Editing Budapest String Quartet (section)

===Mischa Schneider – cellist===

The new cellist was originally named Mojzesz Sznejder, later Germanized as '[[Mischa Schneider]]'. Born in 1904 in Vilna, [[Russia]] (though some place it in Poland at that time) (now [[Vilnius]], [[Lithuania]]), where celebrated violin virtuoso Jascha Heifetz was born in 1901, he had a difficult upbringing. The family had little money, and his father was a tyrant. Mischa often found himself defending his younger brother Sasha against their father. In 1920, at the age of 16, Mischa left home to study in [[Leipzig]] under [[Julius Klengel]], his teacher's eminent teacher. Fellow students included [[Emanuel Feuermann]], [[Gregor Piatigorsky]] and Jascha's cousin [[Benar Heifetz]]. After graduating he moved to [[Frankfurt]], where he taught at the [[Hoch Conservatory]]. He found that he suffered from stage fright when playing solo, a problem that did not exist when playing in a quartet. He joined the [[Prisca Quartet]], but resigned after a while due to a personality clash with two of the other members. The Prisca had often played in [[Cologne]] and there he got to know the Reifenbergs, whose daughter Eva had married [[Emanuel Feuermann]]. It was Frau Reifenberg who introduced Schneider to the Budapest Quartet.<ref>Brandt pp 42&ndash;53</ref>