is the best souvenir of Kolisch’s musicianship (an uneven account of Bartók’s Fifth was not issued until the CD era). Kolisch later led the Pro Arte Quartet in its American incarnation and taught many chamber musicians.

Figure 4.7 Kolisch Quartet: (left to right) Felix Khuner, Eugen Lehner, Benar Heifetz, Rudolf Kolisch

The real successor to the Rosé as an echt-Wiener ensemble was the Konzerthaus Quartet, founded in 1934 by four members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra – who were soon taken into the State Opera Orchestra and the Philharmonic. This group has come down to us as the Haydn quartet par excellence, because of its many commercial and radio recordings; but its Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven are hardly less striking and it has left important records of Bruckner, Schmidt and Pfitzner. Here is the pliant, yielding Viennese style at its best. The Konzerthaus Quartet kept its original members for almost a quarter of a century and even in its dying years, in the early 1960s, it was capable of good things.

Of short duration but of seminal influence was the career of the Galimir Quartet, composed of Felix of that ilk and his sisters. Intent from the first on seeking the approval of the composers whose works they played, the Galimir made recordings in the late 1930s of the Ravel F major and Milhaud Seventh, both supervised by the composers, and Berg’s Lyric Suite – of immense importance because, although Berg was dead by then, they had studied it with him relatively recently. The Milhaud, of less worth musically, was superbly played, as was the Ravel, although the first movement was taken too fast. Galimir made an immense impact on chamber music in the United States, not least through the Marlboro Summer School, and sporadically led quartets, although no longer with his sisters. Significantly, when he came to record the Berg and Ravel works again half a century later in America, the former was much the same in outline but the latter featured a more relaxed opening movement.

Rosé was succeeded by other leaders of the Opera orchestra who played quartets to a high standard. Under Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Walter Barylli and Willi Boskovsky the ensemble was more or less the same, with Otto Strasser as the second violinist from the late 1930s into the 1960s and few changes in the other positions. Another leader of the orchestra, Walter Weller, also had an excellent quartet and the tradition continues to this day with Rainer Küchl and Werner Hink. But none of these ensembles has made a mark at the highest level – the Schneiderhan Quartet, which might have done so, had the misfortune to lose vital years to the war and its aftermath – although worthwhile recordings have been made of all of them.

The emergence of the Alban Berg Quartet in the early 1970s made a huge difference to the Viennese scene. Here was a group of the highest quality, dedicated not just to playing the classics well but also to propagating twentieth-century music. The original four players signalled their intentions immediately by studying for a year with the LaSalle Quartet in Cincinnati. Two personnel changes since then have not affected the Quartet’s quality, although they have changed its personality in subtle ways: having started as a marvellous Mozart ensemble, the Alban Berg Quartet has become a strong Haydn one. The Beethoven cycle, central to its career, has been recorded twice, the second time live, like most of the group’s more recent recordings. Berg, of course, has been vital to these players as well as Webern and Schoenberg. The more exotic central European fare such as Bartók and Janá U+010D ek has not suited them so well; but many premieres have been given – Berio, von Einem, Leitermeyer, Haubenstock-Ramati, Rihm, Schnittke, Urbanner, Wimberger et al. – and the group has been prepared to keep its new music in its repertoire. It is still playing with massive command.

The Alban Berg Quartet’s lead has been followed to an extent by the Artis Quartet, a decade younger, which has made a speciality of exhuming good music by such composers as Weigl and Zemlinsky. Its performances of the classics have sometimes exhibited a certain stiffness but it has made a positive contribution to expanding the Viennese repertoire.

The Viennese ensemble that has created the most stir in recent years is the Quatuor Mosaïques, founded in Paris in 1984 as an offshoot of a chamber orchestra. It purports to play on period instruments but in truth only its French cellist, Christophe Coin, approaches a real period technique. The other three players, all Viennese, play in a sort of halfway-house style; in fact the leader, Erich Höbarth, uses exactly the same instrument when he leads the ‘modern instrument’ Vienna Sextet – the only change is that he uses gut strings for the quartet. It is the innate musicality of the group, rather than any doctrinaire approach to style, that has won it so many plaudits. Its recordings of the Viennese classics have been extremely successful, as have its concert tours.

