Nat Brandt
A 1959 New Yorker profile captured the inspired risk-taking and raw creative spark of a Budapest String Quartet rehearsal: "Sasha leaped from his chair and with violin held aloft, played the passage with exaggerated schmalz, like a street fiddler in Naples. Kroyt...stopped playing and started singing a Russian song....Mischa Schneider thereupon performed a number of stupendous triads on his cello....Only Roisman went quietly on with his part, untouched by the pandemonium around him, playing Beethoven with his noble tone and elegant bowing." Here were four men with personalities as varied as their ways of playing. Yet when they played, they produced a perfect union of instrumental voices and interpretive nuances that not only created an entirely new audience for chamber music in America but also made the Budapest String Quartet the premier chamber music group of the twentieth century. In Con Brio, Nat Brandt tells the fascinating story of the Budapest Quartet, from its founding in 1917 (when its members were three Hungarians and one Dutchman) to the trials and triumphs of its core members, the four Russian Jews - Joseph Roisman, Alexander (Sasha) Schneider, Mischa Schneider, and Bois Kroyt - who brought the Quartet to worldwide fame. We are there on the chilling night in 1934 when Nazi soldiers go backstage to congratulate four 'Hungarians' on their outstanding performance. That night, realizing that the Budapest name would not protect them forever, the four decide to leave Nazi Germany, never to return. We follow them to America, where they become the country's first quartet-in-residence at the Library of Congress, where they record the Mozart quintet with guest clarinetist, the King of Swing himself, Benny Goodman, and where, in 1957, they become the first chamber music ensemble to appear on television, bringing Debussy, Dvorak, and the Beethoven E Minor into the homes of hundreds of thousands of spellbound viewers. Here, too, is a personal glimpse of the Quar
Music,Biography
Con Brio: Four Russians Called the Budapest String Quartet