THE MORE THE MERRIER

ALINE PALEY

This may get the gong for left-field analogies with which to open a French issue cover interview, but here goes. Back in the early 1990s there was a hugely successful British TV programme called Challenge Anneka, which every Saturday night saw its indefatigably bouncy Lycra-clad presenter handed a whopper challenge – restore a steam railway, transform a rubbish tip into a children’s playground – that had to be completed within mere days. Extra tension came from the fact that she didn’t always make it. Back to the Modigliani Quartet, and it was feeling distinctly Challenge Anneka-ish, albeit minus the Lycra, in the September of Covid-wrecked 2020 as their manager and I determinedly raced to make an in-person interview happen. I also had to attend a live concert, even as quarantine restrictions slammed down between France and the UK, and Europe shut down for the virus’s second wave.

Success was by no means certain. So imagine the sweetness of finally sitting down together in a Bremen hotel foyer on the afternoon of the quartet’s season-opening concert. This was to be Schubert’s String Quintet with Tanja Tetzlaff as extra cellist, preceded by Mozart’s Divertimento in F, performed to just 200 people dotted around Die Glocke’s capacious 1,400-seat space, with no interval.

‘I don’t remember exactly what the original programme was before we had to shorten it,’ says first violinist Amaury Coeytaux, our conversation beginning naturally with the fluid nature of concert planning during times of pandemic. ‘It was the Schubert Quintet and some more Schubert. So we had to find a contrast to this amazing and huge piece that is so emotional, and even though the Mozart is only ten minutes long, so much happens. It’s just pure magic.’

There’s more Mozart: the ‘Dissonance’ Quartet in C major, on the quartet’s new album, along with Haydn’s ‘Fifths’ Quartet in D minor op.76 no.2 and Bartók’s String Quartet no.3. Perhaps here there’s also been some magic at play, because entirely accidentally – though it is to be hoped appropriately for 2021 – the linking theme is one of rebirth. ‘We chose them because they’re pure beauty and masterpieces,’ begins Coeytaux. ‘Then we realised that they all represented a renaissance and a kind of new liberty for each of their composers: Mozart wrote the “Dissonance” when he was inspired to write a little differently having rediscovered Bach; Haydn’s “Fifths” Quartet was written when he signed the new contract with Esterházy that finally freed him, and you can hear that he’s not writing for anyone, that it’s his music; then Bartók’s quartet, which was written after a two-year break from composing.’

JÉROME BONNET

As the evening’s concert hints, though, it’s Schubert who is most present across the Modigliani’s current programming. Their release of the Octet came out in September, recorded with Sabine Meyer (clarinet), Dag Jensen (bassoon), Bruno Schneider (horn) and Knut Erik Sundquist (double bass). Back in the summer, meanwhile, they opened their second to last edition as artistic directors of Rencontres Musicales d’Évian, the Swiss festival they have headed since 2014, with the Schubert Quintet featuring Gautier Capuçon, and the ‘Trout’ Piano Quintet with pianist Bertrand Chamayou and double bassist Yann Dubost. All this leads up to a Schubert focus for the 2021–2 season in honour of the 225th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Plans include the curation of their own Schubertiade with a singer and a pianist, complete quartet cycles (including at Hohenems and Schwarzenberg in Austria) and a tour of the late works.

‘It is music that drives us almost crazy, because it has such honesty in every note,’ muses Coeytaux. ‘Even in rehearsal you feel you have to try to raise yourself to that level, almost to redeem yourself. His last works are such masterpieces and so architecturally advanced that we forget that he was only around 30 when he wrote them. Every time we play them it’s a real journey both for the audience and for us.’

It’s also a body of chamber music that feels perfect for a quartet that collaborates with others almost as regularly as it plays as a foursome. ‘We see playing with others as a base, and as an important means of nourishment,’ says cellist François Kieffer. Although, as violist Laurent Marfaing adds, these partnerships have to be with musicians who really want to share the music with them, rather than appearing as the invited soloist. ‘You can play with beautiful musicians, but sometimes they aren’t so happy to go with your sound,’ he points out. ‘If that happens, we do one concert with them and that’s it.’

Performing Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ at Barcelona String Quartet Biennale on 19 September 2020

ARNAU ROVIRA

‘YOU CAN PLAY WITH BEAUTIFUL MUSICIANS, BUT SOMETIMES THEY AREN’T HAPPY TO GO WITH YOUR SOUND. IF THAT HAPPENS, WE DO ONE CONCERT WITH THEM AND THAT’S IT’ – VIOLIST LAURENT MARFAING

Not that they’re asking for identical interpretations from different guests. ‘We’re also looking forward to feeling the different sensibilities the various extra Schubert players bring,’ adds second violinist Loic Rio. ‘As I don’t play in the “Trout” Quintet I can be a privileged listener, and it’s really interesting to watch the others playing with pianists who are different from each other.’