Salzburg has had a great ensemble for twenty years in the Hagen Quartet, which began as a group of siblings. Three still play in the Quartet but two changes of second violinist have brought about subtle differences, and the arrival of the German violinist Rainer Schmidt in 1987 was decisive in lifting the ensemble’s standard even higher. Lukas Hagen is one of the few leaders to play consistently in tune and the group’s stylistic sensitivity in Haydn and Mozart is exemplary. Its Beethoven is almost too lean and hungry, and one feels that much development is still to be made in this composer’s music. A good part of the Quartet’s activity is given over to twentieth-century music, in which it is very effective, thanks to its strong intellectual grasp of musical structures.

Recently Thomas Zehetmair has headed a remarkable group which has exhibited the pros and cons of playing from memory in the most vivid way. Some of its performances of the classics have been mannered beyond belief, but in the music of such composers as Bartók and Hartmann its technical prowess has been revelatory.

The Franco-Belgians

Few French or Belgian composers have written more than one token string quartet, so it is not surprising that native ensembles have largely looked elsewhere for their repertoire. As far as style goes, it is interesting to reflect that in the decade between the composition of the Debussy and Ravel quartets, now considered the cornerstones of the French school, the way of playing string instruments underwent a seismic revolution. The two works should therefore not be played in the same way, although they have outward similarities – and they both continued the trend of freeing the viola part. Because string teaching has always been basically conservative, the innovations of players such as Ysaÿe and Kreisler, with their continuous vibrato, took some time to spread, so that in Paris up to around 1930 one could have heard a gamut of playing styles.

Lucien Capet (1873–1928), the great French quartet leader of the last years of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth, was identified above all with Beethoven. He was a master of bowing whose ideas influenced many later players; and if his use of the left hand was rather nineteenth-century in effect, with little or no vibrato and pronounced portamenti, he played with much stylistic awareness. Capet led four different formations over the years, all with excellent players including two members of the Casadesus family; but the Quatuor Capet which chiefly concerns us is the last, which performed from 1918 until the leader’s sudden death at the end of 1928 (Fig. 4.8). Beautiful records of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Debussy, Ravel and Franck – the Quintet, with Marcel Ciampi at the piano – were made in the electrical era and, had Capet lived only a year or two more, we should have had others. The violist and cellist played on, under other leaders, and the second violinist, Maurice Hewitt, became a conductor. The Quatuor Capet’s recordings are obligatory listening for their courtly musicality and the window they provide into late nineteenth-century performance practice. The sound made on the gut strings is very pure, almost chaste, and yet the interpretative vision is both probing and powerful.

Figure 4.8 Quatuor Capet: (left to right) Camille Delobelle, Henri Benoît, Maurice Hewitt, Lucien Capet

More modern in its approach and less dominated by the leader was the Flonzaley Quartet, founded in 1902 as the private ensemble of the Swiss-American banker Edward J. de Coppet. Its name came from his villa in Switzerland. Although only the cellist was Belgian, the other three members– Swiss second violinist, Italian leader and violist – were pupils of César Thomson at Liège and the ensemble hewed to the light Franco-Belgian style. It soon transcended its origin as a rich man’s plaything and forged an important career, with one foot permanently in the United States and the other in Europe; de Coppet continued to sponsor it, however, until his death about halfway through its lifespan. The Flonzaley gave some high-profile premieres, including Enescu’s and Bloch’s first quartets and Stravinsky’s Three Pieces and Concertino (Fig. 4.9); but its importance lay more in the way it disseminated chamber music through its tours and records. After 1917 it had a series of substitute violists and its famous electric recordings of the piano quintets by Brahms (with Harold Bauer) and Schumann (with Ossip Gabrilowitsch) were made with the ubiquitous Russian player Nicolas Moldavan, who rather diluted its homogeneity of style. In 1928 it dissolved in a flurry of lawyers’ letters and writs – neither the first nor the last ensemble to perish in that way.

