Amar Quartet

He chose his younger brother Rudolf (dedicatee of the work) as cellist, and recruited Licco Amar, a Budapest Conservatory graduate and 1915–1920 concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and then of Mannheim National Theatre, as first violin and Walter Caspar as second.

The violinist Licco Amar remembered: "Shortly before the holidays I [...] received a telegram from Donaueschingen from Heinrich Burkard, a music director completely unknown to me.

He proposed that I participate at the upcoming music festival in Donaueschingen, the first of its kind, with another violinist [Walter Caspar] and perform the quartet of a composer utterly unknown to me named Paul Hindemith.

Without knowing any further details, I went to the Black Forest during the holidays and received the score and parts of the [...] String Quartet, Op.

I would not claim that I understood this new kind of music from an initial reading of the score, but I remember very well that something special grabbed me from these notes: an energy and vitality that I grasped more instinctively than consciously.

I was most astonished when I came to Donaueschingen as agreed and was received by two slight young people, who in fact looked like children, at the railway station.

"The performance was duly given, and in 1922 the Quartet became permanent and began giving recitals, specialising in modern music, and was soon extremely busy.

During the winters of 1927/28 and 1928/29, the Quartet undertook two extended concert tours to the Soviet Union, during which Hindemith was able to gain an impression of contemporary Russian music.

The fact that the works of Paul Hindemith stood at the centre of these efforts is not surprising, in view of the personal union of composer and interpreter.

Strings quartets by Béla Bartók, Max Butting, Alfredo Casella, Alois Hába, Philipp Jarnach, Ernst Krenek, Maurice Ravel, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Anton Webern and many others were included on their programmes.

Anton Webern wrote to Alban Berg from the music festival in Salzburg in 1922 about performances of his Movements for String Quartet, Op.