From Joe Monzo on Kolisch's tuning

"> [Daniel Wolf, TD 541.12]
> for playing Schoenberg's twelve-tone music, music quite
> conciously built around properties of 12tet, violinist
> Rudolph Kolisch insisted on tuning his a to the piano and
> then proceed to tune the g, d, and e to the piano as well,
> insuring that the fifths matched the tempered keyboard.

In a telephone conversation with Ben Johnston, Ben told me
an anecdote related by Peter Yates, who was present at a
rehearsal of a Schoenberg quartet with Schoenberg and the
Kolisch Quartet.

It was Schoenberg himself (at this rehearsal) who spent hours
meticulously tuning the strings to the (presumed) 12-EDO of
the piano and subsequently working on their intonation from
the piano as they fingered the stopped notes.

Yate's whole point in recounting the episode was to emphasize
the unusual sound of the music with the strings so tuned,
saying that it cast 'a kind of grey patina around the music'.

I used to own the CD set of the Kolisch playing Schoenberg,
and can attest to the different sound, compared to the LaSalle
and other quartets I've heard play his music. To my ears,
the Kolisch performances are the definitive ones for this
repertoire (despite the old mono sound).

-monz"