LIFE IS AN ADVENTURE

The 50th anniversary of a quartet conjures up visions of whiskery old men in suits solemnly delivering the greats of the quartet canon. But here is the eternally youthful Brodsky Quartet. Bathed in golden light, two women in chic designer clothes bookend the ensemble, while two men, trim and tailored, form its central energy. They could be at Snape Maltings or headlining at the Latitude Festival. It’s hard to believe they are celebrating a half-century, but the original line-up were not even teenagers when they formed the quartet in Middlesbrough in 1972 – in fact cellist Jacqueline Thomas was only ten.

The rest of the group consisted of her brother Michael (first violin), Ian Belton (second violin) and Alexander Robertson (viola). Initially they called themselves the Cleveland Quartet, after their local county, until 1979 when they changed their name to Brodsky. They were students at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), Manchester, at the time, and they chose the new name in honour of the great Russian violinist Adolph Brodsky, a huge figure in the city in the early 20th century. ‘This was because we’d come face to face with the Cleveland (Ohio) Quartet while studying in Dartington in 1974,’ says Jacqueline Thomas, ‘and we felt it was our place to change, not theirs – they were grown-up and fully established! It took another five years to make the change, though, because there was no urgency, until we were to enter the newly created Portsmouth Competition. Then we knew we couldn’t be the Cleveland Quartet any longer.’

Since the start, the personnel has changed surprisingly little – violist Paul Cassidy stepped in for Robertson in 1982, and Krysia Osostowicz last year became the fifth first violin in as many decades. I caught up with them in April during their 50th-anniversary tour, in the Colyer-Fergusson Hall at the University of Kent, Canterbury, and was reminded of their unique blend of breathtaking technique and spontaneity. They dominate the large floor space, so you hardly notice that they are standing rather than being rooted to their chairs – only Thomas sits on a small platform, raised to the eye level of her colleagues. They wear their trademark Issey Miyake concert clothes, light silk garments that can be crumpled up and stuffed into suitcases for travelling. Standing allows for the dancing, flexed-knee movements of Cassidy, who launches his body into each new phrase; and while Cassidy is ebullient and mercurial, Belton forms a calm, reassuring link between Osostowicz and the others.

They are playing a typical Brodsky programme. The first half contains the world premieres of two movements by John Woolrich which form part of his ongoing string quartet cycle A Book of Inventions: the first (A Remembrance in Notes), mysterious, intense and fragmentary; the second (Memory You Sing), in almost-unison, brash and noisy. Both are performed with total conviction, graspable even on first hearing. These are followed by a Beethoven op.135 that sounds refreshingly contemporary, and the programme culminates with Shostakovich’s String Quartet no.9, written, as Cassidy explains, in 1964, after the composer had been married for the third time – to Irina, who is still alive.

(left-right), Jacqueline Thomas, Michael Thomas, Ian Belton and Alex Robertson outside the Czech Philharmonic Hall in 1979

Top The four string-playing Teeside teens, then known as the Cleveland Quartet, are featured in a local newspaper article in 1974

The Brodsky’s first publicity photo with Paul Cassidy in 1982

In 1977, as winners of the National Festival of Music for Youth

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE BRODSKY QUARTET

‘WE WERE SO EXCITED TO HEAR THERE WAS A NEW SHOSTAKOVICH QUARTET. WE TRIED TO TAKE IT DOWN IN DICTATION FROM THE RADIO AND MANAGED TO GET MOST OF IT’

Shostakovich has accompanied the quartet throughout its 50-year journey. ‘We’ve been playing him since the beginning,’ Thomas tells me later, when we meet in their favourite concert hall, Kings Place in London. ‘They are great pieces for young people to get their teeth into. Some of them are quite simplistic sounding, some aggressive, meaty and feisty. It was a beautiful way to learn our craft together.’ She mentions casually that they played Quartet no.13 (1969–70) soon after its first performance. ‘We were so excited to hear there was a new Shostakovich quartet, we tried to take it down in dictation from the radio. We managed to get most of it – it was certainly good training for music college!’ How many teenagers today have the skills to play Shostakovich quartets, let alone transcribe a piece on first hearing from the radio? The fearless young quartet tore through ‘difficult music’ like Bartók, Janáček and Shostakovich, having been spurred on c.1973 by the adjudicator of the Harrogate festival competition who had dismissed them, says Thomas, as ‘far too young to be playing late Beethoven’ (they came in second to a recorder ensemble!).

