A Crush on Haydn

Violinist Alexander Schneider, 43, has had a crush on Haydn for 22 years. As a young man, he and three other musicians sat for most of two days and nights playing all of the old master's 83 string quartets, while friends fed and watered them. Vilna-born "Sasha" Schneider has always wanted to repeat the performance--at leisure--for a public audience. Last week he and his new Schneider Quartet wrapped up a cycle of 16 concerts--some 40 hours of music in all--with Haydn's seven quartet interludes for the Lenten season, The Seven Last Words of Christ.*

From Violinist Schneider, his followers have learned to expect a dedication to chamber music of almost violent intensity. Even when he was holding down posts as concertmaster, soloist and conductor in Germany, he was rarely without his own ensemble. In 1939 he visited the U.S. with the Budapest Quartet, stayed on and played with the Budapest through most of the war. Since the war, he has organized in turn a chamber music trio, a duo and the Schneider Quartet, and taken a leading part in the Casals festivals in France. Last winter, in preparation for the Haydn cycle, he rehearsed six hours a day with Violinist

Isidore Cohen, Violist Karen Tuttle and Cellist Madeline Foley, and still found time for a brisk schedule of concerts in Buffalo, Indianapolis and Chicago.

Schneider thinks his quartet may be unique because it contains two women. Their presence is "fine" with him. It is also appropriate, he thinks, in America, where "women have 51% of the rights." But the important thing is that his quartet has "I'ame--how do you say it?--soul."

Manhattan critics greeted the Haydn opener with huzzas, but they--and most of the first-night audience--stayed away from the remaining concerts. This grieved Schneider, who is convinced that there is nourishment in every note Haydn wrote. But he was not surprised: "In New York there is too much music. It is better to play west of the Hudson."

* The group actually played 84 quartets. The added work was composed about the time Haydn wrote his Quartet, Op. 1, No. 1. Schneider calls it "Opus Zero."

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