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Con Brio: Four Russians Called the Budapest String Quartet
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Paperback
First published June 10, 1993
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 16, 2020
Enjoyable, anecdotal
The twentieth-century Budapest String Quartet, founded at the end of the first world war by four Hungarians, emerged as an international chamber ensemble in the 1930s, its members all Russian emigres. In its later form, the quartet set the standard for performances and recordings of the standard chamber-music repertory, and its members mentored and taught many younger musicians, some still performing today. Although I never heard them live, I grew up listening to the Budapest’s early-1950s monaural and later stereo recordings of Beethoven and Mozart, as well as to their many collaborations with musicians like Rudolf Serkin, Benny Goodman, and others. So it was fun to read this chatty narrative, written by a journalist/historian who married the daughter of Boris Kroyt, the quartet’s violist. The author learned much from his father-in-law, of course, and knew most of the others; additionally he had access to some unpublished notes, journals, scrapbooks and interviews so there is some valuable research here. New to me is the sad story of Jac Gorodetzky’s suicide, and also the extent to which the quartet insisted on performing 20th century literature along with the earlier classics that made them famous. And how, year after year, they maintained a brutal schedule of concerts and traveling that would have destroyed a less dedicated group of musicians.
That said, this is a book that requires a lot of patience and broad tolerance. It appears to be self published, and it further appears not to have been a project the writer devoted a huge amount of effort to, since he makes little or no effort (for example) to identify most of the reviewers whose reviews he quotes or even the newspapers in which they appeared. Also, for reasons the writer may have had no control over, the Kindle edition is at points almost unreadable, filled with typos that likely result from text scanning problems. Even worse, the endnotes are often numbered differently than the notes in the text that refer to them, or not numbered at all. I found that skimming the text for its many stories and its general drift was the best way to stay sane.
As the Budapest musicians aged, their physical powers declined, even while their musicality and mental powers may have deepened. Since music-making is a physical act, I have trouble listening to their later recordings, especially those from the 1960s. But the rare, usually out-of-print recordings from the later 1930s and the earlier 1940s, when you can find them, are amazing. They do set the standard for modern chamber performance. So it was fun to read about them in this book, warts and all.
The twentieth-century Budapest String Quartet, founded at the end of the first world war by four Hungarians, emerged as an international chamber ensemble in the 1930s, its members all Russian emigres. In its later form, the quartet set the standard for performances and recordings of the standard chamber-music repertory, and its members mentored and taught many younger musicians, some still performing today. Although I never heard them live, I grew up listening to the Budapest’s early-1950s monaural and later stereo recordings of Beethoven and Mozart, as well as to their many collaborations with musicians like Rudolf Serkin, Benny Goodman, and others. So it was fun to read this chatty narrative, written by a journalist/historian who married the daughter of Boris Kroyt, the quartet’s violist. The author learned much from his father-in-law, of course, and knew most of the others; additionally he had access to some unpublished notes, journals, scrapbooks and interviews so there is some valuable research here. New to me is the sad story of Jac Gorodetzky’s suicide, and also the extent to which the quartet insisted on performing 20th century literature along with the earlier classics that made them famous. And how, year after year, they maintained a brutal schedule of concerts and traveling that would have destroyed a less dedicated group of musicians.
That said, this is a book that requires a lot of patience and broad tolerance. It appears to be self published, and it further appears not to have been a project the writer devoted a huge amount of effort to, since he makes little or no effort (for example) to identify most of the reviewers whose reviews he quotes or even the newspapers in which they appeared. Also, for reasons the writer may have had no control over, the Kindle edition is at points almost unreadable, filled with typos that likely result from text scanning problems. Even worse, the endnotes are often numbered differently than the notes in the text that refer to them, or not numbered at all. I found that skimming the text for its many stories and its general drift was the best way to stay sane.
As the Budapest musicians aged, their physical powers declined, even while their musicality and mental powers may have deepened. Since music-making is a physical act, I have trouble listening to their later recordings, especially those from the 1960s. But the rare, usually out-of-print recordings from the later 1930s and the earlier 1940s, when you can find them, are amazing. They do set the standard for modern chamber performance. So it was fun to read about them in this book, warts and all.
Displaying 1 of 1 review