The Brodsky’s complete Shostakovich quartet cycles have become must-hear events. They celebrated their 40th anniversary with a Shostakovich weekend at Kings Place, and Thomas still remembers the excitement at seeing themselves on banners outside the venue, ‘all of us with our instruments on top of a mound, as if planting a flag, like the famous photograph of US soldiers at Iwo Jima’. Recognising the creativity in the quartet that chimed so neatly with its own cross-genre programming, Kings Place invited the Brodsky to become quartet-in-residence and they have enjoyed a fruitful collaboration for the past ten years.

‘Whatever we threw at them, they always came up with fantastic programming,’ says Helen Wallace, artistic and executive director at Kings Place. ‘They have done theatrical shows, collaborations, marathons, rush-hour concerts – all the concerts they have devised for the Unwrapped series have been brilliant. Back in the early 1990s when they first presented concerts standing up, they set a standard for the way others would later present at Kings Place. It can feel like an orchestra in the hall when they perform.’ The fact that the musicians live around the corner and rehearse frequently at the venue as part of their residency has made Kings Place feel like a home. ‘For a group, it’s really amazing to have a base,’ says Cassidy. ‘Also over the last ten years they’ve encouraged us to do things that we wanted to do. We would have these immersive weekends – Panufnik [featuring both Andrzej and daughter Roxanna] and Zemlinsky. Next we would like to do a weekend of the wonderful Isidora Žebeljan.’

Over the decades, the Brodsky has performed and recorded much of the quartet repertoire (it has more than 70 albums to its name) and commissioned many new works. But it is equally celebrated for collaborations with starry musicians from other spheres, such as Björk, Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney and, most recently, jazz singer Jacqui Dankworth (Rocking Horse Road, released earlier this year). Its first ‘crossover’ album, The Juliet Letters (1993), was a five-way collaboration between Costello and the Brodsky players. ‘The whole process was completely open. We all brought things to the table, there was never a feeling of us and him. That wouldn’t have interested either party,’ says Cassidy. ‘As well as creating songs together, we knew we could bring interesting texture and challenging parts to help capture each mood. So when we went on to arrange the songs of Björk, we used the same sort of techniques, we made sure that we were using ourselves as a string quartet, not just a texture to back the voice. The Juliet Letters has been popular all over the world in all sorts of forms, and we are now preparing a new edition of the score and parts for its 30th anniversary.’

‘These collaborations are actually quite a small part of what we’ve been doing, but it’s the bit that gets written about because, well, people don’t write that much about string quartets!’ says Thomas. That hasn’t stopped them from winning followers in both camps. ‘Over the years we found fans from many areas of music who maybe wouldn’t have started listening to string quartets but have done so because of those collaborations. Equally some of our more classically oriented audiences have had their eyes opened to different types of music through what we have done.’ Cassidy is still buzzing from an accolade in the NME in 2020 naming his arrangement of Björk’s Hyperballad as the ‘best moment’ on the ‘best remix album ever’. ‘I think Radiohead was fourth!’

Cassidy and Thomas, married since 1990, have each written memoirs of the quartet, ‘so it doesn’t get forgotten’, says Cassidy. Most recently, Thomas has been chronicling the group’s first ten years using diaries and photographs, in a book called Jacksons, Monk & Rowe and the Brodsky Quartet – the Formative Years (to be published by Troubador in October). Two years ago, Derry-born Cassidy published Get Beethoven!, a hard-hitting chronicle of his early musical life leading up to his invitation to join the quartet, while they were all still at college. He has followed it this year with a history of the Brodsky Quartet from 1982, Got Beethoven. Both books are published by Troubador.

