[History of Interview by C. Crawford] [Introduction by T. Heimberg]

I EARLY YEARS: 1906-1926

[Interview 1: October 25, 1989]

Birth and Family

Crawford:Let's start our conversation today by talking about your life in Vienna, your early years, your birth, your family.

Khuner:Well, my family on both sides come from Moravia, southern Moravia, to wit, a little hamlet by the name of Bisenz [now called Bzenec, in Czechoslovakia], where the Khuners (that's my father's family) and the Frankls (my grandmother's family) come from. My mother's come from northern Moravia, from Moravksa Ostrava. Now, the German population in Moravia were practically exclusively Jewish. The Czechs were the native population and the German-speaking were the Jews. And they tried to get to Vienna, because in Vienna you had much more chance to improve yourself, financially and culturally, in civilization; Vienna was the capital. So both the family of my father and my mother emigrated--I think my grandfather on my father's side, and my mother on my mother's side, went to Vienna. And they both were quite musical, they liked music, they went to concerts, they learned their instruments. My mother was quite a good violinist; my father was a fair violinist, a little of a pianist, and he played the flute; and they played in amateur orchestras. And they wanted to have a son who was a musician. At that time the Philharmonic conductor was Felix Weingartner, and my mother said I was named after him because he was so fascinating a conductor. So, I obviously was very talented. My fingers were fast, I had very good ears, a good memory; I could read music before I could read German. And when my father and mother played sonatas, and they didn't quite know what the rhythms were, and so I could help them. I was about five years old at that time.So I got violin lessons from a member of the Philharmonic who was a nice Jewish boy, just married, needed pupils, lived within walking distance of my parents house, and was a very nice, charming man; I studied with him from the age of five and a half to twelve.

Crawford:What was his name?

Khuner:Max Starkmann.

Crawford:Where did you live, and when were you born?

Khuner:I was born actually in what is now part of Vienna [1906]; at that time it was a suburb. Because I was born in August and all the people who could afford, left the city in the summer. It was a miserable city in the summer; hot, dusty. So everybody who could get a little place outside the center of the city spent the summer there; and we always did, every summer. I was born in that place there. At that time, you weren't born in the hospital, you were born at home.

Crawford:And what was the name of the place?

Khuner:Beidlingau. But it doesn't say on my birth certificate. The birth certificate says Vienna. And now it's true, because it's all part of Vienna!

Crawford:How many miles out of the center of Vienna?

Khuner:It was about, let's say, three or four miles outside of the boundary. It was just like Daly City!

Crawford:But a summer retreat. Higher up?

Khuner:It wasn't higher up, because everything [was level], was not in the hills.

Crawford:But more country.

Khuner:Ja, sure. It was a little village, ja.

Crawford:And then, where did you live in Vienna?

Khuner:Oh, in an apartment house, in Maria Hilf. My grandfather (my father's father) had a little silk weaving factory in that place, in the Maria Hilf; it's a part of Vienna, the sechste Bezirk, sixth arrondisement.

Crawford:And that was your father's profession too, then?

Khuner:Then my father took over the business, yes.

Crawford:Did you all live together?

Khuner:No, we were a few blocks away.

Crawford:Both sets of grandparents?

Khuner:No, the other grandparents were still in Moravia; my mother's family was still in Moravia.

Crawford:When did your mother and father come to Vienna?

Khuner:Well, I told you. My great grandfather immigrated from Bisenz to Vienna, but on my mother's side, only mother's generation, she and her two brothers came to Vienna.

Crawford:Yes. And they just came to better themselves, as you said.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:Was she schooled in Vienna, then?

An Arranged Marriage

Khuner:No, she was schooled in Moravksa Ostrava; she came to marry my father.

Crawford:I see. And where did she meet your father?

Khuner:Oh, through a Shadchen. That was a marriage broker.

Crawford:Yes?

Khuner:Oh, Ja! That was the way to marry. You don't--

Crawford:How did that work out?

Khuner:It worked out that--the Shadchen is like a concert agency. The concert agency brings the soloist together with the orchestra! You don't know what a Shadchen is?

Crawford:Yes, I know the word. I think it's a perfect way to make marriages, by the way.

Khuner:That was the only way! As a matter of fact, the two brothers didn't do that. They met their wives in Vienna, much to the sorrow of my grandparents. You don't do that! You don't marry your school sweetheart, no!

Crawford:It has to be this arranged marriage. But then how did your father find your mother?

Khuner:My mother's parents wanted the daughter and the sons to go to Vienna. The sons went to the university, studied in Vienna, and the daughter was married to a Viennese.

Crawford:But that was arranged once she got to Vienna?

Khuner:No, I think it was arranged before she went. You arrange that Mr. So-and-So will play the Beethoven concerto with the San Francisco Symphony, it's arranged in New York! And then he's sent out here and plays.

Crawford:And she liked him.

Khuner:I don't know! I don't know. But that's what you do. Now, there were other quirks. The thing was this. She had a boyfriend--a courtier, do you say a courtier? No. Somebody who courts someone. An admirer who wanted to marry her. And she would have married him. But there was an older sister who did not have an admirer, so my grandfather said, "No, you don't marry her, you marry the older one." So he had to marry the older one. It was a very unhappy marriage. But he had to. He also wanted to, because my grandfather was quite affluent, he was director of a coal mine.

Crawford:This is your maternal grandfather.

Khuner:Yes, my maternal grandfather. And he was a young lawyer. And he wanted to get the dowry from the director of the coal mine. And he wanted the younger daughter, but he couldn't have her, he had to take the older daughter. So the younger daughter, my mother, was very unhappy, and they said, "We'll marry you off to Vienna, out of the way." That's the way it was done at that time.

Crawford:And was your mother schooled?

Khuner:Oh, yes, my mother was very intelligent, and my father too, they were very bright people.

Crawford:Did your mother play professionally?

Khuner:No. No, never. But she was sent to a girls' school, to Germany, to Breslau; that was the nearest German city. And she studied violin. And she was the good violinist of the provincial city. When she came to Vienna, she wasn't so good any more! But she played a lot.

Crawford:Was there a great deal of music in your home?

Khuner:Ja. Well, first of all, my father and my mother regularly played all the sonatas, and they played together. I had to help them.

Crawford:How did you help them?

Khuner:Well, to say that they played out of tune, they forgot the sharps, and they played the rhythm wrong.

Crawford:You could do this at age five?

Khuner:Yes, more or less, thereabouts.

Crawford:And they wanted you to be a musician.

Music Lessons and Schooling

Khuner:I was obviously considered very talented. And Mr. Starkmann, who was asked, was delighted. I think I was his first pupil.

Crawford:And how long did you study with Mr. Starkmann?

Khuner:With Starkmann? Until I was twelve.

Crawford:And then what happened?

Khuner:By that time, everybody knew that I played miserably.

Crawford:But you were talented.

Khuner:But that's not enough! You have to get a little instruction. I didn't know that. But I knew that I was playing very badly. And I played the Mozart concerto, and the Mendelssohn concerto with this orchestra in the rehearsal. And it was atrocious. And all the friends of my mother said that I played badly. But Mr. Starkmann thought I was great.

Crawford:So your mother realized it was time--

Khuner:She didn't want to contradict him. She was always taking my side against all her friends. Because I really was talented. If you gave me something, in a few minutes I could learn the concerto by heart. The teachers were delighted.

Crawford:But it was the instruction that was lacking.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:So who did you go to next?

Khuner:Well, then my parents tried to find out the dope about this little boy. So I played for Sevcik when I was eleven or twelve, and I played for Carl Flesch--do you know Carl Flesch, the famous violinist? Because his brother was a doctor in Vienna, and my parents knew him. So the next time Flesch came and played in Vienna, I was permitted to play for him. And both Sevcik and Flesch said that that boy will never be a violinist. Ja? Because they were looking at how I played. Elementary things. Sevcik asked me elementary bowing patterns, which I couldn't do. Because I never learned them. You know about violin playing? I can show you. I remember exactly what he wanted. [Felix gets out a violin.] I could play [demonstrates a messy, chaotic bouncing string crossing bit]. Virtuoso things. He says, "Fine, would you please let the bow jump four times on the open G string? Like this." [demonstrates] I couldn't do it. I didn't know--

Crawford:You could do some of the virtuoso things, but . . .

Khuner:Yes. Miserable! Sloppy! Sloppy! Foolishness!

Crawford:Well, so then, why didn't you just pack it all in, and say, "I'm not going to be a violinist?"

Khuner:My mother said I'm going to be a violinist. I was only eleven years old! What do you want?

Crawford:Yes, so she said--

Khuner:I remember this very well.

Crawford:--We'll find a better teacher?

Khuner:So they said you have to find a better teacher. So, much to the chagrin of Mr. Starkmann, I was introduced to the director of the Music Academy. Not the Conservatory. The Music Academy was the State school. The Conservatory was the private school. I went to the State school and I played for the director, who was not a violinist. Mr. Bock. And he tested me for my ear. I had perfect pitch. I had already gotten some instruction in harmony from Camillo Horn, who was a local composer. And Mr. Bock played a chord. And I said, "Well, that's A major." And then he played the dominant seventh. And I said, "Dominant seventh chord." "How do you resolve it?" I mentioned the notes. He said, "The boy's fabulous!" He didn't know I what a bad violinist I was. He knew that I had a musical ear. And I had to be accepted because I was two years younger than the minimum age. I was only twelve; the minimum age was fourteen. Well, I got the certification of Mr. Bock, that I am a promising musician. Not a violinist; Mr. Bock didn't care about it, I never played the violin for him. I played violin for Flesch and Sevcik, who said I shouldn't become a violinist. They didn't care whether I would be a musician or not.

Crawford:What did you play for Mr. Bock? Piano?

Khuner:I didn't play violin, he just tested my ear.

Crawford:Oh, you just did an ear test.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:So then he put you into the Music Academy--

Khuner:Yes, he accepted me. And then I studied in school with Mr. Arnold Ros‚, of the famous Ros‚ Quartet. Unfortunately--or fortunately, I don't know--he was a miserable teacher too. Nothing. He couldn't--

Crawford:Wonderful player?

Khuner:A very fine player!

Crawford:But he couldn't teach.

Khuner:Sevcik left. That was 1918, when I was twelve years old, and the war was over. Sevcik returned to Czechoslovakia. He didn't want to stay in Vienna. He knew the political situation, the Czechs and the Germans. So Ros‚ took over Sevcik's master classes and I got another teacher, who was a very fine, grandfatherly Mr. Julius Egghardt. Professor Julius Egghardt. E, double G, who also thought that I was great, I was wonderful. Not a trace of violin instruction! And by that time, when I was thirteen, or fourteen, or fifteen years old, I told my parents it doesn't make any sense to go to classes. I tested him. I played badly, I played out of tune, I played out of rhythm, as badly as I could. Everything was all right. He didn't care.

Crawford:So here you were, fifteen--

Khuner:Ja. I graduated when I was sixteen, in 1922, from the Music Academy, in violin.

Crawford:Let's back up here for one moment, and talk about your grammar school and your Gymnasium and so on.

