Music: Longhair for All

Chamber music used to be strictly highbrow country; nowadays it is close to becoming a U.S. fad. One of the best examples of the current trend: the steadily increasing popularity of the Budapest String Quartet.

On its first U.S. tour, in 1931, the Budapest could find no audiences west of Chicago, returned disappointed to Europe and divided up an unrewarding $5,000 net. Today, the members of the quartet (Violinists Joseph Roisman and Jac Gorodetsky, Violist Boris Kroyt, Cellist Mischa Schneider) are all naturalized U.S. citizens. With recording dates and more than 100 U.S. recitals a year, they hardly have time for a European vacation.

In a typical program last week, the Budapest played Mozart, Brahms and Debussy for 3,300 fans in Chicago’s North Shore Ravinia Park. The audience had its share of highbrows, but scattered on the lawn near the stage were hundreds of seriously attentive youngsters. Other quartets, e.g., the Paganini, Pro Arte, Griller and Juilliard, fiddle for equally enthusiastic audiences from Fond du Lac to Fort Worth.

The Budapest got its first big boost during the war, when its Sunday-morning concerts from the Library of Congress were broadcast over a national hookup. The broadcasts led to more recital dates—and a big demand for records. The Budapest had made recordings in Europe. “But, my goodness,” says Cellist Schneider, “the United States! It sells three or four times as many recordings as the whole world combined.” Long-playing records (“just perfect for chamber music”) have quadrupled the sale of the Budapest’s music.

Increasingly, chamber music pays. For a concert performance, the Budapest gets at least $800. Annual earnings: about $25,000 a man (to which record royalties contribute about $5,000 apiece). Audiences still thrive on the standard 17th and 18th Century repertory, but the quartet has found some listeners eager for modern cacophonies and “deeper stuff,” adds a smattering here & there of late Beethoven, Bartok and Schoenberg. Four U.S. composers whose music has been added to the repertory this year: Lukas Foss, Quincy Porter, Walter Piston and Samuel Barber. Television? Not yet, says Spokesman Schneider. “Why would people want to sit in the living room and see only four men sitting on chairs pulling bows? But gradually TV will take the place of radio. People will not want to be without chamber music. It is sure to come.”