For this prodigious, prizewinning youth ensemble, the first change of personnel can’t have been easy. ‘It was a shock to the system, after ten years of being in a close-knit group like that. Having gone through teenage development together, there were plenty of emotions flying around,’ says Thomas. ‘But we found the change worked much better than we expected. We’d grown up with a very immediate, attacking style, which lent itself well to our youth, but there wasn’t a lot of finesse to our playing. Paul had a more rounded sound than we were used to and a more spacious feeling towards the music.’

She continues: ‘Each time there’s been a change of player, we’ve relished the learning curve with a new person. We’ve enjoyed what they bring to us, and how much we might influence their playing in turn. People say, however, that the core sound of the quartet has never really changed, which means that, despite the sonic journey, we must have something that’s permanent, that has remained in our voice.’

The ensemble’s most recent personnel change came unexpectedly when Gina McCormack, who had replaced Daniel Rowland for just two years, had to step down when her husband became very ill. The difficulty of going through that replacement process again became so overwhelming that they seriously considered stopping, remembers Cassidy. Candidates were deterred either by the thought of playing 80-plus concerts a year or by the modest remuneration – and what the Brodsky did not want was a violinist who tried to split their time too much between the quartet and other things such as a solo career or teaching. When they found Osostowicz, formerly with the Dante Quartet, they all breathed a sigh of relief. ‘It feels great’, says Thomas, ‘that we are four people who are putting the quartet first and making it our priority.’ Cassidy agrees: ‘Krysia has been just the most wonderful addition to our group. After 25 years in a string quartet, she knows how it’s done.’

With Björk at the Union Chapel, Islington, London in 1999

Rehearsing with Paul McCartney in 1995 for a concert at St James’s Palace

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE BRODSKY QUARTET

The quartet’s cover photograph for 1991 album Brodsky Unlimited

At the reopening of St George’s Bristol with bass-baritone Willard White in 2018

SARAH CRESSWELL

‘A QUARTET IS LIKE FOUR PEOPLE ON A CAR JOURNEY. EVERY SO OFTEN WE GET OUT AND SWAP SEATS, BECAUSE OUR ROLES ARE CONSTANTLY CHANGING’

For her part, Osostowicz was delighted and surprised to receive the phone call from the Brodsky Quartet in February 2021. ‘I can’t believe my luck to find myself in a quartet that I’ve always admired – in fact, when the Dante was preparing its first Shostakovich cycle five years ago, I listened to the box set of their live recordings from Amsterdam constantly. Therefore, when we started playing them together we weren’t miles apart.’ She says she already had an Issey Miyake jacket in her wardrobe: ‘This may have swung it for me!’

The equilibrium in a string quartet is notoriously difficult to manage: four individuals are dependent on staying united musically and personally. How have the central three held it together so successfully? ‘A huge part of the process is, first of all, not trying to get your own way,’ says Cassidy. Thomas agrees: ‘You might play a piece 200 times in your career, and you can try different things. Let someone else have their own way and see if it grows on you rather than argue every point. It’s a huge learning curve to accept that we won’t know immediately how we want to perform a particular corner in the music.’

Belton describes a quartet as being like ‘four people in a car, on a journey. There’s a driver, a navigator and two back-seat drivers, and you’ve got to be able to go on that journey and all get along. Every so often you all get out and get back in in a different seat – because our roles are constantly changing. If you can accomplish that and everyone still enjoys the trip, that’s a bit like being in quartet.’ Thomas adds: ‘Don’t forget our manager Sarah Trelawny Ford, who has been our invaluable fifth member for the last 15 years.’

