Music: Quartet with Tone

Good string quartets are about as rare in the U.S. as quadruplets. Last week in Berkeley, Calif, a new one took the air. The Paganini Quartet (so named because their cello, viola, and two violins are Stradivarii once owned by the great violinist, Niccolo Paganini) played Beethoven and Debussy at a brisker than usual clip, but the music was warm and dramatic. Wrote the San Francisco Chronicle’s critic, Alfred Frankenstein: “Perhaps never before has one heard a string quartet with so rich, mellow and superbly polished a tone.”

Like most string quartets, the Paganini has a liberal patron. She is Mrs. William Andrews Clark, widow of the copper-millionaire Senator from Montana. First she engaged Scottish-born Violinist Henri Temianka and Belgian Cellist Robert Maas, then she sent to Brussels for Violist Robert Courte and Violinist Gustave Rosseels. She bought the four Stradivarii, which are insured for $250,000, from a New York dealer. Patroness Clark’s quartet has already signed for a Beethoven series at the Library of Congress, and for the opening November concert in Manhattan.

Last week’s sellout audience compared the Paganini favorably with such well-established quartets as the Budapest, the Pro Arte and the Roth. The San Francisco Examiner’s Alexander Fried took a longer view. Said he: “You don’t pick a champeen after he’s won one bout in Kalamazoo.”