Argument for Strings

In Canon City, Colo. (pop. 6,345) last week, 100 listeners aged four to twelve sat cross-legged on the floor around the LaSalle String Quartet. The first violinist began an explanation of the music to come: "We are like four people having a conversation, but we use our instruments instead of our voices. We start out rather quietly, but then a great argument develops. After a while we calm down again, and then each waits his turn to speak. We all have our say, and finally we are all agreed." Then the quartet put the various parts together and played the whole first movement of Haydn's Quartet, Opus 77 in F Major. .

Thus the LaSalle String Quartet spoon-feeds a young audience its first taste of a "difficult" musical form, chamber music. It finds that its layman-language explanations work very well with listeners of all ages, and just as well with the Bartok and Schoenberg in their repertory as with the classics. When the performance is finished, the quartet usually gets a rousing cheer from a young audience, plus such probing questions as "What is the white stuff you put on the bows?" (rosin), and "Why doesn't the music have titles instead of just numbers?"

The LaSalle Quartet got started four years ago when its members graduated from Manhattan's Juilliard School, and stepped right into a position as quartet-in-residence at Colorado College, Colorado Springs. In Leader Walter Levin's words, they quickly discovered that "there just weren't any audiences who knew about chamber music or cared about it or would turn out to hear it" in that part of the country. But the group was young (average age: 29) and hardworking ("You've got to give the public the best there is all the time").

They played for anybody who would listen, often without pay, and soon hit on the idea of lecture-concerts. Since its Colorado debut, the LaSalle has given 150 of them, and as many regular concerts. Last academic year it played for the public schools in Colorado Springs, and soon found students dragging their parents to evening concerts. Now the members of the group are local celebrities; they are stopped on the streets by autograph hunters.

In experience and finesse, the budding LaSalles are no match for such famed international quartets as the Budapest, Griller or Paganini. But where these majestic ensembles tour the cosmopolitan concert circuits, quartets like the LaSalle are digging themselves in as hinterland institutions. The LaSalle finds that it has literally built a new audience. Moreover, by going out of its way to play for young listeners, it is building up chamber-music interest for the time when the youngsters will be buying their own concert tickets.

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