Osostowicz is the only member with regular teaching commitments (at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London), but the others run chamber music courses, including a popular one featuring Shostakovich quartets played ‘side by side’ with advanced students, happening this summer at the Dartington festival. ‘Paul devised this project where we perform some of the quartets, the students perform some, and we do others with the students – one of us with three of them,’ says Thomas. ‘It’s a really popular format. We’ve done it in Glasgow [at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland] and in Melbourne [at the Australian National Academy of Music], and in Mexico and Holland, and it works just as well with the Beethoven quartets.’

Brodsky Quartet members have played instruments with extraordinary pedigrees – the original first violinist, Michael Thomas, played a G.B. Guadagnini that belonged to Adolph Brodsky, dedicatee of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Cassidy played Benjamin Britten’s viola for 25 years; it had been given to him on loan by Peter Pears: ‘We had the pleasure of recording the Britten quartets with the composer’s own instrument at the Maltings, produced by Colin Matthews, who had helped the dying composer finish the final work.’ He now plays on a c.1720 viola, named ‘La Delfina’ (courtesy of the late Delfina Entrecanales), and has also been trying out a modern instrument by sought-after luthier Stefan-Peter Greiner. Belton describes the sound of his Maggini violin (whose date has recently been adjusted to c.1620) as being ‘like chocolate. It is 5mm longer than a Guarneri and because it’s a bit bigger than the quartet’s first violin and smaller than the viola, it makes a perfect second violin, visually and soundwise too.’ Terence Weil, the Brodsky’s coach when they were students at RNCM, lent Jacqueline Thomas a Tononi cello that had been owned by Pablo Casals; she now plays a 1785 instrument by Thomas Perry of Dublin. Osostowicz plays a violin made in 1720 by Francesco Gofriller: ‘It has soloistic characteristics, such as really good projection but with a mellow rich sound which is great for chamber music.’

The 50th-anniversary season, 2022–3, sees the quartet touring worldwide, with dates planned across Europe, China, Australia and Central and South America. This summer they are performing at many of the UK’s foremost festivals, including an appearance in Cheltenham, at the Pittville Pump Room, on 11 July, with a programme including Karen Tanaka’s At the Grave of Beethoven (1999), which was commissioned by the Brodsky for its Beethoven op.18 project. The group is a huge champion of new music and Cassidy says he’d love to record a selection of the works it’s commissioned. ‘We have some absolutely beautiful pieces, from [Theo] Verbey and Žebeljan to [Robert] Davidson and Andrew Ford. Ford, who is British but based in Sydney, is a brilliant composer who’s written a lot for us.’

‘KRYSIA HAS BEEN JUST THE MOST WONDERFUL ADDITION TO OUR GROUP. AFTER 25 YEARS IN A STRING QUARTET SHE KNOWS HOW IT’S DONE’

COURTESY IAN BELTON

Ian Belton’s c.1620 Maggini

A recording partnership with Chandos has resulted in an acclaimed recording of the late Beethoven quartets, quartets by Zemlinsky, Brahms, Debussy and, of course, the Shostakovich box set, live from the Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam. The Brodsky’s latest recording is Homage to Bach (released 2021), for which Cassidy made accomplished quartet arrangements of Bach’s three Solo Violin Sonatas which sound as if they were meant to be. ‘The four voices are very audibly there, and he has managed to pick them all out,’ says Thomas. ‘We want to film it as an educational aid for young people so they can see how the voices are being passed around.’ Later in the year they’re releasing the Schubert Quintet, the fruit of their collaboration with cellist Laura van der Heijden, coupled with Schubert’s Quartettsatz. ‘That’s a big milestone for any quartet,’ says Thomas. ‘Just to put your bow on the string to start recording that monumental work is huge. We’ve performed it with many cellists over the years but are thrilled to be recording it with such a remarkable cellist – and adorable person – as Laura.’

A Shostakovich weekend in October 2022 is a celebration of the Brodsky’s residency at Kings Place, and they will continue to bring their restless creativity and musical diversity to the venue. Wallace sums up the qualities that have made the foursome unique in their appeal: ‘They are versatile, flexible, open-minded and open-hearted. They are forever young and forever fresh – they never get stuck in one groove. It’s been wonderful to have them here.’