Khuner:Grammar school was from the age of six, to eleven. I was born in '06--In 1917 I started the Gymnasium, when I was eleven. In 1918 I started at the Academy, when I was twelve. And I was four years in the Academy. That was the Ausbildung. First, second, third and fourth Ausbildung. It was a little more advanced in education. There were three grades. Forbildung, Ausbildung, and Master Class. And for the Ausbildung I was supposed to be fourteen years old, but I was only twelve. But I was accepted, and spent three and a half years with Professor Egghardt. Violinistic useless. But I still played in those school recitals, and I even, when I graduated, played the first movement of the Brahms concerto with the orchestra. Badly!

Crawford:At the Music Academy.

Khuner:At the Academy, yes. At the same time--

Crawford:They thought you were fine; you didn't think you were fine.

Khuner:My teacher promoted me. Because I was such an easy pupil, I learned everything so fast. My fingers were running. And that I had no tone, and had no patterns, no, he did not know, he didn't know anything about violin. My colleagues knew. My colleagues knew more, they told me that that's really not very good playing. But what do you care when the parents and teachers are satisfied? Ja, the colleagues are jealous! The teacher said the colleagues are jealous, because I was so talented. But there were some other teachers. Because the friends of my mother in the orchestra, they all had other teachers, they didn't go to the Academy; they were more or less amateurs, but they still took lessons. There was Mr. Christiann, who was a real stupid fellow, but he was an assistant of Sevcik, he said. He knew a little bit about the elements of technique. For instance, I came to him and he said, "Please play whole bow, and upper half [one long note, two short notes], whole bow, lower half [one long note, two short notes]," which I couldn't do; he had to show it to me. But I played all the concertos, without having any control of my right arm. It's practically unbelievable what you can get away with, with a little talent, without knowing anything.

Crawford:I'm surprised [at this] in Vienna, because you always hear that the standards are very, very high.

Khuner:Very low! Very low! In the Neue Conservatory, the New Military Conservatory, it was a little better. There were actually two good violin teachers there.

Crawford:When did you start at the Conservatory?

Anti-Semitism in Vienna

Khuner:Then, the thing is this, there was something else, too, which was the anti-Semitism. In the Academy, which was a state school, state supported, it was very anti-Semitic. In Neues Military Conservatory, the director was a Jew, so that is where the Jews went. Just like here, the Bohemian Club is anti-Semitic; the Family, all the Jews go. Did you know that about the Bohemian Club and the Family?

Crawford:The Family Club?

Khuner:The Family Club.

Crawford:The Family Club.I don't know the Family Club.

Khuner:It's an offshoot of the Bohemian Club, for the Jews. In Vienna, for instance, in mountaineering, in Teich, there was Deutsche und Oesterreiche Alpenverein, no Jews permitted. But there was a Dohnerland, only Jews. It was a separation.

Crawford:Yes. But the Jewish people were the most prominent cultural leaders in Vienna.

Khuner:Yes, but not for the Viennese.

Crawford:Not among the Viennese?

Khuner:Not for the Bogenst„ndiger, native Viennese. The Jews were also native Viennese . . .

Crawford:But Mahler was Jewish.

Khuner:Sure, but . . . that's very complicated. There were two kinds of anti-Semitisms. There was the national anti-Semitism and the religious anti-Semitism. The religious anti-Semitism you could get away from by being baptized into a Catholic or a Lutheran.

Crawford:Or a Lutheran?

Khuner:That was the religious anti-Semitism. That's why the Nazis were against the Catholics. Because the Catholics were not anti-Semitic enough for the Nazis.

Crawford:I see. So what was the national anti- Semitism?

Khuner:Those were the ones who wanted a greater Germany, that came to pass with the Nazis. But in Vienna it was mostly Catholic anti- Semitism, because ten percent of the Viennese population was Jewish.

Crawford:So what you're telling me is that a young Jewish musician would not be accepted.

Khuner:Oh, Ja, they were accepted. Of course they were accepted.

Crawford:But they wouldn't be promoted at the Music Academy?

Khuner:They had a difficult time. But it was all subterranean. All subterranean. My harmony teacher--I think he was a competent harmony teacher--I came there with the score of Schoenberg's Transfigured Night. And he saw me with that, and said, "You like that?" And I said, "Yes." And he said, "Don't come to my class, you'll never learn anything."

Crawford:I don't understand. Why? He didn't like Schoenberg?

Khuner:Of course, it was a red rag for him. Not only because Schoenberg was Jewish, but Schoenberg in general. If you liked Schoenberg, you were hopeless.

Crawford:Did Schoenberg have a very hard time because he was Jewish?

Khuner:Of course. Not only because he was Jewish. Because he was a revolutionary. But of course that played in there, too. Because Webern was just as revolutionary. Webern and Berg were not Jewish. Something else interesting. When Berg was a young man, he met Schoenberg, he was fascinated--Schoenberg was a fascinating musician--and he studied with Schoenberg. And Berg's family was rather poor, and Schoenberg taught him for nothing, without any compensation. Then Berg's mother made a little [i.e., came into an] inheritance. And she said to her son, "Now you can go to the Academy and study with Holberger." With Holberger, you never heard of him? He was the great teacher at that time at the Academy. And Berg said, "Are you out of your mind? I should study with Holberger when I can study with Schoenberg?"

Crawford:How was Schoenberg regarded? Transfigured Night was a Romantic piece.

Khuner:Of course, Ja.

Crawford:But not accepted?

Khuner:But there were some chords that were not permitted. There's a famous chord in Schoenberg. You don't know? There is one chord that didn't exist, so how can Schoenberg--

Crawford:Couldn't exist?

Khuner:It doesn't exist! How can you use that chord!

Crawford:So people were outraged?

Khuner:Outraged, yes. As I said, my teacher, when he saw me with Transfigured Night, said, "You'll never amount to anything if you like that stuff." And then my composition teacher was Mr. Springer, who was also a teacher of church music, and then later he became the director of the Academy. Austria was a Catholic country, you know. That was the Catholic anti-Semitism that pervaded that life.

Crawford:I see. Now, your family was Jewish.

Khuner:Oh, Ja.

Crawford:Were they Orthodox Jewish?

Khuner:Not any more. My grandparents were, but not my parents any more. The assimilation came in for the Jews, Ja. But we were very Zionistic. Zionism started at that time, and both the brothers of my mother were contemporaries and friends of Herzl, and Martin Buber. You know Martin Buber?

Crawford:Oh, yes.

Khuner:Martin Buber was a friend of my uncle.

Crawford:What happened with your uncles? Did they go into music at all?

Khuner:Oh, no, no, no. One was an engineer, one was a lawyer.

Crawford:[I'd like] to find out a little bit more about your parents. Your mother. You didn't say much about what her life was like, what she did. But you told some wonderful stories about her.

Khuner:She was an amateur violinist, she used to be quite good in the provincial city where she grew up, and she was not as good in Vienna, because there were better amateur violinists. But she had good talents, useful for an amateur orchestra; she always counted correctly, came in after rests, watched the conductors. But those amateur orchestras were generally pretty poor; everybody struggles to get some notes. She struggled, too, but she counted well.

Crawford:And what was her life like, otherwise?

Khuner:Otherwise, she took care of the household.

Crawford:Stayed at home.

Khuner:Stayed at home, ja. Later on, when my parents had a car, she became a member of the auto club.

Crawford:That must have been kind of adventurous.

Khuner:I really don't know. First of all, I left Vienna when I was twenty-two or twenty-three; returned rarely. So I really don't know what she did.

Crawford:What did she do as a member of the auto club?

Khuner:Go to meetings, and arrange that everything went according to the way she thought it had to go.

Crawford:And drive.

Khuner:Oh, she drove her car, sure.

Crawford:What was her car?

Khuner:Well, there were several cars. There was the very early car, there was the better car two years later, and there was a better car two years later--

Crawford:Was driving popular?

Khuner:It just began at that time. At that time in Vienna you could walk the streets for hours and not see an automobile.

Crawford:And you had a good bus and tram system?

Khuner:Streetcars, ja, electric trains.

Crawford:What happened in 1918? Were there shortages that made getting around more difficult?

Khuner:To get around? Well, it was very difficult. The streetcars came in long intervals. When I took my streetcar to school, of course you never got a seat, you had to hang out at the entrance. And you had to wait a long time--just like the bus here. You wait and wait and wait, and finally the bus is crowded to the brim. That's the way the streetcars were.

Crawford:How about the shortages?

Khuner:Shortages of everything! But that was during the war, during the blockade of Austria and Germany--The Allies blockaded and we had no food. And the Hungarians, who had plenty of food, wouldn't let any food go to Austria, although it was the same country. The rural population was very, very afraid that the Viennese would buy up everything. I remember we would go to Hungary, across the Danube to Bratislava, to get some food. They didn't want to sell it to us, because they knew we came from Vienna.

Crawford:Was there enmity, other than that?

Khuner:There was enmity with all ethnic groups--the Czechs, and the Hungarians, and the Serbs, and the Poles, there was enmity, because the government population was German-speaking. They were hated throughout. That's why the monarchy broke up in 1919.

Crawford:Your grandparents. How much did you see of your grandparents during that period?

Khuner:Well, the grandparents--my father's parents?

Crawford:Your father's parents.

Khuner:They lived in Vienna. I saw them a lot. They lived a few blocks from us.

Crawford:And your mother's parents.

Khuner:They lived in Czechoslovakia. I saw them only when some of them came to visit Vienna, which they did. It was always a treat for them to go to the capital, see a few shows, buy a few things in the stores.

Crawford:How much travel did that represent?

Khuner:About five hours by train.

Crawford:And you went in the summers sometimes?

Khuner:I visited them in the city, and two summers we spent near their domicile.

Crawford:When did you start hiking in Vienna, in the mountains?

Khuner:We hiked every Sunday in hills around Vienna. Ever since my teen age. And in the summer when we were in the surroundings, my father was an avid hiker, when he had time.

Crawford:Was there a grandparent who was a great influence?

Khuner:Of course, I am influenced by everybody. The family influence was very strong, all the time.

Crawford:But was there one grandparent who--

Khuner:No. Everybody [influenced me]. My paternal grandmother died early, she died in the middle of the war, 1916, probably. My maternal grandfather died in '14, my paternal grandmother died in '16. And then the other two died much later. The relations were always important and our behavior had to be so that it would be accepted by the older people. That's like what they have in Japan.

Crawford:Filial piety?

Khuner:It's not piety; piety has something to do with religion. No, I'll give you an example. One says, "Well, Uncle Emile wouldn't like what you just did."

Crawford:There was always an example?

Khuner:Ja. And if some of the cousins, like I told you, that cousin didn't behave, he was a bad boy. "Don't take on example of him, you have to do better than the cousin."

Crawford:Well, was that a big extended family?

Khuner:There were a lot of people, ja.

Crawford:Did you routinely get together?

Khuner:Some more, some less, depending on where they lived, and how close the relations were. But they were always somewhere in the background, and they always existed, and we were always told, "He got a very good report card, you know. He's going to go to the University, you know! And the other one, he flunked because he didn't learn! So watch out, don't be like him!"

