Budapest String Quartet

The Budapest String Quartet was a string quartet in existence from 1917 to 1967. It originally consisted of three Hungarians and a Dutchman; at the end, the quartet consisted of four Russians. A number of recordings were made for His Master's Voice and RCA Victor through 1938; from 1940 through 1967 it recorded for Columbia Records. Additionally, several of the Quartet's live performances were recorded, at the Library of Congress and other venues. 1st violin: Emil Hauser (1893–1978) (from 1917 to 1932) Josef Roisman (Joe) (1900–1974) (from 1932 to 1967) 2nd violin: Alfred Indig (1892–?) (from 1917 to 1920) Imre Pogany (1893–1975) (from 1920 to 1927) Josef Roisman (Joe) (1900–1974) (from 1927 to 1932) Alexander Schneider (Sasha) (1908–1993) (from 1932 to 1944 and from 1955 to 1967) Edgar Ortenberg (1900–1996) (from 1944 to 1949) Jac Gorodetzky (1913–1955) (from 1949 to 1955) Viola: István Ipolyi (1886–1955) (from 1917 to 1936) Boris Kroyt (1897–1969) (from 1936 to 1967) Cello: Harry Son (born Henri Mozes Son) (1880–1942) (from 1917 to 1930) Mischa Schneider (1904–1985) (from 1930 to 1967) The Budapest String Quartet was formed in 1917 by four friends, all members of opera orchestras that had ceased playing after World War I broke out. The members were all protégés of Jenő Hubay (violin), a Hungarian pupil of Joseph Joachim and David Popper (cello), a Bohemian. Hubay and Popper had helped to make Budapest a major center for musical education, attracting famous students such as Joseph Szigeti. Hubay and Popper had supported Sándor Végh and Feri Roth in the formation of two other quartets bearing their respective names, and were themselves part of an earlier Budapest Quartet, the new quartet being named in its honor. The debut recital of the new Budapest String Quartet (in Hungarian: Budapesti Vonósnégyes), took place in December 1917 in Kolozsvár, then in Hungary, now called Cluj-Napoca in present-day Romania. The quartet was established with the following rules: All disputes, musical or business, were to be resolved by a vote. In case of a tie, no change. Players were not allowed to take engagements outside the quartet. Players were paid equally, with nothing extra for the leader (first violin). No wives or girlfriends were permitted at rehearsals or discussions. No previous quartet had attempted to live entirely on the proceeds of its concerts. It was a brave decision[who?] for that time. Much later, in July 1930, the current members added another rule to resolve tied votes: One player, chosen by lot, would have a deciding vote. His initials would be written on the music, and he would always have the extra vote for that piece. If he was replaced, his successor would inherit his voting rights. The original members were Emil Hauser, aged 24, from Budapest; Alfred Indig, 25, from Hungary; István Ipolyi, 31, from Újvidék in Hungary; and Harry Son from Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. In 1920, Indig resigned in the hope of advancement; he was replaced by Imre Pogany, a native of Budapest who had studied under Hubay and Zoltán Kodály. After resigning, Indig became a soloist with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra; and 1931 he became concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic. When the Nazis came to power, Indig fled to Paris where he led another quartet for a while. He then relocated to Amsterdam until 1951, and thereafter returned to Paris. His date and place of death remain unknown. In 1921 or 1922, owing to political unrest in Budapest, the quartet moved to Berlin where the group developed a large repertoire but received only mixed reviews. In 1925 the quartet debuted in London and signed a recording contract with His Master's Voice, making recordings at His Master's Voice Studio B at Hayes and the Queen's Small Hall . In May 1927, without telling the others, Pogany traveled to Cincinnati to see his friend conductor Fritz Reiner about a job in the symphony orchestra there. He was offered the post of principal second violin, but refused it at that time. The other members of the quartet were furious because if he had left, they would have found it very difficult to find and rehearse a replacement player in time for the new season. In the ensuing row, Pogany resigned. He then emigrated to America, and this time decided to join the Cincinnati Symphony and teach at the local conservatory. In 1929, he moved on to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini as principal second violin, remaining there until his retirement in 1958. The man recommended to replace Pogany was Josef Roisman, familiarly known as Joe. Roisman was born on 25 July 1900 in Odessa, and was started on the violin at the age of six with Pyotr Stolyarsky, who was also the first teacher of David Oistrakh and Nathan Milstein. After the tragic early death of Joe's father, a wealthy Odessa woman made it possible for him, his sister and mother to relocate to Berlin so that he could study with Alexander Fiedemann. There he befriended Boris Kroyt, another Odessan studying with Fiedemann. At the outbreak of World War I, the family returned to Odessa where Joe continued his studies with Naoam Blinder, another Odessan, who had just returned from England. After the Russian revolution, Roisman was co-opted to play at farms and factories. He managed to escape in 1923 while working near Poland. He traveled to Prague, then to Berlin. In Berlin he met with Kroyt again, who found work for him in a film orchestra. It was during this time that the quartet offer came. Joe was comfortable and secure in the orchestra, but his first love was chamber music. In the end, his wife Polo persuaded him to take the financial risk and sacrifice involved. Immediately he began to regret it. Hauser and Son were constantly in dispute and soliciting his vote. Moreover, Roisman had his own issues, in particular involving Hauser and Ipolyi's inability to play in spiccato (German Springbogen, or with "bouncing" bow), so that the quartet was forced not to use it. The rest of the quartet had had to become expert in using another bowing technique (German Spitzen, or staccato at the point, or tip, of the bow) to get around Hauser and Ipolyi's lack of spiccato technique. Roisman found it very hard to readjust his bowing style accordingly. He had to spend many hours practicing, and was unhappy with the result. In Germany, the quartet was called das Spitzenquartett (not a compliment) because it substituted Spitzen (staccato) for Springbogen (spiccato). Finally, in 1930/31, Son could stand the persistent arguments no longer and resigned. He emigrated to Palestine, and played in concerts there and abroad. Shortly before World War II, however, he made the unfortunate decision to return to Rotterdam. After the Germans invaded the Netherlands, he and his wife Marianne were arrested in Amsterdam, and died in 1942 in the notorious Auschwitz-Monowitz concentration camp. The new cellist was originally named Mojzesz Sznejder, later Germanized as 'Mischa Schneider'. Born in 1904 in Vilna, Russia (though some place it in Poland at that time) (now Vilnius, Lithuania), where celebrated violin virtuoso Jascha Heifetz was born in 1901, he had a difficult upbringing. The family had little money, and his father was a tyrant. Mischa often found himself defending his younger brother Sasha against their father. In 1920, at the age of 16, Mischa left home to study in Leipzig under Julius Klengel, his teacher's eminent teacher. Fellow students included Emanuel Feuermann, Gregor Piatigorsky and Jascha's cousin Benar Heifetz. After graduating he moved to Frankfurt, where he taught at the Hoch Conservatory. He found that he suffered from stage fright when playing solo, a problem that did not exist when playing in a quartet. He joined the Prisca Quartet, but resigned after a while due to a personality clash with two of the other members. The Prisca had often played in Cologne and there he got to know the Reifenbergs, whose daughter Eva had married