What was most appearent to my boys and me when we sat down in our seats in the small auditorium in the Rackham Building in Detroit was this: there were ashtrays affixed to the backs of the seats. Given this most appealling bit of interior design, we all lit up and smolked our cigarettes throughout the Stanley's recital. Whenever I think about this episode, and the look on the first violinist's face, I shutter. At the time my chamber music vinyl recordings consisted of Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Norman Granz's Jam Session and JATP, The Budapest Quartet's Beethoven, No. 15 in A minor, op. 132, The Juillard Quartet's Bartók Nos. 1 & 2, and Schoenberg's Nos. 1 & 2. These wonderful recordings have been reissued as parts of CD box sets.
I spent yesterday afternoon with the musician Hans Keller (1919 - 1985), with, that is, his fabulous BBC broadcasts -- The Keller Instinct, Parts 1 - 4, Chamber Music, Mozart, Parts 1 & 2, Keller on Fortwängler, 'Performing Greatness', Parts 1 & 2, and 'Portrait of Schoenberg, BBC (Radio, 1967).
I came to Hans Keller, to his writing, through my interest in chamber music, through my interest in the quartets and trios of Haydn, the quartets and quintets of Mozart, the trios, quartets, and quartets of Beethoven, and the quartets of Arnold Schoenberg. I purchased and read Keller's great work, The Great Haydn Quartets, 1986. In the composer Benjamin Britten's words,
Hans Keller knows more about the string quartets, and understands them better, than anybody else, . . . composers and players included.Tune into Hans Keller and You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hans+keller
