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“His technical command of his noble instrument is infallible, his tone full and pure and his style free and genial, like his personality. It is said that he has more friends than any other musicians that have lived in the United States for any length of time, and he is affectionately known across the breadth of this country as “Papa” Schroeder. His loss to the Kneisel Quartet will be irreparable, but he will return again and again to this country for concert tours.”Alwin Schroeder spent the 1907-8 season in Europe, then returned to the United States. This was not his original plan. What happened? Before getting to the reasons that he came back, I will explore the motivations for his decision to leave the US.
Indianapolis News, April 6,1907, p. 9
First, some context. The preceding season (1906-7) was Alwin’s 16th year as the cellist of the Kniesel Quartet. This ensemble was then at the apex of its powers and popularity, and was hailed in many quarters as the best quartet in the world. Season after season, Schroeder had been heard regularly in solo performances on the quartet’s concert tours throughout the US. But for the four transplanted European musicians, there had always been a longing to return to the old world, to be remembered and recognized on their old stomping grounds before their powers waned. They said as much in 1903, when they resigned their principal positions in the Boston Symphony Orchestra to devote themselves to quartet and, in the case of Kniesel and Schroeder, solo playing. Four years later, the quartet’s many admirers were “astonished” to learn that Schroeder was leaving the quartet and the country to settle in Frankfurt, Germany. Why would he want—or feel he needed—to go?....
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Read on…on the Alwinac website itself…..
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