Back to the beginning, and the quartet was born in 2003 when Rio and Kieffer were thrown together in a one-off chamber formation at the Paris Conservatoire. Sensing chemistry, they approached their initial first violinist, Philippe Bernhard (who remained with them for 14 years), as someone with whom Kieffer had equally clicked. Bernhard then brought in Marfaing, his friend since high school in Toulouse.

Initial coaching was with pianist Daria Horova. ‘She listened to us as a quartet, but she also had us playing many piano quintets,’ says Rio. ‘For example, we discovered the Vierne Piano Quintet with her, and the Franck. When you’re a student, you want to play the most famous works, like the Brahms, rather than losing time on less famous ones, yet this grounding in such French repertoire, and the French tradition, was great for us, and she had great experience in it.’ Things moved fast. After just three months they asked Ysaye Quartet violist Miguel da Silva to hear them, which led to two years of lessons, working with each Ysaye member.

‘They were the first teachers to explain that we had to find an aesthetic for each composer,’ remembers Rio. ‘The last Haydn quartet and the first Beethoven quartet were composed at around the same time, but they are two different composers. At the age of 20, though, I was thinking of things almost like they were part of a table, with forte played like this, and subito like this… But no, we have to differentiate, then speak together and find our sound.’

Another vital element to complement the coaching they received was the players’ undivided attention. ‘When you decide to pursue chamber music, you need to give all your energy at the beginning,’ Rio continues, ‘and for that we decided to stop all our other activities – such as playing in orchestras to pay the rent, or whatever. I was teaching and I stopped. We said, “Let’s do it for one year and see how it goes.”‘

How it went was very well. Just the following year, they won not only first prize at the 2004 Tromp international competition, Eindhoven, but also its audience and contemporary prizes. ‘As a young string quartet at your firstcompetition, you don’t believe you will win it straight!’ says Rio. Engagements at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and at the Louvre Auditorium in Paris followed. Equally important, though, were the non-ritzy venues. ‘I think the first big step to making us a real string quartet was playing a lot of concerts,’ says Marfaing. ‘That second year, we did a big tour of France through the Jeunesses Musicales de France, playing to schoolchildren. Of course, this was for very little money, but it meant that we were regularly performing on stage – in fact, over two years we did at least sixty concerts, which is huge for a young quartet.’

The next year, 2005, brought an invitation to study with the Artemis Quartet at Berlin’s University of the Arts. ‘They performed the Beethoven cycle in Paris, and we went backstage and asked if we could play for them,’ says Rio. ‘We had masterclasses with big masters such as Siegmund Nissel from the Amadeus Quartet and Günter Pichler from the Alban Berg Quartet, also with the Hagen Quartet, but the Artemis was much closer to us in terms of age. With them it was more interactive; less theoretical, based more around playing. One key lesson they taught us was fidelity to the score. We would perhaps play something according to tradition, or how we felt it should be played, and they’d point to the score and ask us why we were playing like that when it’s not what is written.’

They were also applying to take part in more competitions. In 2006 they took joint first place at the Young Concert Artists auditions in New York, leading to their first US tour and their Carnegie Hall debut. In 2008, they signed with their current record label, Mirare, and won the Grand Prix du Disque from the Académie Charles Cros for their first disc (Haydn) with the label. They have now released more than ten albums with them.

Then 2010 brought the loan of the instruments still played by the three original members: a 1780 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin, a 1660 viola by Luigi Mariani and a 1706 cello by Matteo Gofriller; Coeytaux plays a 1773 Guadagnini. In 2011 they dipped first toes in the waters of artistic direction, founding the Festival de St-Paul de Vence, in 2012 they were named ECHO (European Concert Hall Organisation) Rising Stars, and with 2014 came the artistic directorship of the aforementioned Rencontres Musicales d’Évian.

Then, in 2016, the quartet suddenly needed a violinist to cover for Bernhard for a week. So, enter Coeytaux, who had also been at the Paris Conservatoire but had subsequently moved to study in America with Pinchas Zukerman, and was by this point concertmaster of the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra. ‘We knew each other from the conservatoire, and sometimes we met in concerts,’ explains Rio. ‘So when we needed cover for Philippe, we thought, “Well, he’s one of the best French violinists, and we are not the worst string quartet…”‘ Cue laughter.

‘He learnt all the Schumann quartets in two or three days for us, and tried to enter into our sound,’ continues Kieffer, ‘meaning it was so natural to call him when we needed a permanent replacement.’ Just as taken with them, Coeytaux joined just in time for them to become the first string quartet to play at Hamburg’s newly built Elbphilharmonie in March 2017, and to begin teaching masterclasses at the Paris Conservatoire in 2018. Indeed, for him the timing felt perfect in every regard. ‘If we had started playing together right away, when the quartet had just been founded, then I wouldn’t have gone on to live all those other different lives,’ he points out. ‘I have worked with amazing conductors and soloists, learnt the language and approach of a different country – and today those are memories and backgrounds that we are trying to incorporate into our playing.’ To this Marfaing quips, ‘And we’re very happy he enjoyed everything, because now he’s stuck with the quartet until the end!’ More laughter.

