A 1959 New Yorker profile captured the inspired risk-taking and raw creative spark of a Budapest String Quartet rehearsal: "Sasha leaped from his chair and with violin held aloft, played the passage with exaggerated schmalz, like a street fiddler in Naples. Kroyt...stopped playing and started singing a Russian song....Mischa Schneider thereupon performed a number of stupendous triads on his cello....Only Roisman went quietly on with his part, untouched by the pandemonium around him, playing Beethoven with his noble tone and elegant bowing." Here were four men with personalities as varied as their ways of playing. Yet when they played, they produced a perfect union of instrumental voices and interpretive nuances that not only created an entirely new audience for chamber music in America but also made the Budapest String Quartet the premier chamber music group of the twentieth century.

The eight chapters of Understanding Boccherini’s Manuscripts discuss various aspects of the study of the manuscript sources for the music of Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805), one of the foremost composers of the second half of the eighteenth century. This book begins by outlining the various types that can be distinguished among the manuscripts written by the composer himself or by his copyists, such as manuscripts for archival purposes, for publishers and for patrons. Germán Labrador continues with a discussion of the chronology of both Boccherini’s works and their manuscript sources, and Loukia Drosopoulou describes the musical handwriting that we find in the manuscripts under discussion. Boccherini produced several catalogues of his works of which some are lost, while others have been preserved. Marco Mangani and Federica Rovelli review these documents. The second half of this book addresses more specific topics. Giulio Battelli pays attention to a recent addition to Boccherini’s known oeuvre, the Laudate pueri, a very early work, preserved in the library of the Istituto Musical in Lucca. Rupert Ridgewell deals with the relations between Boccherini and the Viennese publishing house Artaria. Matanya Ophee considers the sources for Boccherini’s Guitar Quintets recently come available, and, finally, Jaime Tortella comments upon some letters to the nineteenth-century collector Julian Marshall – one of them by Alfredo Boccherini, a great-grandson of the composer – that shed light on the adventures of Boccherini’s manuscripts in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, a common bibliography following all the chapters is supplied, as are extensive indexes. In addition to regular indexes of subjects and names, indexes covering letters cited, catalogues, manuscript sources, early editions, and Boccherini’s works are also provided. As such, this book is an altogether indispensable tool for everybody with a scholarly interest in the life and work of Luigi Boccherini, and a splendid model for similar work on other composers.

Within his broad historical narrative Professor Smallman provides descriptive analyses of key works, many with music examples, and also comments perceptively on local trends and developments.

-- Music Educators Journal