Con Brio : Four Russians Called the Budapest String Quartet

A 1959 New Yorker profile captured the inspired risk-taking and raw creative spark of a Budapest String Quartet rehearsal: "Sasha leaped from his chair and with violin held aloft, played the passage with exaggerated schmalz, like a street fiddler in Naples. Kroyt...stopped playing and started singing a Russian song....Mischa Schneider thereupon performed a number of stupendous triads on his cello....Only Roisman went quietly on with his part, untouched by the pandemonium around him, playing Beethoven with his noble tone and elegant bowing." Here were four men with personalities as varied as their ways of playing. Yet when they played, they produced a perfect union of instrumental voices and interpretive nuances that not only created an entirely new audience for chamber music in America but also made the Budapest String Quartet the premier chamber music group of the twentieth century.

Nat Brandt is a veteran journalist who began his career with CBS News as a senior newswriter, then turned to print journalism. He was a reporter before joining The New York Times as an editor, working primarily on the National News Desk. Subsequently, he was Managing Editor of American Heritage magazine and Editor-in-Chief of Publishers Weekly. He is currently the co-creator of the television series, "Crucible of the Millennium," which will be broadcast by PBS in the fall of 2000