Figure 4.9 Ernest Bloch (standing, left) with the Flonzaley Quartet: (left to right) Adolfo Betti, Alfred Pochon, Iwan d’Archambeau, Ugo Ara

The real heir to the Belgian tradition of the Quatuor Ysaÿe was the Quatuor Pro Arte, which was founded in Brussels in 1912 but did not really get going until after the Great War. Its ‘Three Musketeers’ were the violinists Alphonse Onnou and Laurent Halleux (who alternated as leaders in the early days) and the violist Germain Prévost. They stayed with it throughout. When it was reconstituted in 1918 the cellist was the composer Fernand Quinet; he was replaced in 1922 by Robert Maas and the group’s classic formation was complete. The Pro Arte was the foremost contemporary music group of the inter-war years, introducing countless works through its own concert series in Brussels and Paris. It was also taken up by America’s leading patron of new music, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who sponsored many of its tours and its university concerts. In the 1930s the Pro Arte had a summer residency at Mills College in California and it was the first quartet to be given a university residency, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Maas became separated from the others by the war and Onnou soon died; the two others soldiered on at Madison for a time with other players and in theory the quartet still exists – but its great days ended in 1939. The Pro Arte was wonderfully comprehensive in its interpretations of Franco-Belgian music – Franck, Debussy, Ravel, Fauré – which it played with a light touch typical of its roots; fortunately it recorded the major works. In the classics it was sound but not special, so it is ironic that it should be remembered mainly for its series of Haydn records. It gained the contract by a bare-faced lie and had to sightread several of the performances in the studio. The interpretations are fine in their way but one longs for real Haydnesque grit occasionally. Of the Pro Arte’s contemporary repertoire little was recorded.

From the Paris Conservatoire two outstanding groups emerged after the First World War, playing in a very French manner but with a warmth that would be recognised by today’s audiences. The Quatuor Krettly was at its best in the late 1920s, when it consisted of three Frenchmen and a Belgian, and it left some unsurpassed recordings, notably of Fauré’s Quartet. The Quatuor Calvet began to hit its stride in 1928 when Daniel Guilevitch joined as second violinist. During the 1930s it toured throughout Europe and made sublime records of Debussy, Ravel, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. In 1940 it disbanded and a post-war formation did not last long, but its members were hugely influential: Joseph Calvet taught generations of French chamber musicians; Guilevitch (under the name Guilet) had his own quartet in the USA and founded the Beaux Arts Trio; and violist Léon Pascal had his own eponymous quartet from 1940 through the 1950s, making many fine recordings, including a Beethoven cycle.

After the war the major French quartet was the Quatuor Parrenin, which played a great deal of contemporary music but also excelled in the mainstream repertoire. It ran from 1942 for five decades but its best days were in the 1950s and 1960s. Its records of Debussy, Ravel, Fauré and Bartók were notable. The Quatuor Bernède, which performed from 1963 to 1991, also kept up a high standard and at various times three refugees from the Parrenin migrated to it.

In recent years an enormous amount of time, money and effort has been invested in propagating the string quartet medium in France, but no remarkable ensemble has established itself. The Ysaÿe, the Parisii and the Castagneri (which boasts a left-handed second violinist, enabling it to adopt the ideal seating formation) are the younger groups which look most likely to succeed; and the Quatuor Turner, playing on period instruments, has renewed the Parisian Beethoven tradition.

The Belgian tradition also flagged after the war, although the Paganini Quartet kept it alive for twenty years in the USA. Now a mainly French ensemble, the Quatuor Danel, has settled in Brussels and taken on a Belgian violist. This group, with the Danel brothers at the top and bottom of the range, has a dedicated outlook and is conscious of the Franco-Belgian tradition. It plays interesting repertoire such as the quartets of Vainberg and although it is capable of performances of profundity, its concerts and recordings have included lighter fare by the likes of Gounod and Rosenthal.

Chief beneficiary was the Amadeus Quartet (Fig. 4.10), which would have had a good career in any case. As it was, this group composed of three Austrian refugees and an English cellist of immigrant stock got off to a flying start in 1947 and never looked back. In the 1950s and 1960s the Amadeus garnered international acclaim, fuelled by its numerous tours and recordings, while at home its members – Norbert Brainin, Siegmund Nissel, Peter Schidlof and Martin Lovett – became national figures.¹ Its strengths lay in the music of such bourgeois composers as Mozart, Schubert and Brahms. In the earthier Haydn and Beethoven its response was often too smooth. Although it did not play much new music, its interpretation of Britten’s Second Quartet, which was recorded, showed off its bronze tone to advantage; it was no surprise when his Third Quartet was dedicated to the group. The shockingly sudden death of Schidlof brought the end after exactly forty years.

