influence. In Boston Mr.
Bernhard Listemann, some twenty years ago, established a quartet which
gave some very delightful concerts, but the past decade has witnessed
the rise of an organisation which is able to bear comparison with any
quartet in the world.

The Kneisel Quartet was organised in 1885, the year in which Mr. Franz
Kneisel accepted the position of concert-master to the Boston Symphony
Orchestra. Mr. Henry L. Higginson invited him at the same time to
organise a quartet, and a series of concerts was given that season in
Chickering Hall. While the excellence of the quartet was apparent from
the start, there were comparatively few people in Boston who took much
interest in chamber music, and the audiences were, as a rule, small.
Year by year they have increased, and for the past few years it has been
necessary to give the concerts in Association Hall, which has a seating
capacity about twice as large as that of the original hall.

The second violin is Mr. Otto Roth,[2] a native of Vienna, who played
for three years under the baton of Hans Richter, and came to Boston to
play first violin in the Symphony Orchestra.

[Footnote 2: Mr. Roth retired from the quartet in 1899 and his place
was filled by Mr. Karl Ondricek.]

Mr. Louis Svecenski, an excellent artist, who studied in the Vienna
Conservatory, under Hellmesberger and Gruen, plays the viola, and the
'cellist is Alwyn Schroeder, an artist, who had achieved a high
reputation as a 'cello virtuoso, before he came to America.

After a few years the Kneisel Quartet began to appear in other
cities, and now gives regular series of subscription concerts in New
York, Washington, Baltimore, Hartford, and Worcester, also Harvard,
Yale, and Princeton Universities, besides occasional performances in
more remote cities. In 1896 the quartet had given over eight hundred
concerts since its formation.

[Illustration: FRANZ KNEISEL]

At the end of the Symphony season in Boston, in 1896, the Kneisel
Quartet made a visit to London and gave several concerts. In London it
was obliged to stand comparison with the finest quartets in existence.
The Joachim Quartet and the Bohemian Quartet gave concerts the same
season, but the unanimous verdict was to the effect that none could
equal the Kneisel Quartet in absolute ensemble and perfection of detail.
While the Bohemian Quartet played with a great deal of abandon and
enthusiasm, and the Joachim Quartet contained players of a grea