Crawford:So, who was the purveyor of the information?

Khuner:Oh, my parents.

Crawford:Your mother?

Khuner:Mainly my mother, ja. And then if something was not according to her liking, we were told, "I don't like that, this is the bad part of the family." Like Uncle Moritz, he couldn't keep a job, no good. That was the level of civic and moral standards that was always there.

Crawford:And that was within your family.

Khuner:Within the family, ja.

Crawford:And who was the fictitious uncle?

Khuner:Oh, the fictitious uncle! That was my--you mean Kisev! Uncle Kisev.

Crawford:Kisev, yes, I couldn't remember his name.

Khuner:[laughs] Terrible! That was when my mother had to lie for some reason. She'd get that name in so the children would know it's a lie. We met an acquaintance and my mother said, "Oh, I have to go home, something is going to happen, Uncle Kisev is coming." That means she wants to get rid of that person, also to go home. Nobody is coming. Uncle Kisev didn't exist! So we knew that it was a lie. [Younger Khuner son enters]

Eliot:Did she use that often?

Khuner:Oh, ja!

Crawford:You always knew when Uncle Kisev came into the conversation--

Khuner:Ja. Or once, some girlfriend, who was it?

Eliot:Pamela Susskind.

Khuner:Susskind, she used to do that, she knew about it, you know?

Crawford:When did you hear last of Uncle Kisev?

Khuner:I don't know. He existed to the end of my mother's life. Ja. But probably--not lately, not in the last few years. Because there was not so much lying necessary. But that I got a kick out of, when my mother wrote that Uncle Kisev was so happy and proud that I was in the army.

Crawford:So Uncle Kisev was a family member for a long time.

Khuner:Ja.

The Gymnasium and More About Music Studies

Crawford:Talk about the Gymnasium for a moment.

Khuner:In Gymnasium there was a difference, because--Gymnasiums were regional. Not like here, the Berkeley high school is only one school. There was a Gymnasium in any part of Vienna.

Crawford:All the neighborhoods.

Khuner:Neighborhoods. They were neighborhood schools. In my class where I lived in Maria Hilf, was a second ghetto of Vienna. The real ghetto was in the Second Arrondisement, Leopoldstrasse. In Maria Hilf, where my grandfather's factory was, and we lived, was a secondary ghetto. A little higher class ghetto, where the middle class Jews lived. So we were about fifty-fifty Jews and non-Jews.

Crawford:I remember Mr. Adler said that he went right close to his own home to the Gymnasium.

Khuner:Ja, the Gymnasium was exactly 800 meters from my home. That's how I trained myself for 800 meters in track and field, running to school every day!

Crawford:And that was exacting, wasn't it, demanding?

Khuner:The school?

Crawford:Yes.

Khuner:Well, I'll tell you how it was. I started it, as I said, in 1917. And in 1918 I started the Academy. And it turned out that it was impossible time-wise, because I had to attend morning classes in the Academy: orchestra, chamber music and all that. So I couldn't go to school and to the Academy. If I would have been fourteen years old I could have skipped school, but I couldn't skip school. So I had to have an exemption: I could study at home and make the examinations four times a year. And fortunately one of the professors lived nearby and he came twice a week, or three times a week, and helped me with my Latin and my Greek, and my history, and so forth. Not much; you can learn that all in books.

Crawford:Did you learn at home? Did your parents have tutors at home?

Khuner:No, this professor helped me with Latin and Greek.

Crawford:Did you learn Italian and French?

Khuner:No, no. The Gymnasium was only classical.

Crawford:The classical languages. But you could handle both, you did both fine.

Khuner:Latin and Greek? Ja, I learned it from school. It was not too difficult; the requirements were not very high. A little grammar, a little reading, a little Caesar, and Horace, and Homer, that was not so difficult.

Crawford:But everybody had that?

Khuner:In Gymnasium you had to have that. The Gymnasium was for eight years, but by the time I graduated from the Academy in 1922 I became a regular student again for the last four years in Gymnasium.

Crawford:Then what did you do, when you finished?

Khuner:Then I went back to Gymnasium and practiced a lot of piano. Now I want to tell you about that. I had good instruction in Vienna, it was the sister of my father. She was a private piano teacher, one of the most educated musicians, far above the regular teachers.

Crawford:This was your aunt.

Khuner:My aunt, yes. She is the teacher of Jonathan. She came here and was a teacher of Jonathan. He owes her very much. [Cecily Lichtenstein]

Crawford:Is she here?

Khuner:No, she's dead.

Crawford:I see. So she came from Vienna, she lived in Berkeley--

Khuner:She lived in Oakland first, and then in Berkeley.

Crawford:And she taught your son. Why was she so special as a teacher?

Khuner:Oh, she was intelligent, and educated, she went to concerts! All the vocal scores of Wagner operas, and Mahler symphonies and Bruckner I got from her, I didn't have anything. I couldn't buy anything.

Crawford:So you started piano--

Khuner:Piano with her, yes.

Crawford:How old were you then?

Khuner:Seven. Very early. And I practiced.

Crawford:How old was she?

Khuner:She was--she was I think sixteen when my mother married in '25. She was the younger sister of my father, the youngest in the family. She was probably around eighteen or nineteen.

Crawford:So she taught you piano from the age of seven--

Khuner:Not only piano, but music.

Crawford:I see. And you felt you were a better pianist?

Khuner:I was a very good pianist, Ja. And I practiced, and I played a lot of piano. In violin there is nothing to study, playing my Wienawski concerti? What? What can you-- Pagannini concerto? Who wants to play that? But I played all the Beethoven sonatas, the Schubert sonatas, the Brahms piano music, and Schumann Klaviermusik, ja, and all that.

Crawford:Did you study Schoenberg harmony?

Khuner:Yes!

Crawford:Was that what she gave you?

Khuner:That's what she gave me. Now Schoenberg I discovered exactly in 1921, when we were in a little city in Geusen. There was a hotel that had a piano downstairs in the lobby, and they had some music, songs. And that is where I first played Schoenberg songs. And I said, that's the music, not Strauss. Strauss songs were very popular at that time.

Crawford:And who else was it that affected you, that influenced you?

Khuner:Well, I would say mostly I was critical of the life. For instance there was a performance of Fidelio, Mr. Franz Schalk conducting, and I had the feeling that I was the only one there who knew anything about the opera.

Crawford:You didn't approve of his conducting?

Khuner:Not only the conducting; the singing, the orchestra, everything. I said, that's not the opera by Beethoven, that's not how to perform it.

Crawford:How old were you then?

Khuner:Oh, that was also when I was a teenager-- about fifteen.

Crawford:What had been your exposure to opera at that point?

Khuner:Oh, I went very much, every performance that interested me; mostly Mozart and Wagner. I wouldn't go to Italian operas. No, no way!

Crawford:I knew you would have strong thoughts about that! We won't get into it. Eventually I want to have you talk about Wagner and Verdi. So you went to the Royal Opera as a young person.

Khuner:The thing is this. I was at that time already a major in what you call music theory; harmony, counterpoint, composition, conducting. Not instrumental.

Crawford:So that at the Music Academy you were- -

Khuner:First at the Academy, then at the Neue Konservatorium, where I met Adler.

Crawford:Oh, that's where you met Adler, and you shared Professor Melius, right?

Khuner:Melius, that's right.

Crawford:What was the balance of your studies there?

Khuner:Well, it was useless. Somebody played. We had Carmen, we had Figaro, I don't know the operas. Somebody played the piano. I never played the piano. They were all better pianists than I. And we were sitting there, making believe that you conduct. Just conduct and follow one-two-three-four, there was no instruction.

Crawford:That was your conducting instruction?

Khuner:That was the conducting. Mr. Melius didn't know himself. [Whispering] Like here. Senturia doesn't know it either!

Crawford:Did you not conduct at the Music Academy?

Khuner:No, I was not in the conducting school in the Academy, only in Conservatory. But in the Academy I had composition. There was Franz Marx and Franz Schmidt, and Professor Springer . . .

Crawford:Franz Schmidt the composer?

Khuner:Schmidt, Ja, but I never studied with Schmidt.

Crawford:Did you study with Marx?

Khuner:Not with Marx. Occasionally when Springer was sick, Marx would come in for a class. But I had a good teacher, he was Mandyczewski, in counterpoint. Mandyczewski was the curator of the museum of the Gesellschaft der in Musikfreunde and a friend of Brahms. And that's also a little thing, is that the people who lived upstairs from our apartment house, there was a young fellow, he was about four years older than I. He was a bad violinist but was interested in music. And he was Karl Geiringer. Do you know Karl Geiringer? He became the curator of the instrument [collection] . . . [shows Crawford something]

Crawford:I know this name, yes.

Khuner:He lived upstairs. And he was the successor of Mandyczewski in the museum. And he became a very noted musicologist. He died last year. He was about three or four years older than I. From 1922 to 1926, that means from my graduation as a violinist from the Academy, until I graduated from Gymnasium, I did a lot of playing, not officially. There were quite a number of amateurs who were very interested in contemporary music. And I played quartets with them. We played the Bartok quartets, Kodaly, Toch, Korngold, and Szymanowsky, all the contemporary quartets.

Crawford:Were they well received?

Khuner:They were not played in Vienna, they were played only at home by the amateurs.

Crawford:It was about that time that Schoenberg organized that society for private listening and so on?

Khuner:That's right, ja. The Ros‚ quartet played the first two quartets by Schoenberg. I mean, there were performances, but not regularly. It was only an exception. Of course there were performances of Schoenberg and Berg and Webern.

Crawford:Did you have contact with Arnold Ros‚?

Khuner:I was a pupil of his for four months.

Crawford:Did he help you?

Khuner:No! Not at all. As a matter of fact, I met him later. He came and saw our rehearsal and he didn't recognize me.

Crawford:But you knew the Ros‚ family?

Khuner:No, I didn't know the family. I went to the concerts. I attended all the Ros‚ Quartet concerts.

Crawford:Where did they perform?

Khuner:They had their regular six-subscription concerts every season.

Musical Life in Vienna

Crawford:Let's talk about that. What was your musical exposure outside of your schooling?

Khuner:Very strong. I went to all sorts of concerts, and the opera; practically every evening I was out listening to something.

Crawford:And your parents went too?

Khuner:No, my parents didn't go any more. They went when I was a baby, I knew that; when I was a child, six, seven, eight, nine. At that time they were going, to the Italian things, quartets, the Triest Quartet, the Bohemian Quartet, the Ros‚ Quartet, the Klingsor Quartet, the Philharmonic concerts. They went to concerts all the time. They were not so much in opera, because my father liked only Donizetti. He thought it was marvelous.

Crawford:Fine for a German!

Khuner:Ja!

Crawford:What do you remember of Vienna?

Khuner:Well, I remember that I went to school, that I took violin classes, practiced for my teachers. Then on Sunday we went out hiking in the Vienna woods, in the summer we went swimming.

Crawford:Did you leave in the summer, other than to go a few miles out from Vienna?

Khuner:No. We always went outside [the city].

Crawford:In August?

Khuner:Ja. In June. In June, July, August. Until school started again.

