Berkshire String Quartet
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The Berkshire String Quartet was an American classical chamber group founded and funded in 1916 at the height of
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by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. The quartet, originally, was the Kortschak String Quartet, named for Hugo Kortschak (1884–1957), a member of the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) was founded by Theodore Thomas in 1891. The ensemble makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival. The music director is Riccardo Muti, who began his tenu ...
from 1907 until 1914 (serving as assistant concertmaster from 1910 until 1914). Kortschak was a key figure in organizing the Berkshire Chamber Music Festival founded by Coolidge. The original Berkshire String Quartet disbanded sometime after 1941. In July 1948, the successors of the Gordon Quartet were about to disband for a lack of funding and loss of its founder, Jacques Gordon (1897–1948), who had disbanded the quartet in 1947 due to ill health. Coolidge came to the rescue. She underwrote enough additional performances to make the quartet's summer season possible. But, according to ''
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'', Coolidge, for one of the few times in her life, asked a sentimental favor in return. "Would the quartet please call itself the Berkshire Quartet?" The quartet agreed and, at the urging of Wilfred Bain, moved its permanent residence to the Indiana University School of Music. The quartet continued to maintain its summer residence at Music Mountain, a hilltop near
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, where, in 1930, Gordon had founded a Chamber Music Festival named after the hilltop.


Former members

Founding members in 1916, in residence at Pittsfield, Massachusetts * Hugo Kortschak (1884–1957) (first violin) * Serge Kotlarsky (1893–1987) (second violin) * Clarance Evans (viola) * Emmeran Stoeber (1882–1945) (cello) Other members at Pittsfield * Hermann Julius Felber, Jr. ( –1892) (second violin, debut 1917) † * Émile August Ferir (1873–1949) (viola) * Edouard Dethier (1885–1962) † :† In 1917, Hermann Felber was drafted into the
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; Edouard Dethier of New York played in his place."New Music Hall at Yale"
''The New York Times'', November 26, 1917. Successor of the Gordon Quartet beginning in 1948, in residence at
Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universi ...
and Music Mountain Founding members in 1948 * Urico Rossi (1916–2001) (first violin), formerly a student of Kortschak * Albert Lazan (1914–2003) (second violin) * David Dawson ( –1975) (viola) * Fritz Magg (1914–1997) (cello) Other members after 1948 * Jerry Horner (1935–2019) (violist from 1975–1976) * Paul Biss (viola)


See also

* Zhanna Arshanskaya Dawson, David Dawson's wife


References


External links

* National Register of Historic Places
Daniel Gregory Mason:The appreciation of music (Volume 4). (page 5 of 12)
The Berkshire Festivals
The Harlem Valley Times Thursday, March 8,1979
THE SECOND FESTIVAL, 1919
MUSIC; The Berkshire String Quartet. Miss Rosalie Miller's Recitals
''The New York Times''. November 19, 1919

''The New York Times''. September 26, 1919, * ttp://www.thecrimson.com/article/1920/1/20/berkshire-string-quartet-gives-concert-this/ The Harvard Crimson January 10, 1920
Berkshire Festival of Chamber Music (1918–38)
{{Authority control Musical groups established in 1916 American string quartets Jacobs School of Music faculty