“We met in prison!” they used to joke. Three of the
quartet had come to Britain in the late 1930s as Jewish émigrés from
Nazi Central Europe. Norbert Brainin, born in Vienna in 1923, developed
an early love of music and considerable talent as a violinist. In March
1938 Hitler’s troops marched into Vienna and Austria promptly became
part of the Third Reich. One of Brainin’s uncles was in London at the
time and, in due course, Brainin was able to emigrate to England, where
he was lucky enough to receive good schooling – and violin lessons from
that master teacher Carl Flesch. War broke out in 1939 and the following
year Brainin, like so many who had sought refuge from the Third Reich,
was taken away from London and interned.
Siegmund Nissel, born in Munich in 1922 to parents
who had moved from Vienna, began playing the violin at the age of six.
In 1931 Nissel’s mother died and his father took the nine-year-old Sigi
“back” to live in Vienna, where he continued his studies. Nissel always
retained vivid memories of the Nazis’ arrival in Vienna in spring 1938
and his realization that no career, in music or anything else, would be
possible for him there. He too was among the lucky ones, sailing to
England courtesy of the Kindertransport (Children’s Transport)
scheme. In 1940, along with many other “Hitler émigrés”, Nissel was
interned by the British as an “enemy alien”. On the Isle of Man he
befriended Hans Schidlof, another Austrian refugee and budding musician.
Schidlof was born six months after Nissel and, following the Anschluss,
he too was sent to England, where he disembarked in late 1938, a
bewildered teenager with no connections and knowing no English. But at
least he had his beloved violin with him. After war broke out, he was
sent off to internment (“Don’t forget your tennis racket,” said a
friendly policeman), initially to Prees Heath in Shropshire, thence to
Lancashire and finally across the water to the Isle of Man. While in
Prees Heath, he became friendly with a fellow prisoner, Norbert Brainin,
and they passed the time playing violin duets together.
All three were soon released, and often encountered
one another in wartime London. Thanks to a recommendation from Flesch,
they were able to pursue their musical studies with his young assistant,
Max Rostal, who was to prove an inspiring and generous teacher and
longtime friend. They also began to find themselves invited to perform,
often in the homes of kindly people who organized soirées for their
music-loving friends. Here, the three future quartet members became
acquainted with others from the refugee community, such as the
Hungarian-born violinist Suzanne Rozsa. One day, Susi contacted Schidlof
(now calling himself Peter) to say she had to withdraw from a Wigmore
Hall concert at which she was due to play a violin and cello duo with
Martin Lovett, a talented young cellist born in London in 1927 (and
later Susi’s husband). Could Peter stand in for her and do the violin
part? He could, and did. Thus the two boys who were destined to spend so
much of their lives together gave their first joint concert.
By the end of the war, Brainin, Nissel, Schidlof and
Lovett had come to know and value each other’s musicianship, and would
get together every now and then to play their way through a string
quartet or two, Schidlof and Brainin taking turns at trying out the
viola part. By spring 1947 they were getting down to serious work,
Schidlof agreeing to subordinate his principal instrument to the less
familiar one. That summer, Imogen Holst invited them to try out a
concert at Dartington Hall in Devon; it proved a great success and, with
her encouragement, the boys decided to book the Wigmore Hall the
following January and launch themselves officially, in London. It was
Nissel who first came up with “Amadeus”. It sounded nice, embraced the
ideas of love and God, and was Mozart’s middle name. “OK,” they agreed,
days before the posters had to be printed, “let’s be the Amadeus!”
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