Crawford:And your father would come and then come back into Vienna?

Khuner:If he could, ja, if we went close enough to Vienna. I know we lived in Pergstersdorf, which is just about ten miles outside the city limits, [and] Beidlingau, where I was born, and Mauer, in Rodaun--some of these things are now part of Vienna. And then later on, we were getting farther away, about one, one and a half, two hours by train. So my father could come home on weekends.

Crawford:Were there brothers and sisters?

Khuner:I have one sister, still alive. [Franzi died in 1992]

Crawford:Is she a musician too?

Khuner:No, no. She gave it up. She was supposed to get cello lessons, piano lessons, but she wasn't interested. No talent whatsoever.

Crawford:Did your parents push her to learn music?

Khuner:I guess they wanted to, ja, but she wasn't interested.

Crawford:Was your family interested in theater as well?

Khuner:Very little. I was more interested in the theater. I went to--not to the Burgtheater, because I had no chance to get there--but there was the Reimund Theater and Deutsche Volks Theater, where I saw quite a number of interesting plays.

Crawford:The Burgtheater was the Reinhardt theater?

Khuner:Reinhardt had his own theater.

Crawford:Did you go to the Reinhardt theater?

Khuner:Yes!

Crawford:So you liked the theater. Why was music so important in Vienna?

Khuner:It wasn't important. That is all fiction.

Crawford:Really?

Khuner:Yes, that's all a fiction, that is all public relations.

Crawford:We always hear that music was king in Vienna.

Khuner:Ja? Well, they say the waltzes--you couldn't hear a waltz in Vienna. Yes, at the time of Johann Strauss the waltzes were for the dancing at the Imperial Palace. But the popular people didn't dance waltzes.

Crawford:No, but look at all the quartet activity; that's remarkable.

Khuner:Well, the Ros‚ Quartet was there--they were members of the Philharmonic. Mr. Ros‚ was the concertmaster, Rugiska was the principal violin, Buchsbaum was the principal cellist.

Crawford:But there were many quartets?

Khuner:They came from other places, ja? Well, there was an audience for string quartets, yes.

Crawford:And two opera companies?

Khuner:More or less, ja, the Volksoper--

Crawford:And operetta?

Khuner:Well, there was operetta--oh, ja, operetta, that's a different story. Vulgar things were very popular!

Crawford:But music was a big part of life, it seems, from what you're telling me.

Khuner:No! Not more than here.

Crawford:But you went every night to music! A young man doesn't do that unless--

Khuner:Because it was the capital; it was for promotion's sake. Like you have to give a recital in New York if you want to get engagements in Kansas City. You have to have press releases.

Crawford:Well, in The Proud Tower, by Barbara Tuchman, she says that the politics in Vienna, the political climate, was disintegrating, and she said music was an anchor.

Khuner:Well, you mean, when the Nazis, with the annexation, or--

Crawford:No, I mean before the first war, right after the turn of the century.

Khuner:There was a congregation of writers, journalists, painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, whatever else. The greatest architect was Loos at that time, but he was a good-for-nothing, he had nothing but enemies. Schoenberg had nothing but enemies. The writer Karl Klaus had nothing but enemies. But there was always a small group--I am honored to belong to that--who realized that; and we of course hated the official Vienna.

Crawford:So you're saying there was that friction--

Khuner:There was no actual friction; they were just-- they were not in our class.

Crawford:I read that the Emperor Franz Joseph never read a book.

Khuner:The Emperor was--my mother's oldest brother was a reserve officer in the Austrian army. And he was a real Austrian, he was a real military man. Very strange for a Jew.

Crawford:How so? How was he a "real Austrian"?

Khuner:Because he was military man. Like here, if somebody is a colonel in the army, he's a military man. Now, he was not active, he was a reserve officer. There were not many Jewish reserve officers. He was just a real good soldier. Ja?

Crawford:Not interested in music?

Khuner:Not interested in anything; but he was a soldier. And even he said, our Emperor is an idiot! A chammer, that's the Jewish word for idiot. But he spelled it, "c-h-a-m-m-e-r," he wouldn't say chammer. But not only an idiot, he was a criminal. Actually, he had his wife killed, and he had his son killed.

Crawford:Are you sure?

Khuner:Sure.

Crawford:That's such a sad story, about his wife.

Khuner:Well, he had nothing but mistresses, and affairs, and he wanted to get her out of the way. She was killed in Geneva, you know that.

Crawford:I know, I remember the story.

Khuner:That was an open secret. But you don't find that in history books.

Crawford:No, you don't, you don't see that in history books. Well, what was the political climate in Vienna, before the war, as you can remember now?

Khuner:The first war? Well there were the ruling party who were the Catholic party. And there was a little opposition, the liberal party; the opposition was the Jews. And the Catholic party was anti-Semitic. There was a mayor of Vienna by the name of Luger, who was elected on the anti-Semitic platform. He said, "I will get rid of the Jews. The Jews have too much influence, they have too many jobs, they have too many businesses, they are in banking and so on; I'll get rid of the Jews." So he was elected. And then it turned out that he didn't want to get rid of the Jews. There were some complaints: "You still do business with all those Jewish firms." So he said, "I decide who is a Jew. If I want to make business with him, he is not a Jew." Oh, you know that?! Ja. But then, after 1918, Vienna became Social Democratic. The intellectual leader of the Social Democrats was Otto Bauer, he was a Jew. And his widow, Mrs. Bauer, lived in Berkeley after the war.

Crawford:That was Kurt Herbert Adler's uncle, you know.

Khuner:Possibly, ja.

Playing in the Vienna Opera Orchestra

Crawford:Let's talk about Mahler and Strauss.

Khuner:Well, of course, Strauss--I played with Strauss, in the Opera, when he conducted, sure, I knew--he was the co-director with Schalk of the [Vienna] Opera.

Crawford:What do you remember of him?

Khuner:Well, I'll tell you--it's not very delicate. He was not paid very liberally, because there was no money in Austria; but he was given a palais to live in, for, let's say, twenty or thirty or forty years, in lieu of money.

Crawford:A palace?

Khuner:A palace, yes. So he lived in that palace. And he conducted very sloppily, and very disintegrated. So the musicians said, "Well, tonight he directed and conducted from the bathroom, from the scheissheisel [scheissh„usel means little shit house]. When he conducted well, he conducted from the livingroom, or from the bedroom, but tonight he conducted from the bathroom."

Crawford:And you played in the orchestra there?

Khuner:I was substituting in the Opera orchestra. When I was in the last year of Gymnasium, Mr. Starkmann wrote me one day, or told me that there were auditions for substitutes. That was a rule that there were accredited substitutes when the regular people didn't want to play because they had better jobs. At that time there were a lot of dance bands going around in Vienna.

Crawford:And you got more money, I suppose.

Khuner:I didn't get anymoney. They got more money!

Crawford:They got more money?

Khuner:Not more [from the Opera]--they got their regular salary for the Opera, plus the money they'd make. Because they didn't pay much to the substitutes. I was accepted as official substitute. I could play any time one of the violinists needed a substitute. So Mr. Weissgaber or Mr. Sedlak, or Mr. Whoever-it-is wanted to get a night off, they phoned me--can you play?--mostly Wagner operas. Rigoletto they liked to play themselves, but Wagner was too long. And Wagner was always on weekends, on Sundays, when they got good jobs. So I played--for two years I played every Tristan, every G"tterd„merung, every Walk re, every Meistersinger. Ja. And they lined up, already, three weeks ahead, they were asking me, "Please play for me."

Crawford:Now this was in the Twenties. Were you still in school?

Khuner:That was when I was still in school, Ja. That was '24, '25, '26. When I was eighteen or nineteen years old.

Crawford:And did you at that time think, "I will be a regular member of the--"

Khuner:I thought, in case I become a conductor, which was always somewhere in the back of my mind. But I knew all those operas. Up till now I know Meistersinger and Tristan and Parsifal by heart. I know even Mahler symphonies by heart. I remember once we played the Second Mahler Symphony, Steinberg conducting. Something was wrong, and I had to tell him, "The clarinetist transposes wrong, because the clarinet is in B. And Steinberg said, "Yes, yes, that's right." But he didn't know. I knew the score better than Steinberg.

Crawford:So, at that point you thought you might be a conductor?

Khuner:Listen. I knew that becoming a conductor doesn't come out of the open air, you know? I knew that I had no backing, I had no entry. It's like you say, are you interested in--what would you be interested in; geology, and you want to become a professor of geology; that doesn't come out of space.

Crawford:But still, it interested you.

Khuner:Ja, especially [since] I knew I was a better conductor than Schalk. Schalk came and--now something like Adler. When in the rehearsal, I remember when the conducting fell apart, Mr. Schalk said, "Oh, I'm not going to conduct at all; you're better without me." He said that!

Remembering Arnold Schoenberg

Crawford:How about Schoenberg? What were your impressions of him.

Khuner:Well, Schoenberg. I knew the music very well, I read the harmony [i.e. Harmonielehre, Schoenberg's textbook.] I didn't know anything about him, I never met him, I didn't know what he looked like. And suddenly out of the blue sky, my old professor Egghardt, whom I hadn't seen for years already--that means between 1922 and 1926, or 1925, I hadn't seen him--He told me, he says, "There is a violinist by the name of Rudolph Kolisch, who has a quartet, and he needs a second violinist, the second violinist quit." So I went to Kolisch's apartment, talked about music, and I find out that we had a lot of things in common--musical ideas. And suddenly the door opened, and a little man came in, talked to Rudy, didn't pay any notice to me; and I said, "who is that?" He said, "That's Schoenberg." I said, "That's Schoenberg?" And he said, "Well, that's the husband of my sister." I said, "So it's your family; is he interested in the quartet?" He said, "Sure, we have rehearsals [with him]." I said, "Of course I'll play with you. If Schoenberg is there, of course I'll play with you."

Crawford:But you knew his music already.

Khuner:I knew a lot of his music. I had already known the piano pieces opus 19, I believe, Ja. Short piano pieces. I got the music from the rental library, and came to a violin class with them and played them. Oh, they laughed about it! My violin colleagues. So I said, "Well, that's the music [people will remember when all the Wieniawski concertos have been forgotten]."

Crawford:Opus 19. When would that have been written?

Khuner:I really don't know. [1911]

Crawford:I wanted to ask you about something you said, about packaging. You said that you weren't interested in packaging. What did you mean, exactly?

Khuner:About packaging. Oh, the package is not important, Ja. The sound is not important. Some time ago, a musicologist came and asked me some related questions. He said, "Is it true that in your quartet Mr. Heifetz, the cellist, has a much better sound than the first violin?" I said, "What do you mean, better sound?" Well, everybody complained that the sound of the first violin was not as good.

Crawford:Go on.

Khuner:Well, an inoffensive sound, and a pleasant sound, is of course preferable to an offensive sound or an unpleasant sound. The unpleasant sound distracts from the performance. Like a very bad pavement distracts from your vacation trip. If you are jostled all the time by the potholes and so on, you are really distracted from the beautiful scenery. Although you shouldn't be!