Figure 4.10 Amadeus Quartet: (left to right) Norbert Brainin, Siegmund Nissel, Peter Schidlof, Martin Lovett

Not that the Amadeus had things all its own way. The Allegri, founded in 1953, was impressive for a quarter of a century; and the Aeolian – which as the Stratton Quartet had won Elgar’s admiration with its records of his music in the early 1930s – had its finest hours in the 1970s under the leadership of Emanuel Hurwitz. Here was a primarius who could rise to the heroic challenges of Beethoven while also doing justice to the spiritual side. Happily the Aeolian’s interpretations of the late quartets – which it played memorably on television – were recorded; and the ensemble was the first to complete a cycle of the Haydn quartets.

Two ensembles formed in 1966 had differing fortunes. The Gabrieli Quartet kept up a high standard for more than twenty years but lost impetus after a change of leader. The Lindsay Quartet, on the other hand, is still making news with interpretations of daring and penetration. In Peter Cropper it has one of the best leaders – musically speaking – since Busch. Its first recording of Beethoven’s Op. 130 would alone entitle it to immortality and a Schubert C major Quintet (with Douglas Cummings) is almost as good. If the group’s technical address equalled its imagination it would be even better thought of. Perhaps, like most British ensembles, it tries to play too wide a repertoire.

As the number of music clubs willing or able to hire a quartet has declined, too many British quartet players have had to do other work in order to earn a decent living. Or, like the Brodsky Quartet, they have been driven to desperate ploys to attract publicity – this foursome’s ventures into ‘crossover’ have been questionable and their insistence on playing standing up has not aided audience concentration. The residencies available to British ensembles have also been few and not as munificent as those in America. Small wonder that in the past two decades, although such groups as the English String Quartet have made valuable contributions and the Fitzwilliam had a decade of glory with Christopher Rowland leading, only one British ensemble – the Endellion Quartet (Fig. 4.11) – has consistently met international standards. This superb classical quartet is playing as well as any in the world at present and its interpretations have a rare intellectual penetration.

Figure 4.11 Endellion Quartet: (left to right) Andrew Watkinson, David Waterman, Garfield Jackson, Ralph de Souza

Many hopes are invested in the young Belcea Quartet, British trained but with a Romanian leader and Polish violist, which has already displayed much accomplishment. Britain is also the base for a remarkable international ensemble, the Arditti Quartet, which in a quarter of a century has given innumerable first performances of new music. Its leader, Irvine Arditti, has been in place since the beginning and in 1985 the group acquired the distinguished Sri Lankan cellist Rohan de Saram. Its past and present members have all had the reputation of being fearsome sightreaders and fortunately many of the quartet’s interpretations have been recorded. One can forgive the gimmickry of the Arditti’s party piece, Stockhausen’s Helikopter – where each member plays in a separate helicopter – when so much of its work has been so dedicated. Its activities, along with those of the Kronos Quartet in America, have helped to revitalise the quartet medium for the twenty-first century. In Britain its challenge has been taken up by the young Kreutzer Quartet, which has already given many astonishing performances of new scores.

The Nordic lands

Denmark has consistently produced expert professional quartets, and two groups with their roots in the 1930s, the Erling Bloch and the Koppel (named after its violist and led by his wife), made important recordings, especially of the works of Nielsen. The Danish Quartet, which ran from 1949 to 1983, was at its peak in the 1960s and 1970s. But the jewel among the Danish ensembles was the Copenhagen Quartet, formed in 1957, which had a close relationship with one of the century’s great quartet composers, Vagn Holmboe, and toured worldwide. Apart from its discs of Holmboe, Nielsen, Gade, Kuhlau et al., the Copenhagen recorded a worthy set of the late Beethoven quartets and excelled in a wide repertoire of classic and romantic music. Its leader Tutter Givskov is still passing on her insights to younger generations.

In recent years the Kontra Quartet, led by the Hungarian Anton Kontra, has set the tone for Danish quartet playing. In fact the contribution of Hungarian violinists to Scandinavian music has been considerable. In Sweden, the group led by Carl von Garaguly was the first to perform the Beethoven cycle, in 1948. That country, like Norway, has had many quartets of excellent quality without producing any of international calibre until recently. However, the Norwegians now have the characterful Vertavo Quartet, composed of two pairs of sisters.