They really are using that orchestral experience, too. For instance, a recent development at Rencontres Musicales d’Évian has been to bring together the young ensembles of its ‘Atelier’ or chamber academy to form a chamber orchestra, led by Coeytaux, in which they use the interpretational points they’ve been working on in string quartet rehearsals. They now plan to develop this further in their education work beyond Évian, not least because this method – whereby an orchestra is broken down into small groups more often than meeting as a whole – feels like a good one for as long as social distancing requirements are still with us.

MARIE STAGGAT

‘LOCKDOWN WAS ACTUALLY A LOT OF WORK. WE FELT THAT WE COULDN’T STAY STILL FOR TWO OR THREE MONTHS’ – VIOLINIST AMAURY COEYTAUX

Which brings us back to 2020, when the various strings to this quartet’s bow made for a busy life even during two months of separation necessitated by the March lockdown. On the playing front, they reunited virtually with their Schubert Octet recording partners to record an album teaser from their respective homes. Meanwhile, with their artistic director hats on, they were reimagining Rencontres Musicales d’Évian as a smaller, virtual festival to be broadcast on radio and medici.tv, although eventually the Swiss Covid measures relaxed enough for a small audience to be possible.

Smaller didn’t mean less artistically ambitious, though, because highlights beyond the aforementioned Schubert concert included a new ballet staging of Ravel’s String Quartet, created with former Paris Opera ballerina Agnes Letestu, dancer and choreographer Florent Melac and stage designer Jeremy Demester. ‘Lockdown was actually a lot of work,’ chuckles Coeytaux. ‘We felt, for the sake of our agents, that we couldn’t just stay still for two or three months and say that everything would get back to normal. Th at’s why we were trying to find new ways to perform.’

They also joined with other artists including the Ébene and Diotima quartets and pianist David Fray to publish an open letter to the French government highlighting the plight of independent musicians who didn’t qualify for state salary compensation owing to the fact that they performed in multiple countries. The government responded with the creation of a fund. Then the Île-de-France authorities approached them with a view to creating something more, and the quartet responded by joining with Fray, plus violist Gérard Caussé and stage director Jean-Paul Scarpitta, aided by private partners, to create Concerts au Potagers du Roi: a 20-concert outdoor festival in the Versailles kitchen gardens featuring 70 rising and established musicians, many of whom hadn’t performed since lockdown – from the Arod Quartet and cellist Bruno Philippe, to violinist Renaud Capuçon and pianist Nicholas Angelich. All of it was organised from scratch in just weeks, with no availability issues. ‘It was interesting,’ comments Rio. ‘Usually, we know what we will be playing in two years’ time, whereas I don’t even know what I want to eat at the restaurant tonight! So equally with this coming season, with all the big planned projects that will be cancelled, it’s about how we can react quickly and say, “But today everything is possible, so we can play a Schubert quintet tonight and it will be great.”‘ ‘Great’ is also the word for their future non-Schubert plans.

And as I write now with vaccines on the horizon, it feels hopeful much of it will happen. Since the interview they’ve premiered Split Apart, a quartet written for them by Mark-Anthony Turnage, in Madrid, and this month they take it to the Concertgebouw. Album-wise, it’s back to collaborations, recording Tchaikovsky’s sextet Souvenir de Florence with violist and cellist siblings Veronika and Clemens Hagen alongside the composer’s String Quartet no.3. Most notably of all, this May sees the relaunch of the triennial Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition, newly under their artistic direction. This will be the main focus for them going forwards, meaning they’re thinking big, with accompanying festivals for both competition and ‘off ‘ years. They plan to grow the previous ‘off ‘ years masterclass programme by having participants perform concerts in the region, and to work with the Artemis Quartet and a musicologist on how string quartet performance can be combined with different art forms.

Back to Bremen, though, and at the concert that night, never has the Mozart sounded purer, or the Schubert more achingly bittersweet. As 200 pairs of hands and legs thunder their applause, I can’t help thinking of Coeytaux’s parting words as we leave that hotel foyer, squirting the hand gel as we go: ‘The main thing for me is that we can tell that the public is waiting for us to be back on stage, and that’s an amazing feeling.’ Too right.

WIN THE MODIGLIANI QUARTET’S NEW ALBUM

The Modigliani Quartet’s new recording of Haydn, Bartók and Mozart is released by Mirare in January. To win one of ten copies, submit your details at bit.ly/2KdIXeP Closing date 31 March 2021