Crawford:That's right. Sometimes the rougher journey is more meaningful.

Khuner:Ja, well--but really the enjoyment of the scenery is a little disturbed by a very rough road, or if your car stops all the time.

Crawford:You were such a close friend, could you talk about Schoenberg, about his life?

Khuner:Well, I know very little. Schoenberg was part of my surroundings, although I didn't see him very often. Months and months went by when I had no idea, I didn't even know where he was.

Crawford:When did you first speak to him?

Khuner:Well, I first spoke to him in the early rehearsals. Right in the first season that we had in Vienna in 1926-27, we had a Schoenberg concert with the first and second string quartets, with the singer Maria Freund from Paris singing the lead, [The Book of the] Hanging Gardens. And during these rehearsals I got closer acquainted for the first time, because we rehearsed together.

Crawford:What was he like?

Khuner:He was a very friendly, and very sympathetic, and very interested person. He was always interested in what we were doing. He was interested in every detail of our surroundings. I always say that [as] Adoras said, he doesn't want to discuss the price of milk with Schoenberg. But Schoenberg was interested in the price of milk, or the rise of the price of milk. Or how do I reach an intersection in North Hollywood.

Crawford:Did he paint at the time?

Khuner:Not at that time, any more, as far as I know. He never painted in my presence. I think his painting period was gone by then.

Crawford:His biographers make the conclusion that he painted because his music was not accepted.

Khuner:There was no indication of that. But he never spoke about his painting. The paintings were always in his home activities, you know now they are all there, but at that time not all of them were there. I saw his paintings, some of them, around there.

Crawford:He had a reputation for being very superstitious.

Khuner:Extremely so, ja. Especially with figures--not so much words, I think. Schoenberg was superstitious with letters. You know, his name was Arnold, and his son's name is Ronald--the same letters.

Crawford:How about the number thirteen?

Khuner:That was Berg. But thirteen, I don't know. Berg was twenty-three.

Crawford:And then it also said that he was very proud of the twelve-tone method.

Khuner:He was a little proud. He had the priority. He discovered it. Well, of course he discovered it, because everything in music has two sources. The material, which is the sound; and the brain of the composer. The brain of the composer determines what you can make out of the elementary sounds. The sound is the overtones and the relation of intervals. This is our raw material, and the composer sees what he can do with it. Music has developed as more and more composers discover what can be done with the sounds. And Schoenberg discovered what can be done with the twelve tones of our chromatic scale.

Crawford:Thomas Mann apparently wrote a novel about someone [who formulated that scale].

Khuner:That, ja, well, that's Dr. Faustus. I haven't read that. You know, frankly, I have all the works of Thomas Mann except this novel. I have to write to the publishers to get it. I never read it. So, there was a Matthias Hauer, a composer in Vienna, who did also a similar thing. He said, "I want to use different combinations of intervals, all the mathematically possible permutations." In other words, he approached it from the mathematical standpoint. And Schoenberg protested that. Hauer said, "I was first to discover the possibility." But Schoenberg of course discovered it from the musical side, not from the mathematical side.

Crawford:I see. So they were totally different from one another.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:Schoenberg was quoted as saying that "the Kolisch was the best quartet I ever heard."

Khuner:Well, it's the same thing--there were quartets who played more polished. They neglected, they were not interested in the musical approach. It had to be in tune, it had to be homogenized, it had to be together, and so on. And anything that disturbed this polished surface they eliminated. Musical considerations were less important than the polished surface. We were not interested in the polished surface. I mean, we did the best we could, but sometimes if you really concentrate on the musical realization of the composition, the polished surface suffers.

Crawford:The packaging.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:When you got together and did a piece, that, say, you were going to do for the first time, the Schoenberg Third Quartet, did you just light into it? Did you talk about it?

Khuner:Well, we didn't talk about it. Now, first of all, the first movement of the Schoenberg [Third] Quartet, is rather dry, [an] unappealing kind of music. The quality of the music--is of course the combination of the twelve tones and the way that Schoenberg was using it. So we were mostly concerned that we really played the right notes. And at that time it was not easy to find the intervals correctly. In the beginning we worked, concentrated very hard on the intonation, on the intervals. And then it had to be done very precise rhythmically, or rather in rhythmic monotony, which was difficult to achieve. Because the locations of the notes were difficult; doublestops, and jumps all over the fingerboard, which had to be practiced.

Crawford:But the score was written down.

Khuner:Ja, ja, of course. So we worked very hard on that. And originally, when we started out, it sounded a little frantic, because it was difficult. But I remember a performance when it went very smooth and very beautiful, like a simple Haydn quartet. I remember especially one performance in Prague--it was on a Sunday morning!--and really, the whole quartet sounded very easy, very spontaneous, very clean, and very nice. But it was a difficult quartet to start out in 1927.

Crawford:And then you had first rights to the Fourth, too?

Khuner:Then later on we played the Fourth, that was around 1936 or 1937.

Crawford:That was the one that was commissioned by Mrs. Coolidge? In '36?

Khuner:Or so.

Crawford:So that was a later work. How was that different?

Khuner:You mean the Fourth from the Third? It's a different piece, I don't know. Well, of course, there were a lot of similarities, same composer, same medium--

Crawford:More classical than the third?

Khuner:It is less classical; more, what you would say, romantic, but I hate to use that word. Especially the slow movement. The slow movement of the Fourth is a very rhapsodic piece, very imaginative, whereas the slow movement in the Third Quartet was a little neo-classical.

Crawford:What has been the performance history?

Khuner:I don't know what you mean.

Crawford:Well, for instance, [Berg's] Lyric Suite is done all the time in its revised form. How often are the string quartets played?

Khuner:I don't know. How often we did it, or the other quartets? I don't know anything about other quartets.

Crawford:I just wondered. Because I never hear them performed.

Khuner:Oh, they are not performed, no. They have no entertainment value. There are a lot of quartets here recently who played, who did the Third or Fourth Quartet--I didn't hear it--I don't know. Generally on the program there are other quartets that have more entertainment value, whether they are old, or new. And the Schoenberg quartets, they have no entertainment value.

Crawford:And they are very difficult.

Khuner:They are also difficult, yes.

Crawford:Schoenberg is often compared to Bach-- as being the transition between two periods. Do you see any parallel?

Khuner:Well, I have to leave that to the music historians, to find out, to arrange, like on the music bookshelves, where the periods begin, where they start, all those things.

Crawford:How about--

Khuner:No, wait, listen. Bach--Bach, the patterns, the baroque patterns, were used by dozens and by scores of composers, all the baroque composers. And I have the impression that Bach knew all those patterns, he used them, like he used compositions by Vivaldi. And maybe he [Schoenberg] did that. It's not that he [he sings the theme from the Violin/Oboe Concerto, in different keys, to demonstrate the random abstractness of patterns] A colleague of mine made--can we shut it off? (taping stops momentarily) I am not a musicologist, and it doesn't concern me.

Crawford:Let me ask you, going back to Schoenberg. He was a very spiritual person?

Khuner:Well, of course he was seeking. He was--all sorts--he was religious, like in the opera Moses und Aaron, like the oratorio Jakobsleiter. He was also interested in political developments, in the Jewish question. But that is not special, every intelligent person does that.

Crawford:So you wouldn't say he was especially religious.

Khuner:No! He is of course accused that he left the Jewish community and was baptized and became a protestant or a Catholic. That was the rule in Vienna, you had to do it; if you want to be at least somehow in the public eye, you had to do it. It was a very strict Catholic country, with an enormous amount of anti-Semitism. And also, he said if you want to, you can believe in any religion. Schoenberg said you can believe in communism as a religion.

Crawford:Did he feel it was advisable or was it necessary to have a strong personal belief?

Khuner:I don't know. He never talked to me about it. I know that he converted [for public show], and then later he converted back to Judaism.

Crawford:That was just before he wrote Moses und Aaron.

Khuner:I don't think so. I think it was later. Because earlier it had nothing to do with his religious beliefs, it was just a topic that interested him.

Crawford:Anything else?

Khuner:I don't know--

Crawford:Oh, tennis! You haven't talked about tennis. I know you played tennis with him.

Khuner:Ja, well, he was a tennis and ping pong player. And in 1929 when we were on the Dutch Coast we played soccer.

Crawford:Schoenberg used to come there?

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:What was that like?

Khuner:We were rehearsing. Schoenberg and his wife--he had no children at that time--were there. And every afternoon we went to the [beach].

II THE KOLISCH QUARTET: 1926-1937

[Interview 2: December 7, 1989]

Vienna in the Twenties

Crawford:In another interview we were talking about that group of young intellectuals in Vienna that were against the establishment, of which you were one. When did you first sense that you were going to take that anti- establishment position?

Khuner:Well, it happened in 1918, when the Austrian Republic was formed. We were, of course, very liberal, not to say communist, and we were very on the lookout for the Old Guard at that time, which we didn't like. So that was with politics; it had nothing do with music or with art. We were always on the lookout for the new things, and not to continue the old.

Crawford:Your thinking then extended to politics, too.

Khuner:That was with politics.

Crawford:And who were the people who were involved?

Khuner:Well, that was all very vague in general. We were always very suspicious, like Mr. McCarthy was suspicious of communism. We were suspicious of every conservative, old monarchists, you know? And then we were also suspicious of--the German nationalists between 1918 and 1933, [and the] ascending power of the Nazis.

Crawford:And what form did that take?

Khuner:Well, that was all very informal.

Crawford:You met in coffee houses, you talked with other students?

Khuner:Very little. As a teenager, no, I had no time for that. That was only meant for political groups; and the other Zionist groups--of course that was a little detached from Austrian politics. That was something else--No, I had no time for that; I had to go to school, I had to do my violin practicing, I had to play quartets, I had to go to concerts, I had to go to operas. On the weekend I would go skiing, or swimming or hiking. In the evening we had the Zionist youth groups. So--

Crawford:So you didn't have time for politics per se. But you read?

Khuner:Well, of course I read a lot about music, and literature, and whatever was accessible to me. The libraries were very poor, in the Academy. We had very little worthwhile things. But I discovered [Heinrich] Schenker, and then I discovered the music of Schoenberg. And then, of course, there I was a rabid Wagnerian.

Crawford:Shaw said, "You can't love Wagner unless you are a revolutionary yourself." Is that true?

Khuner:At that time, not any more. No, that was twenty years before, around 1900. But by that time Wagner was very well established. He was still of course--people said that Wagner was too dull, and they couldn't sit through a five- hour opera. Like my German professor says, "You cannot sit through five hours of Parsifal," and I said, "But you can go through four volumes of the old medieval German epic!" That's what he wanted us to do, you know. He had a volume like that about Parsifal or Wolfram von Eschenbach that was standing there. That you want us to read! That takes five months to read! But five hours in the opera is too much for you!

Crawford:How about Schenker?

Khuner:Well, Schenker I discovered--I'll tell you how- -I took violin lessons of a young violinist, Mr. Schiffer. Did I tell you that? Ja? Well, Schiffer was an absolute nobody! He was a young violinist, and he had a little string quartet; I played a couple of little performances with him. And it seems to me that he knew quite a lot about violin playing. I don't think that he was a very inspiring or inspired teacher, but he knew something about violin playing. And he was probably the first one who really told me how bad I was.

