IN GOOD TIME

The Engegård Quartet’s third album of Mozart string quartets was all about timing – from allowing enough space between learning and recording the works, to faithfully honouring the composer’s tempo markings – as Andrew Mellor discovers

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here were no winners during the pandemic last summer, but chamber musicians in Scandinavia were among the lucky ones. Long obsessed with chamber music, the region saw performances with audiences resume in June while travel bans continued to effectively close borders. Festivals looked to domestic ensembles to fill the gaps, among them the Engegård Quartet, which had seen its own tour to South America evaporate.

And so it was, in relative terms, a fruitful summer for the Oslo ensemble. Its annual 1-2-3 Festival went ahead with pianist Olli Mustonen as guest artist, and in June it mustered at Sofienberg Church in Oslo’s east end to record the third instalment in its eight-disc survey of Mozart’s works for string quartet. The wide building, without the wraparound gallery ubiquitous in Scandinavian churches, has a reputable acoustic: ‘lovely and natural, not too boomy,’ says the Engegård Quartet’s violist Juliet Jopling.

The broad yet intimate sound styling that has been noted in the cycle’s previous volumes is down to producer Vegård Landaas, producer and boss of the Norwegian label LAWO. ‘Vegård and Thomas [Wolden, sound technician] are passionate and idealistic, and mic so that you really hear everything. They have a very interesting way of thinking about sound,’ says Jopling. ‘On projects like this, Vegård feels like part of the quartet.’

That ensemble, inaugurated on the Lofoten Islands in 2006 but based in Oslo, is on the eve of its 15th birthday. ‘We have had some changes, but since Alex [Robson, second violin] and Jan Clemens [Carlsen, cello] came in, we’ve got closer to where we want to be than ever before,’ says Jopling. ‘It took a while to make space for each other and find our balance but now we really move together, rather than following.

That balance is absolutely vital.’

Particularly in Mozart, to which the Engegård’s tight blend and Ravelian lightness seems particularly well suited. Has the music itself nurtured the ensemble’s sense of togetherness? ‘It’s certainly great for having to lose an idea of oneself and agree on something joint, something mutual,’ says Jopling. ‘A successful performance is completely dependent on everyone having a complete understanding of all the minute little details; the colours and phrasings that we’ve worked through.’

Yet detail is also a potential stumbling block in Mozart, with a good number of performances straying over the line that might separate the poetic from the pedantic. ‘Yes that’s right, and that’s a good principle to keep in mind,’ says Jopling. ‘In the past we’ve got our knickers in an awful twist with regard to metronome marks, all the little expressions, and always wanting to bring out the motifs on which the music is built. These are things you just need to do but it’s awful if you hear yourselves back and realise that it’s all just way too obvious.’

One solution is time. The ensemble worked towards a concert performance of Mozart’s K387, K464 and K458, the contents of the new recording, six months before the sessions; the interpretations were then left to marinate for half a year before they played them for the microphones. ‘You want enough time to go through these processes, to respect the composer’s wishes, to understand the use of dynamics and metronome marks and all the rest of it, and then enough time to forget all about it all so you can feel it in the moment,’ says Jopling.

‘A SUCCESSFUL PERFORMANCE IS DEPENDENT ON EVERYONE HAVING A COMPLETE UNDERSTANDING OF ALL THE MINUTE LITTLE DETAILS’ 

The Engegård Quartet records Mozart at Sofienberg Church, Oslo, in May 2020

AUDUN NEDRELID/ ESPEN NORDERUD

The subject of tempo is pertinent to the long, complex variation movement of K464. Surely it needs to be felt rather than pre-set? ‘We work from our own approximate metronome mark, and we do check everything against it regularly,’ says Jopling. ‘I think we went through a phase when that sort of thing took up too much of our time, and we perhaps followed a metronome mark too zealously. Now it’s more of a framework. It’s a helpful tool and stops bad habits creeping in, as long as you eventually put it aside and just make music.’

This more introspective, profound quartet was apparently the ‘most fun’ to play and record. Less well known, it has also been among the biggest discoveries in the group’s journey through Mozart’s works. Jopling describes the Adagio of K458 ‘The Hunt’ as ‘one of the finest slow movements in the book: phenomenal.’

From the flat horizons and fresh air of that movement, conversation turns to the polyphonic pressures of the finale of K387, and the challenge to make it sound light and joyous even when its execution is freighted with hard labour.

Jopling talks a lot about perfecting internal balance, so I wonder how the ensemble dealt with this movement’s transitions from rapid polyphony to apparently settled homophony. ‘Mozart helps you there,’ she says. In what way? ‘You have this genius transition, but we did think a lot about that before we settled into it.’ What was the problem?

‘It was just that we wanted to achieve so much, and when one wants so much, the shoulders go up and stress levels go up, and it’s tough when you’re in a quartet. Everyone cares so much, and if it doesn’t go your way you can get upset.’

There have been plenty of conversations about vibrato, Jopling recalls, but K387 and K464 presented a good lesson in how complex part writing invites greater simplicity of tone. ‘These quartets are so contrapuntal, so we did a lot of, if not senza vibrato playing, then at least trying not to cover things with a thick layer of sauce. When you’ve got chromatic movement you’ve got to allow everything to settle so every note can be heard. I hope we managed that.’ If some of the discussions have been intense, perhaps they needed to be. ‘Vegård helps us,’ says Jopling. ‘He shares the responsibility with us and it’s fantastic to have someone feeling from the edges, pointing out when things aren’t successful. In the end you are four different people in a quartet with slightly different sound ideals. To some extent you just have to accept that.’