In Finland the Jean Sibelius Quartet, led by the Japanese violinist Yoshiko Arai, has been performing and recording with cultured elegance since 1980; while the Helsinki Quartet has given promise of a vital younger generation.

Russia and Eastern Europe

No ensemble has been more closely connected with a composer than the Beethoven Quartet with Shostakovich. Founded in 1923 in Moscow, this group comprised four major personalities: Dmitry Tsïganov was among the leading violinists of his era, Vasily Shirinsky a composer and musicologist, Vadim Borisovsky one of the main figures in the viola’s development, and Sergey Shirinsky, brother of the second violinist, a nonpareil quartet cellist. The four stayed together for more than forty years, an amazing record in itself. During that time – and in a further dozen or so years with new players of the inner parts – they gave innumerable premieres, including all of Shostakovich’s chamber works except his first and last quartets (Sergei Shirinsky died while they were preparing for the first performance of the Fifteenth). They rehearsed every premiere under the composer’s meticulous supervision; and their recordings are still the benchmarks against which Shostakovich performances must be measured.

More or less contemporary with the Beethoven was the Glazunov Quartet of Leningrad, which premiered Shostakovich’s First Quartet and left a few valuable records, including a fine Borodin Second.

After World War II the Soviet state machine interfered more and more in concert life. Only favoured ensembles were allowed to make trips abroad, while those in disfavour were condemned to tour the most remote regions. Despite the restrictions, some elite ensembles made decent livings. The violist Rudolf Barshai was involved in two noted ensembles, the second being the Tchaikovsky Quartet, whose career was ended by the untimely death of its leader Yulian Sitkovetsky. The first, which became known as the Borodin Quartet after Barshai’s departure, has now been going for more than half a century and includes no founder member, although the cellist Valentin Berlinsky has been aboard since its early days. He is perhaps responsible for the way this quartet – which admittedly plays to a superlative standard – hands its interpretations down from generation to generation like holy writ. Much of its music-making is mannered and unspontaneous, with its trademark senza vibrato overused. Capable of memorable performances on a good day, the Borodin Quartet is far from deserving the iconic status it enjoys in some quarters – its Shostakovich interpretations have been wildly overpraised. Some of the problems stemmed from its founder leader Rostislav Dubinsky, a preening, narcissistic player. His successor Mikhail Kopelman brought a more human face to the ensemble, and his successor is perhaps the best violinist per se that the group has had. So it continues to evolve.

Shostakovich’s own second choice of ensemble was not the Borodin but the Taneyev Quartet of Leningrad, which in a long career starting in 1946 was always capable of profound statements. Its recorded cycles of Shostakovich, Myaskovsky, Beethoven and Schubert are all worth hearing – Schubert’s C major Quintet, with Rostropovich assisting, has claims to be the greatest performance of that work ever set down.

The Shostakovich Quartet, which has recorded the cycle by its name composer twice, is also to be taken seriously. Its concerts can be inspirational and its recording of Haydn’s Seven Last Words – a brave choice of repertoire at the time it was made – is among the finest.

Various ensembles from the regions of the old USSR were of good quality but the Komitas Quartet of Armenia – founded in 1925 and still going, with different players – stood out for its luscious tone, fine balance and committed musicianship. An old recording of the Grieg is fit to be placed alongside the Budapest Quartet’s version; and in the 1950s its superb Tchaikovsky and Borodin records were issued in the West.

Bulgaria has had one quartet of the first rank, the Dimov, founded in 1956 and at its peak in the 1960s and 1970s. Poland did not find ensembles equal to the challenges of Szymanowski’s two quartets until the Wilanow Quartet appeared in the 1960s. A decade later its violist and cellist joined up with the Bruczkowski brothers to form the outstanding Varsovia Quartet. And recently the Karol Szymanowski Quartet has emerged with distinction. A problem common to all fledgeling quartets, but especially to those from Eastern Europe, is the difficulty of finding decent instruments. Considering the obstacles placed in their way, many ensembles have worked wonders.