Crawford:He said you were bad!

Khuner:Ja. And I remember there was in one instance--I asked about holidays or vacations, and [he] said, "I'm not going to get a vacation, I have a book to study first. When I have studied that book, then my vacations will begin." That was Schenker's analysis of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which probably you are not aware about. It's a very interesting book. That's where I heard the name of Schenker first. And then I found some of Schenker's books in the Academy library. New Ideas and Fantasies. Ja, Neues Ideen und Fantasien. And then I found the first book about harmony, and so on.

Crawford:So that was an influence for you.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:And was that of the Schoenberg school?

Khuner:Well, he was not an admirer of Schoenberg, because he was very conservative. Schoenberg admired him, and said he was a very fine [player]--unfortunately, he had a wall against contemporary music. And Schoenberg told me that was wrong, because all his ideas, and all his research, and all his discoveries apply just as much to new music as they apply to old music.

[tape break]

Crawford:Was Schoenberg attached to Karl Kraus' political philosophy?

Khuner:Oh, Ja, Schoenberg was an admirer--right. He told me once that he had a grudge against Kraus. Because when Schoenberg was a very young man he wrote a letter to Kraus. What it was, I don't know. And Kraus rebuffed him in some way or other. And Schoenberg was very hurt by that. And I said that's too bad because if Kraus would had been more understanding--I don't know what it was--they would have had a much better relationship, at least to the benefit of Schoenberg. But I don't know what the topic of this was.

Crawford:But you read Kraus's newsletter, his publication?

Khuner:Of course, yes. I had a complete Fackel, which was destroyed; my parents destroyed it before they left Vienna.

Crawford:Why?

Khuner:Oh, they were afraid. There was a whole shelf of Fackel there; if that could be discovered--I mean, that was just a waste of Die Fackel-- Kraus died in 1936. It was still Austria. I had the complete, all the issues of Die Fackel up to his death. You know? Which I could sell now for half a million dollars.

Crawford:You surely could!

Khuner:Ja. But my parents, in 1938, before they left, they burned it.

Joining the Kolisch Quartet

Crawford:You joined the Kolisch quartet in the twenties.

Khuner:That's correct, 1926. I was born in 1906, and I was nineteen.

Crawford:According to Mr. Lehner, it was a continuation of another quartet.

Khuner:There was a quartet that was called the Neues Wienerstreichquartett. And there was Kolisch, and Mr. Rothschild was the second violinist; Mr. Marcel Dick was the viola player, you know that. And Joachim Stutschewsky was the cellist. Now Rothschild was a local violinist in Vienna who was playing, little recitals, little jobs, I don't know--I met him later in New York. He was not much to brag about. Marcel Dick was a very intelligent, very musical viola player. He later became professor of composition at the University in Cleveland. Stutschewsky was the oldest of the group; he was also a free-lance cellist in Vienna, who later emigrated to Israel, and was also a very intelligent and musical and above-average musician, not a very good cellist. Not a very pleasant person.

Crawford:How so?

Khuner:Well, he was very self-centered, and nothing else mattered but himself. He said, "Why should I be polite to Mr. Schoenberg; I am just as good a cellist as Schoenberg is a composer!"

Crawford:Oh, I see! Ego problems!

Khuner:Ja! I don't know how that quartet was formed, I have no idea. But they had played already two or three seasons.

Crawford:When you came along.

Khuner:Ja. Then Mr. Rothschild didn't like it for some reason or other, there was some kind of personal [friction] I don't know anything about. And Kolisch went to Mr. Professor Egghardt, whose name you remember, who was my teacher and had also been Kolisch's teacher in his early years. And Kolisch went to him and says, "Can you recommend any of the young people that you have in your class who would be interested in my quartet?" And he described it. And Egghardt said, "That must be Felix Khuner--" He said, "Not an extremely good violinist, but interested in the music." And Kolisch phoned me, and I said, "Well, I don't play violin any more. I still play a little, I play in the Opera orchestra, substituting, and play a little chamber music at home with semi- professionals. But otherwise, I'm going to go to the University for mathematics and chemistry studies. I have no time to play quartets." So he said, "Come over, we'll talk it over anyhow." I told you that--and Schoenberg entered the room--

Crawford:Yes, you didn't know who it was!

Khuner:I didn't know who he was! And I said, "What has he to do with you? Who is that old man?" And he said, "Well, that's Mr. Schoenberg." I had never seen a picture of him before. Well, I said, "Has he any connection?" He said, "He's my brother-in-law, and of course, when we perform, when we rehearse, he comes and talks with us, and so on." And I said, "Well in that case, of course I want to play with you!" It was at the end of the school year. He said, "Can you rehearse?" and I said "No." I had arranged with my cousin to make a hiking tour through Switzerland, in the summer of '26. So, that's what we did. It was a very nice three or four weeks; we hiked through Switzerland, we went up some mountains, and swam in the lakes, and southern lakes, and so on, it was very nice. And then when we came back, Kolisch said, all right, let's practice a little. The other other two people of the quartet had already left for whatever they did during the summer. Marcel Dick played, I think, in some summer orchestra, Stutschewsky was out of town some place. So we went through the repertoire, just the two violins of us. And that was in Schoenberg's house in M"dling. And Schoenberg had a piano and a harmonium, and we there played Wagner operas, and Tristan, and Walk re, for piano and harmonium!

Crawford:Where is M"dling?

Khuner:M"dling, it's a suburb of Vienna. It's about, I would say, twenty miles south of Vienna.

Crawford:And so you spent the summer, or part of the summer--

Khuner:No, no, I went there for a day, twice a week.

Crawford:And was Schoenberg there?

Khuner:No, no. Nobody was there except Kolisch.

Crawford:And your repertoire was mixed, then?

Khuner:Ja. Well, the classical repertoire, of course, I was acquainted with; I'd played a lot of it, I'd heard a lot of it. But the other quartets I didn't know. We played the first and second Bartok quartets, and the first two Schoenberg quartets, and by Toch, and by Szymorowsky, and also the first things of Webern. But they were the string quartets they played.

Crawford:So then you began the season, the regular season--

Khuner:Ja, but before that, there was one rehearsal that we had with the other two. Of course, they wanted to know who is that young fellow, nineteen-year-old fellow, who wants to play in our quartet. So we played, and they said, "Well, he's a good sight-reader, he'll do--Kolisch, you practice with him! You, you study the repertoire, and then we can have the season."

Crawford:Now, what were the ages of the others? Rothschild, and Dick?

Khuner:Well, Kolisch was ten years older than I, Rothschild must have been--I don't know. Dick was a little younger then. Stutschewsky was about six or seven years older than Kolisch.

Crawford:Spell that name for me, would you?

Khuner:Stutschewsky? (spells it) Transliteration of the Russian.

Crawford:And then, so then you began this '26 season with the quartet.

Khuner:Ja, well, of course, I said, "I have to go to school, so I can't play." They said, "Well, we have only a few concerts, in October, and then we have a few concerts in February. So you go." So, I registered at the University, and went to a few classes of mathematics in September and October, and did a little rehearsing to brush up the quartets we played. And then we had the tour--just a few concerts, I think--where was it? We played also in Berlin, I remember that. We played in Prague. We played a few concerts in Switzerland, that Stutschewsky arranged, because he knew people. We had some concerts in the north of Italy. But I don't know how that was arranged, because I had no idea. They just told me "We play there, we play this."

Crawford:Had you been in those other places?

Khuner:No. No.

Crawford:You had been in Switzerland?

Khuner:I had been in Czechoslovakia visiting my mother's family, but I'd never been in Germany, Berlin was quite new to me. Quite impressive, of course. Berlin! Well! And I had never been in Italy. But I had been in Switzerland, south Switzerland.

Crawford:Did you like Berlin?

Khuner:Well, I cannot say. I was very much impressed. First of all, the subway. We had no subway in Vienna. And the signals, the traffic lights, green and red traffic lights! There was none in Vienna! I mean, to go to the Leipzigstrasse, and see the whole street, a traffic light at every corner, every intersection! Fabulous!

Crawford:That's interesting. Interesting that that made such an impression on you.

Khuner:Ja, then--wait a minute--I really don't know-- we had another tour in Europe. By the time I came back, and went back to the school, everything was gone, I couldn't keep up with the classes. So, I had to give it up.

Crawford:So you gave up the University? You didn't continue?

Khuner:Well, I gave it up for the time being, see, and the first two terms, semesters, I didn't do anything. I was a drop-out! Yes!

Crawford:Well, in a way! You had once a hundred and twenty concerts. Did you usually have that many?

Khuner:That was later, ja, ja.

Crawford:In 1927, yes.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:But, were there a great many concerts that you did?

Khuner:In the first year? Not more than about thirty. Ja, those tours--oh, we had some concerts in Vienna, and so on, ja.

Crawford:Also. And were you playing all classical repertoire that year?

Khuner:Oh, ja! In those concerts in Switzerland we didn't play anything that was contemporary. We played all Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert quartets.

[Portion of tape missing]

We were in Mantua, and Mantua is a little, you know, a little city in Italy, and it was a delightful day. It's a wonderful little city. We were walking around, absolutely one delight after another, every street! Then we had a little hotel room, there was a little balcony out there, and Lehner and I, we took a chair out and we played chess all afternoon. And I remember that afternoon. So if you ask, what did you do, that's what we did.

Crawford:Did you notice any difference with Italian audiences?

Khuner:No. No. They liked the slow movement of the Dvorak F Major Quartet best. [sings the theme] That always brought down the house! We played once Casella, in Milano; it was a great thing. And they hissed, they didn't want it! They said, Beethoven! Beethoven! Beethoven! No Casella! [Alfred Casella, 1883-1947] No, they didn't like the Italian music, I mean the contemporary, like Malipiero and Casella, and Alfano. I would say that the best performances were played when we knew it was totally lost. Totally unwanted. I remember once we played the Lyric Suite in a private concert in Paris, and we knew it would be totally lost on the audience. We just did it because the hostess for some reason wanted it. It was the best performance we ever played! It was totally lost on everybody.

Crawford:Why? Maybe because you weren't worried.

Khuner:What? No! It was a performance that would have been acclaimed by every knowledgeable listener. But not by that audience.

Crawford:How did you feel about that?

Khuner:Didn't care.

Crawford:You didn't care that you didn't record it?

Khuner:I never cared about it. No. The only thing is, are we going to get re-engaged? Because when we played in different places in Italy, we played in Mantua and Padua, and in Ascona, and in Rome, and Florence. So we would take a nice tour, two weeks. Or in Holland, or in England. Ja. We played in Scotland every year, we had to play in Aberdeen, and Edinburgh, and in Inverness. And in Glasgow [and] in Aberdeen we played--In Elgin, way up in the north. But the thing is this, we had to have all those cities. Otherwise it would be expensive to go there.

Crawford:So, you wondered--

Khuner:We wondered, are we going to be engaged again?

Crawford:And did you ever fail to be re-engaged because they said, "We don't like your approach?"

