A Classical Woodstock

Five young string players stayed up all night in a Manhattan hotel room playing Schubert and Brahms, the grumbling of the management to no avail. The next morning, along with half a hundred others, they assembled at Carnegie Hall for a rehearsal with Conductor-Violinist Alexander ("Sasha") Schneider. "It's not warm enough," said Schneider after a few bars, and he was not referring to Carnegie's central heating. That afternoon, they were all downtown at The New School rehearsing chamber music. "Your pizzicato sounds terribly dry," complained Violinist Felix Galimir to a group in one classroom. In another room Cellist Mischa Schneider (Alexander's brother) exhorted, "Sing, sing, sing!"

So it went on a typical day last week during New York's Second Annual Christmas String Seminar. Sasha Schneider served as a combination guru, godfather and gourmet guide--preaching music to his temporary flock, shepherding them around town, invariably leading them en masse to one of his favorite Chinese restaurants. Sponsored by Carnegie Hall, The New School and the National Endowment for the Arts, the seminar brought together 57 youthful players between the ages of 14 and 22 for ten days of expert coaching, supervised practice and--for players so young--the rare opportunity to give three orchestral concerts at Carnegie Hall. The kids gave up their Christmas leisure to eat and sleep music. So did Sasha, along with Mischa, Felix, Contralto Maureen Forrester and Violinists Itzhak Perlman and Jaime Laredo. The result was a contrived yet carefree musical happening that bore some resemblance to a classical Woodstock. As a young second violinist put it: "The vibes were good."

Triumph of Joy. Sasha Schneider, himself the former second violinist of the Budapest Quartet and the guiding genius behind the annual Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, is a man ill equipped by talent or temperament to put up with total beginners. Each participant arrived with a full supply of credentials, plus technique--gained largely from such conservatories as Eastman, Curtis or Juilliard. But at competitive schools like these, there is often an overwhelming emphasis on individual virtuosity and solo work. Schneider's main purpose was to teach the youngsters both the difficulties and the joys of making music together.

Nothing showed the triumph of joy over difficulty as much as the concerts themselves. Joy lay in the delight of balanced line and cooperative spirit in such works as Bach's Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor (soloists: Perlman and Laredo) and Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E Flat, K. 364 (soloists: two brilliant and beautiful Japanese women. Violinist Hiroko Yajima and Violist Nobuko Imai). In Haydn's Symphony No. 49 in F Major, joy swelled from the powerful ebb and flow of phrase, showing why a composition that often tinkles merrily in lesser hands fully deserves its subtitle "La Passione." To be sure, the string playing lacked the flawless sheen of, say, the Philadelphia Orchestra. But few conductors would not have envied the vibrancy of tone that Schneider brought from his youthful group. It was as though each member of the orchestra felt that he was the only one playing. That, in fact, was one of Schneider's aims. "This is why I tell an orchestra, every one of you has to play like a soloist in a quartet," Schneider told TIME'S Rosemarie Tauris, "and this is why these kids sound so fantastic."

Loving Music. The average professional symphony does not always radiate that kind of vibrant joy, because there are usually 18 first violinists playing the same passage, and each one of them knows that he can ease up now and then and get away with it. Too often, that comforting knowledge leads to sleepy mediocrity. "I blame the teachers," says the peppery Schneider, who has never once relaxed onstage and probably never will. "And I blame the conductors for not making the orchestra members feel that they are musicians. Better to let a player express himself too much than not at all." Musicianship and self-expression are the two gifts Schneider hopes each seminar member will take away with him. "The most dangerous age for young musicians is between 15 and 20," he says. "That's when they decide whether they love music enough to continue being musicians or decide to give it up."

Schneider's theory is that loving in music is like any other kind of love-making--to receive, one must give. "Sure, we get tired," says Violinist Stanley Kurtis, 20, of Juilliard. "But he pushes on, and we gain strength." Cellist Eugene Moye came away from the seminar hoping that people will think twice before dismissing the entire younger generation. "I think it is important that a lot of kids 'wasted' their Christmas holiday just to play music nine hours a day. And most of them are just kids. At 19, compared to them, I feel old."

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