Word: quartetting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
While the famed Budapest Quartet played compositions by Schumann and Haydn, a packed house listened with hushed attention, savored each trill of the viola, each violinistic vibration. Many of the audience were well-known Manhattan musicians who had dropped in for a quiet taste of musicians' music. Many others were concert-hardened music lovers whom only the caviar of two violins, a viola and a cello could drag from their homes on a pleasant afternoon. But nearly all of them were regular patrons to whom the New Friends' concerts are a weekly ritual...
...woman of stern, uncompromising tastes, she decreed that the New Friends should have no stars, no intermissions, no encores, no flowers, no free passes. For her audiences she hired a few carefully selected soloists (Pianist Artur Schnabel, Violinist Joseph Szigeti and others) and a roster of the finest string quartet players...
Instead of picking an artist and asking what program he would like to play, she picked a program and hired the artist to play it. She presented Beethoven's entire output of chamber music, quartet by quartet. The audience could like it or lump...
Luckily, the Budapest Quartet isn't hiding its light under a bushel. They can be heard every Sunday morning over some Columbia stations from 11:05 till 12, and Columbia has just released their excellent reading of the Beethoven 11th, or "serioso" quartet. They are at their best in this playing of Beethoven's sombre, powerful music, and the recording is highly recommended to anyone who still thinks quartets dull or stuffy...
Tonight in Sanders Theatre, Alexander Schneider, one of the Budapest Quartet's violinists, and Ralph Kirkpatrick '31 will play the second in their series of Bach and Mozart sonatas for violin and harpsichord. There is no excuse for not going to one of these concerts. Both artists are masters of their instruments, and no recordings of these sonatas, played as they should be played, with harpsichord accompaniment, are available...