Curtis String Quartet

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Curtis String Quartet
OriginPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
GenresClassical
Years active1927 (1927)[citation needed]-1981 (1981)[citation needed]
Past membersJascha Brodsky
Charles Jaffe
Benjamin Sharlip
Max Aronoff
Orlando Cole
Louis Berman
Enrique Serratos
Mehli Mehta
Geoffrey Michaels
Yumi Ninomiya

The Curtis String Quartet was an American string quartet based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

History

The quartet as an entity was formed in 1932

British Broadcasting Corporation invited them to London in 1935.[1][3] This visit, made in June 1935 and sponsored by the Philadelphia branch of the English-Speaking Union, was in connection with the celebration of the Jubilee of George V and was in the company of several other young Philadelphia musicians: Rose Bampton, pianists Elizabeth Westmoreland and Martha Halbwachs Masséna, singers Agnes Davis and Benjamin de Loache, and violinist Philip Frank. Two concerts and a BBC broadcast presented music by American composers. The Curtis Quartet's contributions included Gian Carlo Menotti's Italian Dance and two works by Samuel Barber: the Serenade for String Quartet, Op. 1 (1928), and Dover Beach, Op. 3 (1931).[4] Shortly before this tour, on 13 May 1935, the Curtis Quartet had made a recording at the RCA studios in Camden, New Jersey, of Barber's Dover Beach, with the composer singing. Although Rose Bampton had made an earlier recording in 1933, it was never released, so the Curtis Quartet's recording became the first commercial release in June 1936.[5] The quartet was subsequently engaged for an extensive European tour during the 1936-37 concert season, during which they performed in all the major musical capitals to great acclaim. They reprised this success during the 1937-38 season and were set to repeat it a third time before the outbreak of war in Europe curtailed their touring. In the meantime, they toured widely through North America, giving over the course of their career approximately 5000 concerts, in their early days giving in many cases the first quartet performances in the towns they visited. In 1942 they left Curtis briefly, owing to disagreements over the direction of the institution, and founded the New School of Music, Philadelphia to train chamber and orchestral players; they became the resident string quartet there.[6][7]

Violinist Charles Jaffe resigned from the quartet during the war years (joining the

Dohnanyi and Franck with their longtime colleague and classmate, Vladimir "Billy" Sokoloff
.

Louis Berman was succeeded as second violinist first by Enrique Serratos, in the mid-1950s.

Conductor Zubin Mehta's family moved to the United States when his father Mehli Mehta joined the quartet as second violinist in 1959.[8]

In the late 1960s, the second violinist was Geoffrey Michaels. He was finally replaced by Yumi Ninomiya, now a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

After about 5000 performances, the quartet disbanded in 1981 upon the death of violist Max Aronoff.[1][9]

See also

References

  1. ^
    John Tyrrell
    (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
  2. ^ "Swastika Quartet program". MediaWiki. Curtis Institute of Music. Retrieved 24 August 2016.
  3. John Tyrrell
    (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
  4. ISBN 978-0-19-509058-1
    .
  5. ISBN 978-0-19-509058-1
    .
  6. Montreal Gazette
    . February 12, 1944. Retrieved 24 February 2013.
  7. ^ Allan Kozinn, "Jascha Brodsky, 90, Violinist at Curtis Institute" (obituary), New York Times (March 6, 1997): D22.
  8. ISBN 9780826418159
    .
  9. John Tyrrell
    (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
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