Khuner:We don't know. How could we know? For example, sometimes we asked [the representative] Mr. Bechert, "We were so successful, let's say, in Elgin last year, why couldn't we--" He said, "Well, they couldn't fit it in their time schedule." Say you could play only Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday that week, and the hall was already taken. It would happen. It happens here too. In the opera. Why do we get this singer, why don't we get a better one? It was not available for that day.

Crawford:But generally you were re-engaged, because you were kept pretty busy.

Khuner:No, we were not kept very busy. We could have played many more concerts if we would have had them.

Crawford:You could?

Khuner:Oh, ja. Not that I would have been extremely happy, because I enjoyed free days! Really.

Crawford:You liked to have the free days.

Khuner:Well, sure! Say, you are in Florence, you would like to spend two days, but you can't, you have to leave tomorrow morning to play in Spezia.

Crawford:You traveled everywhere by train, I'm sure, in those times?

Khuner:Oh, ja, no planes, except a very few times. In fact, we took a plane once from [somewhere] in Poland, and I took a plane once from Strasbourg to Czechoslovakia, because we would travel over Germany, not go through Germany. Those were the only two times I went by plane. Those were big planes at that time, twenty passengers! Ja. Most airplanes had only six, eight or ten.

Benar Heifetz and Jeno Lehner Join the Quartet

Crawford:Yes. So when did you start with Berg and Schoenberg, and so on?

Khuner:That was part of our, of at least my interest, you know? We played that in Vienna itself. We had, I remember, one recital where Schoenberg was present; we played the first two string quartets. And the singer, Maria Freund, sang the opus fifteen.

Crawford:And he was there.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:Was the work well received? Was that a premiere?

Khuner:That was not a premiere, no, no. No, no. That was already played before, by the Ros‚ Quartet.

Crawford:Did you get large audiences?

Khuner:No, that was a very small audience, the smallest hall, yes.

Crawford:Was his Society for Private Musical Performances still going on?

Khuner:I was never participating. My aunt was there. Did I tell you that?

Crawford:No.

Khuner:That was actually my first introduction to Schoenberg. My aunt, the piano teacher, told me, when I young, I was about twelve, thirteen, fourteen, that she was a member of this thing. And she played some of the very, very avant garde music, by Debussy and Ravel, for the piano. And I was very interested in that. Because that was performed a lot at the Verein [f r Musikalsche Privatauff hrungen, 1918].

Crawford:And so she was involved, but you weren't really involved with it?

Khuner:I was not. I was too young.

Crawford:I think that was begun in 1918, as I remember. Was there also a Society for Creative Composers? [Union of Creative Musicians]

Khuner:Not that I know of.

Crawford:I think Zemlinsky was responsible for founding that--

Khuner:Well, undoubtedly they performed a lot of the music of living composers, and local composers. Naturally. But the emphasis was on performing. I don't think they in any way sponsored or encouraged composers, except by performing them.

Crawford:Well, that's one way.

Khuner:Well, that's of course a very important way. But that's not like here, where present day sponsors, they pay the composer to compose and don't care about the performance.

Crawford:So then, Jeno Lehner?

Khuner:Then, at the end of the first season, after these two short trips and a few concerts in Vienna, Berg had finished his Lyric Suite, and we were faced with the important thing, to rehearse it. And there were only two violins in the quartet! So we met Mr. Benar Heifetz, who was also a so-called free-lance cellist, in Vienna. Ja? He couldn't get a job in any orchestra. The only income he had was playing professionally with amateurs, who appreciated a good cellist in their quartet.

Crawford:He was a Russian, was he not?

Khuner:He was also Russian. He was an immigrant, an emigrant from Russia. So we had Heifetz, Heifetz was interested. And Kolisch played two piano trio recitals with him. I was not involved. And he thought that he was a very fine cellist. But we couldn't play quartets, we had no viola player. And all the local viola players were out of the running.

Crawford:Because you'd lost your viola player?

Khuner:Ja. Marcel Dick left. He said he couldn't continue because he had to stick to his orchestra job. He couldn't rehearse in the summer because he was in a spa orchestra somewhere in the Austrian countryside. Ischl.

Crawford:Very lucrative, I suppose.

Khuner:Well, not lucrative. It was very bad money, but it was a living, modestly.

Crawford:So then?

Khuner:Well, I could play, because I was supported by my parents at that time.

Crawford:So your revenues by no means provided a living.

Khuner:Oh, no! At that time, not at all! And what I earned in these two seasons was just to buy myself a few books!

Crawford:Music books?

Khuner:Not necessarily, no! Then there was a Mr. [S ndor] Jemnitz, a composer in Budapest, whose, I think, string trios or string quartets we had performed in our first season, and who was interested. And Kolisch must have mentioned that we are on the lookout for a viola player. So he said, "Well, there's a young viola player in Budapest who is not exactly a great viola player, but he's interested in music, and very intelligent, and so on." So he sent Jeno Lehner to Vienna and we rehearsed with him a couple of times. And we saw that he was--the right material!

Crawford:So, really, you all of a sudden had a much younger group.

Khuner:So the group was much younger, ja. Heifetz was younger than Stutschewsky, Lehner was younger than Dick. And we had a very, very young quartet. The total age was less than one hundred years. And Lehner also could come to Vienna because he also had support, he had a patron, some aristocrat friend of his parents, who was very much interested in furthering his talents; and when she heard he would become a member of an uncommon, internationally renowned string quartet--hopefully!--she said, well, she would support him, until he--

Crawford:Was the Kolisch Quartet then renowned?

Khuner:No! Not at all, that was all a calculation. But Lehner was very enthusiastic, and of course Kolisch was there, and Heifetz had nothing to lose. I had nothing to lose; I said, "I'll do it."

The Repertoire in the Twenties

Crawford:According to Lehner, the Lyric Suite made your fame.

Khuner:I'll tell you about that now. The Lyric Suite was not printed yet, it was only in the proofs. So we started working on it. It was quite difficult. Not only this; also the Third Quartet by Schoenberg, which had just been completed. Now, the question came: we were all there; nobody really had serious financial support. We had no sponsors. So how do we go on? Now, there was a Mrs.--what was her name? I forgot her name.--a singer, who was interested in singing contemporary music. She commissioned The Wine by Berg. You know the aria of this opera? The Wine? Der Wein. You know? Drinking.

Crawford:No, I don't.

Khuner:You don't know? Well, it's one of the few compositions of Berg. She commissioned it. And in order to appease his wife, so she would look away from his affairs, [her husband] founded a concert and opera agency, international, I don't know, called "Ithma." It was specially funded with his money. He was a very wealthy industrialist. He wanted to please his wife, so he founded that in order to promote her career. And because she sang the Second Quartet by Schoenberg, except the fast movement, we studied it with her. To launch her career in foreign countries. She would come with us, she would sing, we had concerts, and the Ithma sponsored it. On a very modest scale. And Schoenberg and Berg also said, "Now we have a young quartet." In contrast to the old string quartet with Rothschild and Stutschewsky, who were always, so to say, a little dragging; there were two young players, a young second violinist, a young viola player, and a cellist who was also younger that Stutschewsky. They said, "We give you the exclusive rights for one year of those two pieces." The Third Quartet by Schoenberg and the Lyric Suite. Now, through the Ithma we got an engagement at the music festival in Frankfurt, that was the big German music festival; and the music festival in Baden Baden. And there we were very successful with the Lyric Suite. We had to repeat it at request. And so we got known through the commercial circuit of string quartets.

Crawford:Were the German audiences more open to contemporary music?

Khuner:Well, in Baden Baden, that was an audience for contemporary music. That was especially--like later on in Donaueschingen.

Crawford:That it was a festival for contemporary music, so people came because they wanted to hear it?

Khuner:Exactly. Well, of course we tried to play Berg, Webern and Schoenberg as much as we could. But there were other composers who also hoped that we would play their quartets.

Crawford:Didn't you have exclusive rights to one of Webern's works? A string trio he wrote?

Khuner:No. Well, Webern knew that the string trio wouldn't be played a lot. Although it was performed here at the university once, with students. Miserable performance.

Crawford:His music was banned in 1933?

Khuner:I'm sure it was--I'm sure it was, yes, but I don't know--Kulturbolshevism.

Crawford:Did that take the form of a statute prohibiting performance?

Khuner:I don't think so. It was just that performers made all the efforts to toe the line. Not to perform contemporary music.

Crawford: Was Berg involved in rehearsals of the Lyric Suite?

Khuner:Oh, ja, Very much. Oh, yes.

Crawford:What are your impressions of him?

Khuner:I don't know! He was the composer of a very important piece of music. I was on very friendly terms with him, but I was a very young man! Berg was a towering figure of contemporary music, and I was a little fiddler who was privileged to play his music!

Crawford:So you don't really have any personal recollections?

Khuner:Oh, I have a lot of recollections of him as a person! But I cannot describe it! Do you know the story of the Jewish tailor who went to Rome to see the Pope? And he comes back, and people say, "Well, you saw the Pope?" "Yes!" "You mean, you went into the same room with the Pope?" "Yes, sure! sure!" "Well, how far away were you?" "Well, about five, six feet, he was standing right in front of me." "Well, what kind a person was he?" "Well, I would say, number five, short!" [Laughter.] You don't know that story? Yes, you know that story!

Crawford:No. Now I do.

Khuner:Well, to the tailor, that was important, number five, short.

Crawford:What is the story about the Lyric Suite; it's supposed code for the name of one of Berg's amours.

Khuner:No, there was only [her] daughter. Her name was Do. And there is in the second movement a repeated C, which is Do in Italian. That is supposed to be the daughter of the girlfriend.

Crawford:Let's talk a little bit more about repertoire now. The Fourth Quartet of Schoenberg was commissioned by Mrs. Coolidge, is that right?

Khuner:I believe so, ja. Well, I think she paid for the concert, for the first performance, which was, I think, at UCLA. I believe so, ja.

Crawford:That was the premiere?

Khuner:That was the first performance, ja. The way I remember it.

Crawford:And how was that received? That was 1937.

Khuner:I didn't pay any attention to that.

Crawford:You never read the criticisms?

Khuner:Occasionally, ja. I collected them and if it seemed that, maybe, some of those things you cut out and put in next year's brochure. As I always say, you get a review and it says, "A first class ensemble!" But the review says, "A first class ensemble they are not!" But the "they are not" you leave out.

Crawford:Quote unquote!

Khuner:Ja!

Crawford:Well, but, on the other hand a good review, sad to say, might mean a re-engagement.

Khuner:Not necessarily. The re-engagement is placed on the impression we make. But the review in the brochure influences the people who don't know us. They go by the lies that we put in the brochure. Like Mr. Norrington's Beethoven symphonies will be bought not because people like it but because they hear about it, they read it in the music magazines.

Crawford:Is that true?

Khuner:Of course. And since few people will read Mr. Lippman's review in the Sunday paper, and many will read the reviews of the great music magazines, a lot of people will buy the recordings. I don't have it. I gave it to Edgar Braun. Well, it's a scathing review. It said that the only word that really described those recordings is "scandalous." With all due respect of the knowledgeability of some of the critics, they are influenced to please the people who pay them money. If a guest conductor is very widely acclaimed somewhere else and he asks a high fee, and you go to those people and say, can we have the $20,000 to get him, he must be good. You just cannot help it.

