‘Music is part of our existence, even under shell-fire’: String players of the Great War

Fritz Kreisler was at the height of his fame when war broke out in 1914. He and his wife Harriet were taking a cure at a Swiss spa when on 31 July they read in a newspaper that his old regiment had been mobilised. Although he had resigned his reserve commission two years previously, Kreisler set off at once for Vienna to report for duty and discovered he was being called up anyway…