Farewell to the Budapest

What is one Russian? An anarchist. Two Russians? A chess match. Three Russians? A Communist cell. Four Russians? The Budapest String Quartet.

For years, that was one of the music world's favorite jokes. Alas, no one will tell it any more: the Budapest String Quartet has apparently decided to call it a career. Its three oldest members--First Violinist Josef Roisman, 68, Violist Boris Kroyt, 71, and Cellist Mischa Schneider, 64--are in poor health. Although there has been no formal announcement, they have agreed not to perform in public any more. Mischa's brother Alexander, 60, the second violinist, thinks that that is probably just as well. "Most artists play past their prime," he says. "How long could we have gone on without realizing that it was too late?"

The Budapest probably went on longer than any quartet in musical history, maintaining a continuity of style despite changes in personnel. It was a first-rate group when, in 1917, four string players from the Budapest Opera gave their first concert in Kolozsvar, Rumania. But it was the present members, all Russian-born, joining forces and talents in the late 1920s and early '30s, who made the Budapest the century's most popular string quartet--and the best.

The group's "bread and butter," as Alexander Schneider put it, was the complete cycle of Beethoven's 16 quartets and the Grosse Fuge, which it performed almost every year. It also recorded the cycle three times--once in the 78-r.p.m. era, a second time in the early days of LP and a third for stereo. Haydn, Schubert and Brahms were staples as well, and moderns like Bartok, Milhaud and Hindemith were regularly included. To everything they played, the foursome brought a Toscanini-like elegance of outline within which the music pulsed with expressive passion. Says Violist Walter Trampler, their "fifth man" in quintet performances since 1955: "They had temperament and fire. Some people have lots of that, but they get carried away. The Budapest players were always in control."

One reason for their longevity as a group is that when not rehearsing or performing, they pursued separate lives, even refusing to travel together. Whenever they ate at Manhattan's Russian Tea Room, they sat at separate tables. "We'd talked enough at rehearsal--politics, human nature, the whole world situation," says Alexander Schneider. "It was important to separate as much as we could, so that we kept entirely separate personalities. Homogeneity is the worst thing in music."

Roisman, a fastidious man who always kept a hairbrush and a box of Sen Sen in his violin case, was fond of detective novels and long walks. The gregarious Alexander frequently went off to organize a party, or a concert, of his own. Kroyt loved nothing better than a fishing trip. Mischa, the unflappable perfectionist, had a weakness for gambling parlors.

It took 22 years before Roisman and Mischa addressed each other by their first names, and Alexander to this day has never attempted such informality with his colleagues Roisman or Kroyt. Says Seattle Symphony Conductor Milton Katims, who preceded Trampler as the group's extra violist: "It was like four married people trying to keep their relationship fresh and spontaneous."

Although aristocratically Old-World in manners, the members of the group were thorough democrats when it came to running the quartet. They shared its profits equally--at their financial peak in the '50s, they made about $40,000 a year each--and put all disputes to a vote. Deciding interpretive questions at rehearsals, they avoided 2-to-2 deadlocks by assigning one player two votes for the music at hand. Roisman could sometimes swing a vote his way, even when in the minority. He would say quietly: "Doesn't Mozart get a vote?"

Bridge at Rehearsals. Occasionally, the group could also have fun together. Alexander would cut up a pinup photo, insert the tantalizing slices between the pages of his colleagues' music, then watch for the reaction when the others discovered the picture halfway through a concert. During a two-year period just before World War II, the men showed up every day for rehearsal, but never practiced a note. Kroyt's daughter accidentally discovered why and reported back to her mother: "Momma, they're playing bridge."

The Budapest Quartet probably hit an interpretive peak in the late 1930s and early '40s. Nothing reflected that better than its way with the mysterious, deeply spiritual last quartets of Beethoven. The ensemble's recordings of that period captured their particularly expansive style, in which they seemed to move as much above the music as with it. Although they lost some of their ease and sparkle in later years, they never sank below a remarkably high level of interpretive excellence. Even on an off night, they played with exactitude of tempo and emotional involvement that few other ensembles could match--the reflection of so many years of living together and apart.

The quartet has not played in public since February 1967, when Mischa developed a pinched nerve in his spine. Concerts were canceled indefinitely, pending his recovery; despite a recent operation, his left side remains partially paralyzed. Roisman has had a heart condition since 1960, and Kroyt is now recovering from an operation, but there was never any thought of resuming without Mischa. The music ended, the members of the quartet are satisfied with what the years have given them.

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