Strings in Watertown

Watertown, Wis. (pop. 11,300) is famed for its roast goose, stuffed with noodles in oldtime German style, and widely exported. Watertown's most celebrated native is Joseph Edward Davies, once its district attorney, later U. S. Ambassador to Soviet Russia. Watertown sometimes gets into the news when its Tavernkeeper "Turkey" Gehrke takes to his bed, to sleep through the winter. (So far this year, he has not retired.) Last week, Watertown made news for yet another reason: it had its best, and almost its only, high-brow concerts since Fritz Kreisler played there 20 years ago.

From Chicago, through no miles of sleet and snow, drove Manager Leon Perssion and one of the finest string quartets in the world--the Pro Arte. This quartet still calls Brussels its home, but only in a far, faint voice. Its members: Spanish First Fiddler Antonio Brosa, 44; Belgian Second Fiddler Laurent Halleux, 43; Belgian Violist Germain Prevost, 49; British Cellist Warwick Evans, 56. It took the Pro Arte men four hours to plow from Chicago to Watertown, and once, in a bad skid, M. Prevost's $5,000 viola nearly went through the window. By the time the quartet reached Watertown High School, 700 youngsters, who had stayed after school to hear them, had begun to fidget. Said a 14-year-old to a friend: "Are you gonna stay for this? I am. I'm the intellectual type."

The audience forgot its fidgets when the quartet began playing Mozart. Twenty youths walked out between movements--they were newsboys, already late for their routes. The next piece, Brahms, was harder going for the kids, but they stood it. A Haydn quartet recaptured their interest, earned the Pro Arte three noisy curtain calls.

Afterwards Floyd Bordsen, the high school's young music director, took the quartet to his home, poured them Scotch & soda while Mrs. Bordsen got dinner ready. From the kitchen she could hear Violist Prevost pick up her own viola, try a few passages on it.

After dinner the quartet went on to Northwestern College (Lutheran), where nearly all the 150 students and 550 people from the town and countryside sat in the gym, ranged about the basketball court. In evening dress the Pro Arte men wound up a staircase from the dressing rooms, bowed gravely, sat down on a platform under a basketball goal. They played Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms. They were applauded con brio. As the audience filed out, many were heard to praise the Pro Arte Quartet, and to vow that the 50-c- admission was cheap: the sponsors (the college and Watertown's Euterpe Club) could easily have charged $1.50. Next day, Newsman Clarence Wetter said in the Watertown Times: "It was an artistic triumph."

The Pro Arte's standard fee is $500. For playing in Watertown it got nothing. The Watertown sponsors put up $250, which the University of Wisconsin collected. For this year the university pays the quartet a salary ($10,000, contributed by four Wisconsin friends and alumni--among them, Joe Davies). The Pro Arte's duties are to teach university students, coach the string section of the university symphony, give 35 concerts. The double-header in Watertown was the first of a small-town series. Wisconsin prices the quartet at $500, but will take less.

The Pro Arte Quartet plan to go to California next summer, return to Madison next autumn. They never play down to any audience, think that concerts like those in Watertown prove them right.

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The Santa Clara County, Calif. draft board put 23-year-old Violinist Yehudi Menuhin, father of two, in Class 1, because of his financial means, then gave him a 90-day leave to tour South America.

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