Israel

Many important quartet players – Emil Hauser, Harry Son, Felix Galimir, Lotte Hammerschlag among them – spent at least some time in pre-war Palestine, and the earliest generation of Israeli string players adhered to their Central European tradition; but in a country of individualists, few quartets developed. Only the splendid Tel Aviv Quartet, which flourished especially in the 1960s and 1970s, made an impression internationally. Since its heyday a vast influx of Russians has changed the complexion of Israeli music-making and some vibrant young groups such as the Jerusalem and Aviv Quartets reflect this sea-change in playing style.

North America

Economics have ruled chamber music in the USA even more than in other countries. Although some societies have long and distinguished records, there has never been a network of clubs to compare with that in Europe. This lack of infrastructure and the vast distances involved made it almost impossible to keep a professional quartet going in the first half of the twentieth century, without sponsorship. The Flonzaley Quartet was subsidised by a banker in its early years. In the inter-war period, the Perolé Quartet was sponsored by the Perera, Robson and Leventritt families, hence its name, while the Musical Art Quartet spent most of its time performing in the great houses of the rich; both groups were of premium quality, to judge from their few recordings. Mrs Coolidge, the ‘Lady Bountiful of chamber music’ in Cobbett’s phrase,² made several attempts to found a successful ensemble and came closest with the Coolidge Quartet, which she started in the mid-1930s. She also made it possible, through her festivals and subventions to various foreign ensembles, for much new music to be heard; and she was one of the major figures behind the musical activities at the Library of Congress. She was also the instigator of the residency idea, by which a quartet was supported by a school or university in return for a certain amount of teaching. Despite all this activity, and the various schemes which followed Mrs Coolidge’s lead, no quartet written on US soil has yet followed Dvo U+0159 ák’s ‘American’ into the repertoire; and the many composers churning out music on university campuses have failed to match the excitement of American popular music (yet when the black jazz pianist and composer James P. Johnson wrote to Mrs Coolidge asking for help in promoting his string quartet, she did not even reply; the work is now lost). With rare exceptions, US quartet ensembles, for all their technical skills, have also failed to get to grips with the grand European tradition, especially the works of Beethoven. This lacuna is strange when one reflects that the Austro-German ethos, as exemplified in quartets by the Kneisel ensemble, ruled music in the US until after the First World War and continued to be influential thereafter.

By 1920, the waves of immigration from Russia in the previous forty years were beginning to have an effect on string playing; indeed, through the rest of the century the dominant style in American string circles was to be ‘Russian American’. All the more credit, then, to the Flonzaley Quartet, which during the first three decades of the century managed to confound all the norms. It was in essence a Franco-Belgian ensemble, as already noted; it toured assiduously throughout the country, playing anything from the classics to ‘Turkey in the Straw’; it became successful enough to do without sponsorship in the latter part of its career; and it was a front-rank recording organisation.

The first residencies in the US went to foreign groups, the Quatuor Pro Arte and the Budapest, which from 1939 to 1962 held the plum post at the Library of Congress, with the use of a set of Stradivarius instruments. It filled the position admirably, playing a good deal of American music. By this time the group was wholly Russian in make-up; but all the members had also received German training and so their playing of the classics, especially Mozart, was first-rate. In Beethoven they projected a massive competence, without the heartstopping moments that made the Busch Quartet’s performances so memorable; but generations were introduced to the Beethoven cycle by the Budapest. The group was at its best when Alexander Schneider was its second violinist. During the decade when he was absent, 1944–54, it was not quite the same force, and after his return it was sometimes technically fallible as old age encroached.

The quintessential American ensemble did not emerge until the late 1930s and its early years were disrupted by the war. As a result the Hollywood Quartet, founded by the husband and wife Felix Slatkin and Eleanor Aller, had an effective career of only a decade. It was re-formed in 1947 with two other leading players from the Hollywood studio orchestras and owed its success to a unique combination of factors. As it was a spare-time activity, the players plunged into it with joy and dedication. Being used to working in the movie studios, they were great recording artists from the start – in fact, although the group toured a certain amount and gave regular concert series, as far as most of the world was concerned it was a record phenomenon. It also came along at precisely the right time to exploit tape recording and the long-playing disc. The second violinist Paul Shure was good enough to have led the group and both violists, Paul Robyn and then Alvin Dinkin, were superior artists. The Hollywood Quartet combined an eclectic taste in music and an awesome command of technique with an almost perfect judgement of tempo, evident in its recordings which have been reissued on CD to acclaim. It even made a brave shot at the late Beethoven quartets and came close to success.