Crawford:So that it's a business like any--

Khuner:All the time.

Crawford:Did you have first, exclusive rights to any of the Bartok works?

Khuner:No.

Crawford:But you did the premiere of the Fifth Quartet?

Khuner:We did the premiere of the Third and the Fifth. The Third was in Hamburg and the Fifth was in--and the Sixth, too, the Sixth was in New York--and the Fifth was--I don't know.

Crawford:And then Webern also, you played his string works? [Five Movements for String Quartet] Everybody makes much of the fact that you memorized the music in these concerts.

Khuner:Well, I told you how it happened. We happened to be in Berlin, that was in 1927 or 1928, I don't know--and we rehearsed the last movement of Beethoven opus 59, number three, for quartet exercises. We could play it by heart, just because of repetition. We played it by heart for Schoenberg; he was very excited. He said, "That's the way to play quartets." So we did it!

Crawford:So after that, you did it. Did that tax you?

Khuner:What?

Crawford:Did it tax you to learn all the music by heart?

Khuner:No, we didn't learn all the music. We had only one quartet the first season, only that Beethoven quartet. Ja? But during that season we played a lot of the Death and the Maiden by Schubert. So we found out that we almost knew that by heart, by just playing it so many times. So we said, "Next time we'll play that [by memory] too."

Crawford:What are the mechanics of that?

Khuner:To learn by heart? Well, you have to know the music, that's all there is to it.

Crawford:Know the music. But does it free you, then, when in performance?

Khuner:Oh, enormously! Of course!

Crawford:So that the performance is better.

Khuner:First of all, I knew my part well. I could improvise on my own part. Could experiment with a different fingering, and so. Lots of people don't; they play what's written in the music. And I knew the whole quartet much better. I knew every nuance of every other instrument.

Crawford:Yes. Mr. Lehner said so, he said that you could cover for the other instruments.

Khuner:Ja, if somebody missed a note, I could play it, sure, naturally! I can do it in every opera.

Crawford:Because you're listening to it--

Khuner:Because I hear what's going on.

Crawford:So if somebody loses their way, you can pick it up?

Khuner:No. People play with the exclusion of their ear. They are taught from the beginning to play with their fingers.

Crawford:And their eyes.

Khuner:First comes the ear, then come the fingers. Ja? As I always say, I write down for you CAT, and say, "What is that?" They say, "Well, the C I do by putting my tongue up there, and the A I say by doing this, and T is--CAT? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it!" No, you don't speak like that. You know the sound, and how you produce it before you announce it.

Crawford:Mr. Lehner said that you played in cold blood, no mistakes.

Khuner:Very few mistakes. No reason to make a mistake. Did you ever go in your bathroom instead of your bedroom? I'm always asked about those things--things that you want to learn you can learn. People don't want to learn. Maybe I'm specially talented for learning, or all my colleagues couldn't learn.

Crawford:But isn't it true of musicianship that you either have a very, very refined ear or you don't?

Khuner:People generally become performing musicians because they have good fingers!

Crawford:That's what I'm saying.

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:Not everybody has a good ear, a great ear.

Khuner:Well, I believe the ear can be trained. If you want to have something to do with music, train your ear. Mostly the ears of players are good enough to play the instrument. If you are completely at bay about rhythm or pitch or quality of sound, or distinguishing dynamics, you won't get any place. I mean, in a couple of years, you quit right there, like most of my pupils do!

Crawford:What was the significance of the quartet, musically, in the 1920s, say?

Khuner:Well, it was that we played differently than the run-of-the-mill quartets. At that time.

Crawford:Was anybody else specializing in the Second Viennese School?

Khuner:No, no. Well, the Ros‚ Quartet was interested in Schoenberg, because when the Ros‚ Quartet played the first Schoenberg quartets and the Sextet, Schoenberg was a very young man. And Ros‚ was a decent musician, a good violin player. The quartet was a good quartet, as far as I remember, and they played it. I think Ros‚ made them play it. It was against Mr. Fischer and Mr Rugiska. I have a little quotation that I found in the Reader's Digest. It says, "If you call on a thoroughbred he gives you all the speed, strength of heart, and sinew in him. If you call on a jackass, he kicks." I see it in my pupils. I have some pupils, a right number, who really work, and try and try. And some other ones who when you ask them to do something say, "Oh, what for? I don't think I can." Jackasses! Now, for instance, these two members of the Ros‚ Quartet are the ones who kicked about everything. But Ros‚ was not, Ros‚ was a thoroughbred.

Crawford:What was the meaning of Wozzeck to you--to that generation?

Khuner:Well, you see, I knew Wozzeck, I knew B chner, ja?

Crawford:The playwright.

Khuner:The playwright. I knew B chner very well, because I was, so to say, specializing in German romantic literature. And B chner was a real Communist. B chner was one of those that we admired. So I knew the play. And then when I heard that Berg had composed an opera, I was very interested. And I heard the performance in Vienna. I think it was a bad performance.

Crawford:By the Staatsoper?

Khuner:By the Staatsoper, yes.

Crawford:And what was the reaction?

Khuner:Well, I don't--what do you mean by reaction? You think that I should say, "Oh, it's just as beautiful as Butterfly?" Oh, no.

Crawford:No! But more provocative!

Khuner:Well, of course! It was that thing that we looked up to, that we admired, and that we studied.

Crawford:But not by the general population.

Khuner:Of course not! No. When we played Wozzeck here, I remember afterwards I was walking up to my car, and a group of opera goers saw me with my violin and said, "Did you play the opera?" I said, "Yes." They said, "Do you like this stuff that you play?" And I said, "Yes I do!" They said, "[Does] all the orchestra?" I said, "No, only I!" That was the first time we played Wozzeck here [1960].

Crawford:Mr. Adler had wanted to do Wozzeck for years, and [Robert Watt] Miller said no.

Khuner:Of course.

Crawford:Like the Lulu.

Khuner:Ja. Much more than Lulu! Wozzeck is much simpler than Lulu. It's a much simpler piece than Lulu. According to Jonathan, Lulu is a much finer work, but I prefer Wozzeck!

Crawford:So, really, the Kolisch was the standout in terms of a balanced repertoire, and trying the challenging new works.

Khuner:Ja. But of course we played the old repertoire also, slightly different. First of all, we played in the Beethoven quartets the real tempi. In Europe, especially in Vienna, where a lot of amateur music was going on, the amateur musicians played everything slow in the fast movement and fast in the slow movement. Everything was equalized, no character. Just play, try to get the notes! So when we played in different tempo than the amateurs, they said, "Well, that's wrong, we play it differently." There was this incident in Paris when we played opus ninety-five of Beethoven. That the piano teacher in the balcony shouted, "Tout est trop vite!" Everything is too fast. Very loud, after the performance! There was some applause, and when the applause died down, he shouted, "Tout est trop vite!"

Crawford:C'est trop vite!

Khuner:Ja.

Crawford:How did the critics respond to what you were trying to do?

Khuner:I don't know.

Crawford:You don't--you didn't care?

Khuner:I don't care. No. Sometimes they were a little knowledgeable, sometimes stupid, sometimes non-descript--who cares? The only thing that we were interested in was, can you take an excerpt and put it in your next brochure. Like everybody else did. It doesn't make any sense. It's silly.

Composers and the Quartet

Crawford:Tell me now more about the participation of the composers with the Quartet in the 1920s.

Khuner:I would say, they always said, "An excellent string quartet they are not," but the "they are not" you leave out!

Crawford:What was the extent of Schoenberg, and Berg, and all the composers' involvement with you, with the quartet?

Khuner:Well, Berg and Schoenberg were, of course, friends. There was an almost continuous correspondence. Not very frequently, but every few months we would hear from them. If we didn't hear from them, Kolisch wrote letters. Sometimes months went by and we didn't know what they were doing.

Crawford:But did they come in to rehearsals?

Khuner:Whenever possible. When we were in Vienna, Schoenberg would be there wherever we were. When we, in 1931, spent the summer in Holland, Schoenberg was there, also on vacation. I told you.

Crawford:The entire summer?

Khuner:Yes.

Crawford:What was he like as a personality?

Khuner:Well, I don't know, actually. He's one of my dearest friends, so I cannot tell. I cannot tell. Everybody complained that he was, I don't know--

Thoughts About Audiences

Crawford:Let me go back and ask you to amplify some questions. First, what was the muscial impact of the quartet.

Khuner:The influence, the impact of the Kolisch Quartet was small on a small segment of the consuming public. We never had the engagements, continuing engagements of the big societies in whatever it was, in Mannheim, or Frankfurt, or K"ln [Cologne]. Occasionally we had it. But [usually] we didn't. Because there were other quartets who specialized in Borodin and Smetana, and were much more successful.

Crawford:Because the music was more accessible.

Khuner:Ja. Ja.

Crawford:Which ones?

Khuner:Oh, the Dresdener Quartet, and the Guarneri Quartet, and maybe also the Ros‚ Quartet. And they played much smoother. They eliminated everything of interest in the performance in order to get the most pleasant performance, the most even performance, the most uncontroversial performance. I always give as an example the following thing: When we played in the Pops season with Mr. Fiedler, we would play a waltz or a polka, and he encouraged the people to clap. They clapped very happily. And he made a little ritenuto; their faces fell, they didn't know what happened. Generally all this is, as long as it goes smooth, absolutely nothing happens, it's beautiful. If something interesting musical happens, they are disturbed. It's true generally, everywhere, with practically every audience. With few exceptions. And when I judge a performer, most of the performers emphasize the ordinary, the things that you know anyhow. The ritenuto at the end, the accent on the tonic. Everybody expects it in that way. Anything that is interesting is eliminated, or played down.

Crawford:But this was not true of the Kolisch Quartet?

Khuner:We did the opposite. We emphasized the interesting things, the ones that the music really is about. Not the packaging. Every music has packaging and the stuff that's inside the package. And what's inside the package is the interesting thing. The packaging is necessary, it makes the piece. But as I said before, people play the packaging and forget the contents.

Crawford:And this approach you all agreed on.

Khuner:That you have to have all the time, even in a little Haydn minuet.

Crawford:Is there a string quartet like that today?

Khuner:I don't know, I don't listen to them. They are all very good; as long as I don't listen to them, they are very good. The Guarneri, I had one experience; that was sufficient for me. One of my friends in San Francisco, with whom I play occasionally, not now, any more, because she's very sick--she says, "I would like to play a Dvorak quartet." I say, "All right, I don't know it, but we'll play it." So I was there about half an hour before we were supposed to play, and she says, "Well, we play the Dvorak quartet, I have a recording of it with the Guarneri quartet. I also have a score." So I said, "Well, let me [go] through it. Since I don't know the quartet, I might get acquainted with it." So she gave me the score, and I listened to the recording. The same thing. Everything that was interesting was not audible. Every important change of tempo, and change of character was not there. The notes were all there.

Crawford:Is th