Amadeus Quartet
The Amadeus Quartet was a well-known string quartet of the 20th century. It was founded in London in 1947 and had the following line-up: Norbert Brainin (1st violin ), Siegmund Nissel (2nd violin), Peter Schidlof ( viola ) and Martin Lovett ( violoncello ).
history
In 1948, the Amadeus Quartet first appeared publicly under this name at a concert in London's Wigmore Hall . The quartet's beginnings go back further. As early as July 13, 1947, the musicians - at that time still as the Brainin Quartet - gave a much-noticed concert in the great hall of the Dartington Hall with works by Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven.
The four musicians found each other as a quartet in London , where the three young Austrian violinists Brainin, Nissel and Schidlof had fled because they were Jews. With the beginning of the Second World War, they were interned as "hostile foreigners". They met in an internment camp and played together for the first time in front of fellow internees. They all became students of Max Rostal . After the idea of founding a quartet was born and the question of whether Schidlof would be prepared to swap the violin for a viola, the three asked the somewhat younger Englishman Martin Lovett to join them as a cellist. At Morley College they finally met the daughter of the composer Gustav Holst , Imogen Holst, who supported the young musicians as music director of Dartington Hall and provided the money for their first concert.
This marked the beginning of a success story that, just three years after the quartet was founded, led the four musicians to make their first recordings ( Franz Schubert , G major quartet D 887) for Deutsche Grammophon in 1951. In the course of the following years, recordings of almost all of the great classical and romantic quartets were made. In addition, there were isolated recordings with works from the 20th century (e.g. Quartets 2 and 3 by Benjamin Britten ). In addition, the quartet was regularly expanded to include concerts and recordings for string quintets (Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Bruckner) and string sextets (Brahms). It was always the same guests who were invited: Cecil Aronowitz as 2nd viola and William Pleeth as 2nd cello. The unmistakable sound of the Amadeus Quartet was characterized by a particularly beautiful sound, homogeneity and passionate intensity.
In 1969, all members of the quartet were awarded honorary doctorates from the University of York . From 1980 until the quartet was dissolved, the Amadeus Quartet taught at the Musikhochschule in Cologne , where countless, now well-known musicians studied with them.
On August 15, 1987, with the death of Peter Schidlof, the Amadeus Quartet disbanded after almost 40 years of existence with an unchanged line-up. In his tribute, John Amis wrote Farewell to the Amadeus Quartet : “We have to be grateful that we had this quartet and comfort ourselves with the large repertoire that the Amadeus Quartet has left us in recordings. For many years to come, it will be possible to listen to the Amadeus Quartet with awe and gratitude, its interpretations of the great quartets, quintets and sextets. "
literature
- Daniel Snowman: The Amadeus Quartet - The Men and the Music. Robson Books, London 1981, ISBN 0-86051-106-5 .