The best way to hear chamber music, someone said many years ago, is through the feet. By which he meant that, optimally, one should be so close to the players that the cello’s vibrations—and even sympathetic ones from the other strings—would communicate from the floor as well as the air. Today chamber music, alas, is rarely encountered through the feet, which may or may not have led to its relative obscurity vis-à-vis the other musical performing arts, but which certainly has led to a change in aesthetic appreciation.
There are other factors as well. In the days of the Flonzaley, or even the Budapest, Quartet, the audiences would be largely made up of those who had at least attempted the works being played, had studied the scores, and had, when new works entered the canon—notably Bartók’s six—a genuine interest in at least giving them a run-through. Quartet playing, of course, still exists as a diversion, discipline, or relaxation for many—the violon d’Ingres is hardly unstrung—but it is today a sidelight rather than a centrality. It is probable that most of those in the audience for today’s chamber music recitals have never played through a Haydn—much less a Bartók— quartet.
And yet the quartet recital has refused to go out of fashion, and despite the groans from classical music critics this brazenly elitist form of musical expression is currently enjoying a resurgent popularity not only in New York but across the United States. String quartets are in residence