Three major quartet leaders emerged after the Second World War. Broadus Erle and Eudice Shapiro were destined to be largely overlooked, but Robert Mann received his due from critics and public. He led the resident quartet at the Juilliard School, New York, from its inception and during his fifty years in the chair saw numerous colleagues come and go. As if in recompense for their compatriots’ having let Béla Bartók virtually starve in New York, the members of the Juilliard Quartet focused intensely on his six works for the medium; it has since been possible to speak of an American Bartók style. Their other major project was the Schoenberg cycle and they premiered many American works. They proved themselves superb Haydn players and were effective – if unnecessarily expressive – in Mozart, but never came near an authentic Beethoven style. The group, which has become a little more romantic in outlook over the years, is still going under new leadership.

Erle led the avant-gardist New Music Quartet, in which his colleagues included the violist Walter Trampler and the cellists Claus Adam and (later) David Soyer. This group disbanded in 1956 when Erle moved to Japan, where he was highly influential. On his return in 1960 he went to teach at Yale, where he led a superb resident quartet with, over the years, two Japanese second violinists, the violists David Schwartz and Trampler, and the cellist Aldo Parisot. In 1967–71 the Yale Quartet recorded the most probing set of Beethoven late quartets to have come out of the USA so far, but its great days ended with Erle’s death in 1977.

Shapiro has been a vital force in West Coast music since the war years. She and her husband, the cellist Victor Gottlieb – who had played in the Coolidge and Pro Arte groups – formed the American Art Quartet with the violist Virginia Majewski in Los Angeles in 1945, and it became a mainstay of the legendary Concerts on the Roof. The two occupants of its second violin chair were both dedicated artists and its records of modern music show it to have been a top-flight, flexible ensemble.

The USA has seen some yeoman groups, such as the Fine Arts, Vermeer and Guarneri Quartets, but many of them have had a rather heavy playing style, symptomatic of performing overmuch in halls too large for intimate music. The Guarneri, a particularly beefy quartet, has even had a book written about it,³ and one wishes its members played as profoundly as they talk. Several ensembles in the land of the free have carried democracy to the absurd lengths of having co-leaders, forgetting the lesson of the Kolisch Quartet. For the connoisseur, it is irritating to hear what are, in effect, two different quartets tackling a Beethoven, Bartók or Shostakovich cycle. In the case of the Orion Quartet, having two brothers as the violinists has slightly mitigated the violence of the change from one leader to the other; but the work of the Emerson Quartet has been fatally flawed, especially as one leader has shown himself to be a better fiddler and interpreter than the other. The Emerson has also consistently failed to find the right style or even the right sound for Beethoven.

Two notable classical quartets of recent years have been the Cleveland Quartet – now disbanded – which evolved from a rather overheated group to an echt Beethoven ensemble under its latter-day leader William Preucil Jnr, and the American Quartet, which is still playing as well as any in the world. Its complete recording of the Mozart quartets is wonderfully stylish. On the West Coast the Angeles Quartet acquired an enviable reputation, not least through its fine complete recording of the Haydn quartets, but disbanded at its peak in 2001.

Since 1973 the Kronos Quartet, based first in Seattle and then in San Francisco, has given hundreds of first performances and has done much to attract a younger audience with its imaginative programmes. Among its successes, George Crumb’s Black Angels is beginning to sound old hat, but Steve Reich’s haunting Different Trains will probably stay in the avant-garde repertoire.

Over the border in Canada, the Hart House Quartet of Toronto was of good repute for most of its 1923–46 career; but the string quartet immediately gained a higher profile when the violinist Kathleen Parlow returned to her native country in the early 1940s. Her group, also based in Toronto, played the classics well but did much, through its many broadcasts and occasional tours, to propagate Canadian music.

The first Canadian ensemble to gain an international reputation was the Orford Quartet, which flourished in Toronto from 1965 to 1992, toured widely and made excellent recordings of the Beethoven cycle. The all-female Lafayette Quartet, founded in 1985, has been based at the University of Victoria since 1991.⁴ Its solution to the usual problem faced by female ensembles – two members have families – has been to restrict its touring; but eventually it will have the world-wide fame it deserves.

