Suzanne Rosza, violinist key to the founding of the Amadeus Quartet has diedThursday, November 17, 2005 |
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by Anne Inglis Suzanne Rosza, who has died aged 82, was a fine violinist in her own right, as well as being instrumental in the formation of the Amadeus Quartet. She was part of the vibrant ÈmigrÈ community of musicians during and after the second world war, when today's household names were starting out. She met her husband, the cellist Martin Lovett, during their time as students at the Royal College of Music (RCM), London. It was at a refugee amateur's house where, through Susi, Martin met the violinist Norbert Brainin (obituary, April 11) and fell in love with his playing. Norbert knew Siegmund Nissel (violin) and Peter Schidlof (viola) from internment; with Martin, they went on to form the Amadeus Quartet, giving their first concerts in 1947. Susi was quite up to this level, but the extraordinary chemistry between the Amadeus members carried its own momentum, and there was never any question that she would join the ensemble. In years to come, she helped out as second violin when Nissel was ill. Born in Budapest, she started the violin at five, and when the family moved to Vienna in the early 1930s, studied at the Vienna Akademie with Ernst Moravec, principal viola of the Vienna Philharmonic. At 14, the much coveted Kreisler prize was hers, but soon afterwards the Anschluss brought the uncomfortable communication that her "services were no longer required". Susi and her mother came to Britain, where she learned with the great teacher Carl Flesch. He left for Holland, and she then studied with Isolde Menges at the RCM and with Max Rostal at the Guildhall - the Rostal "stable" also including Brainin, Nissel and Schidlof.Susi won the Guildhall's gold medal, and was subsequently made a fellow and became a professor there. Innovative and dedicated as a teacher, she carried on with lessons regardless of time constrictions, and was one of the first to use video as a teaching aid for violinists, giving her students possibly uncomfortable perspectives on their playing. At home, it was not unknown for there to be a student downstairs while she lay in the bath upstairs, banging on the floor every time she felt they were not practising well enough. She also led the London Polish Quartet and broadcast many times, often with the pianist Paul Hamburger as a sonata partner. She was a founder member of the English Chamber Orchestra, played in the Bath Festival Orchestra under Yehudi Menuhin, and in numerous first performances of Britten operas, including The Turn of the Screw and Albert Herring, at the Aldeburgh festival. She formed the Dumka Trio with Liza Fuchsova and Vivian Joseph, recording all of Dvorak's piano trios.Gregarious and sociable, Susi was stimulating company and never dull. I once spent an extraordinary two days travelling round northern Italy on the way to Cremona with her in a camper van. It was a stream of fascinating, warm anecdotes about Britten, the quartet - for whose 40th birthday she compiled a wonderful book, in aid of the Amadeus scholarship fund - musicians in her circle, and her family, whom she adored. But she loved performing, whether talking or playing to an audience. Her son Peter tells how he took his mother to Budapest a few years ago. At a party, with a Gypsy band, "Suddenly, she took hold of one of the violins, and this plump, elderly lady, who wasn't so steady on her feet, played two perfect Gypsy tunes with the band, with a free and youthful energy." She leaves her husband, son and daughter Sonia.
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