Canada has suddenly started to produce young quartets, thanks to initiatives such as the scheme at Banff, and three to watch are the Alcan, the St Lawrence and the Claudel, another all-female ensemble.

South and Central America

The South American continent has been something of a terra incognita for the major international ensembles, although the Busch Quartet was touring there in the mid-twentieth century. Three members of the Léner Quartet settled in Mexico City in 1941 and had a profound effect on music-making there. It was therefore no surprise that, when a world-class native group arose in 1981, it came from that city. The Cuarteto Latinoamerica – which includes three brothers – now has two residencies, in its home town and Pittsburgh, and has made definitive recordings of the quartet music of Revueltas, Ginastera, Villa-Lobos et al.

The Far East

Japan had its first notable ensemble as early as June 1928, when the Suzuki Quartet was founded in Nagoya. It was a family affair, led by Shin’ichi Suzuki (1898–1998), who had just returned from eight years of study with Klingler in Berlin. He and brothers Kikuo, Akira and Fumio – a pupil of Heinrich Werkmeister in Tokyo and Julius Klengel in Leipzig – played together until 1945 and left a handful of records, including a suite with tenor voice composed by Fumio Suzuki. Not surprisingly the group’s style was reminiscent of the Klingler ensemble. It was during one of its rehearsals that Shin’ichi Suzuki had the inspiration for his Talent Education system.

Japan was a refuge for a number of fine Western quartet players, such as Alexander Mogilevsky, who led a group with three local players; and Ryuhtaroh Iwabuchi founded the all-Japanese Pro Musica Quartet in 1953. But the first outstanding Japanese quartet did not emerge until the mid-1960s.

The Mari Iwamoto Quartet should be known the world over, especially as it has a large discography of rare quality; but its leader, a distinctive artist trained by a Russian pupil of Auer, took some time to persuade her family that chamber music, not solo work, was her real vocation. After this late start she had not much more than a decade of success with her Quartet before her death from cancer in 1979. The ensemble, which from the evidence of its records could pass for a Central European quartet of the first rank, gained much from the artistry of its cellist Toshio Kuronuma, a profound player whose influence on Japanese chamber music continued after Iwamoto’s death.

Iwamoto was half American, and both she and Kuronuma had spent short periods in America; the cellist had also played in Broadus Erle’s Japanese group. And the one Japanese ensemble to make a world-wide reputation so far, the Tokyo Quartet, was largely an American creation, trained at the Juilliard School and heavily influenced by Robert Mann. Over the years it has been diluted by personnel changes. Just one founder remains and the group inevitably lacks that edge which comes from all members of a quartet sharing a common heritage.

China has not yet recovered from the ravages of the Cultural Revolution, and the only group to make any headway has been the distinctly medium Shanghai Quartet, which for some time has been based in the United States, with an American cellist. The Vega Quartet, of Chinese origin but American trained, is very promising.

It is possible that Korea will become a growth area for quartets. At least one excellent ensemble, the Virtuoso Quartet, has emerged in Seoul in the late 1990s and has recorded some stylish Mozart.

Australia

One can find mentions of string quartets in Australia as far back as 1905. More recently Musica Viva has done amazing things for Australian chamber music and is probably the largest such organisation in the world. For many years, however, this huge country depended on visiting ensembles for real quality. The man who turned the tide was Hungarian-born Robert Pikler (1909–84), who began as a front-rank violinist but turned to the viola when he settled in Sydney after World War II. He founded several ensembles including, in the mid-1960s, the outstanding Sydney Quartet, in which he played.

In 1985 the Australian Quartet was formed under the equally inspirational leadership of William Hennessy. This group has had its ups and downs, for the usual economic reasons, but among its many recordings is one of the most profound accounts of Mozart’s G minor Quintet ever heard by this writer.

The Goldner Quartet, composed of two married couples, came to the fore in the 1990s and is of unquestionable world class. Among its finest interpretations and recordings are quartets by the nation’s leading composer Peter Sculthorpe. The audience for chamber music in Australia’s major centres is committed and informed; and although touring from such a distant corner of the world is not easy, the local players have good support at home.