THE ART OF CHANGE

A successful string quartet combines four individuals into a single ‘identity’. But how does a group cope when its members change? Peter Quantrill speaks to players who have survived, and even thrived on the experience

Change is something most of us are compelled to manage, strive to embrace, or even welcome as a catalyst for renewal. There is no shortage of authors and therapists on hand to help us do this in our personal lives. Courses, consultants, reports and recommendations are a routine expense for companies and corporations with a mandate for change or the urgent need to alter their practices. The same goes for musical organisations, from opera houses to chamber orchestras.

What happens when we look at the cracks in between individuals and their groups? The quintessential chamber music body is the string quartet: four players, one identity. How do quartets retain that identity over time as members leave and are replaced? Is there even an identity to retain? When I ask members of four current quartets how they have managed change, I naturally receive four different answers, but common themes emerge between them. ‘A string quartet is like a biotope,’ says Annette Reisinger, second violinist of the Minguet Quartet. ‘It’s a living organism that is permanently subject to change – that’s what makes it so exciting and worth living for!’

FOLLOW THE LEADER?

To set the context for their reflections, it’s worth stepping back, and looking back. In organisational terms, most professional quartets are flat hierarchies. Allowing for the strength of personalities involved, each member makes a roughly equal contribution not only to the sound of the quartet on stage but also to the broader direction of travel: the ensemble’s chosen repertoire, its goals, its indefinable character. Well into the 21st century, a top–down dictation of terms from one member is not likely to be tolerated by the others.

It wasn’t always so. Notable quartets from the 19th century were named after their leaders – Ignaz Schuppanzigh, Joseph Joachim, Arnold Rosé – and were, well, leader-led. The boss called the shots. A democratic shift overtook quartets’ behaviour and governance through the first half of the last century. It took place slowly and irregularly, just as it did in the political structures of the countries they came from and played in, and for that matter, in the form and language of the quartets composed at the time.

Back in the 1920s and 30s, the Busch Quartet not only sounded like a musical collective but its members worked as one too, on the evidence of Tully Potter’s research and writings. They were guided by Adolf Busch but not lashed to his will. Well into the 60s, however, some celebrated central European quartets thrived essentially as an extension of the personality of their leader, from Sándor Végh to Walter Weller. Other members came and went, but the ensemble’s musical personality reliably bore the imprint of its founder leader.

The Busch Quartet in its mid-20th century heyday: (l–r) Adolf Busch, Gösta Andreasson, Karl Doktor and Hermann Busch

Like most of us, quartets are disinclined to wash their dirty linen in public, but their inability to manage change has come to light from time to time. Apparently bound to each other by outward success, the Amadeus Quartet notoriously fell apart within and continued as (to use more management jargon) a dysfunctional organisation for many years. The Budapest Quartet likewise suffered well-publicised internal quarrels. When the Audubon Quartet changed its first violinist, a lengthy and traumatic court case ensued, eventually costing the other members more than half a million dollars.

TRIGGERS FOR CHANGE

However, the catch-all term of ‘artistic differences’ is far from the only reason or catalyst for change within quartets. Members may find the lure of a soloist’s life pulling them away at one end of their career, or they may feel age catching up with them at the other. These kinds of uncouplings can be managed gradually and harmoniously, even though the remaining musicians are left to look for a replacement. Then there are those unforeseen events from the world outside, which send shockwaves through the delicately knit tissue of a quartet’s body and the relationships between its limbs.

STRING QUARTET MEMBERS MAY FIND THE LURE OF A SOLOIST’S LIFE PULLING THEM AWAY AT ONE END OF THEIR CAREER, OR THEY MAY FEEL AGE CATCHING UP WITH THEM AT THE OTHER

On a global scale, no recent event was more disruptive than the Covid-19 pandemic. A different article would pursue the wider consequences of lockdown for musicians who must play to pay the bills, and must play together to retain a common identity. Gary Pomeroy, violist of the Heath Quartet, recalls the time vividly: ‘We had these intensity spikes. There would be nothing, nothing, nothing, and then three broadcasts for Radio 3, and then nothing again.’ The ‘nothing’ times became pauses for thought, and in those pauses, the quartet’s first violinist Oliver Heath decided to quit. ‘One, to spend more time with his kids,’ says Pomeroy. ‘And two, he wanted to become a psychotherapist.’

In 2021, Marije Johnston joined the Heath Quartet as a co-leader alongside Sara Wolstenholme. The very concept of a quartet ‘leader’ is ‘slightly triggering’ for Pomeroy, as well it might be, given the historic shifts in the balance of power briefly outlined earlier. He associates it with corporate culture, state sponsorship and flag waving. ‘It’s just not us. We’re much more of a sum-of-our-parts kind of quartet.’

The Heath Quartet: (l–r) Juliette Roos, Gary Pomeroy, Sara Wolstenholme and Christopher Murray

HEATH PHOTO KAUPO KIKKAS

The Takács Quartet: (l–r) Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes,András Fejér and Richard O’Neill

However, Johnston soon began to suffer from an injury that resisted diagnosis and treatment. Within 18 months, the Heath members found themselves hunting for a new violinist, and Juliette Roos joined them in May 2023. ‘Finding a leader, if that’s what a quartet is trying to do, does present its own challenges, because it’s a unique role,’ explains Pomeroy. ‘But trying to find somebody who is perfectly confident in swapping roles, is willing to do it and is comfortable with it maybe means having to find an even more special kind of player. I just think, “You’re a musician, aren’t you? I mean, just play!” Embracing co-leadership emancipates a quartet, offering a lot more potential, I think. It’s more of an open conversation than a democracy.’

The Heath has been through an unusually protracted period of instability. As leader of the Takács Quartet, Edward Dusinberre outlines the ideal scenario. ‘A year or two’s notice helps with a seamless transition and helps us to plan tours and repertoire. Changes in the Takács have often been an opportunity to re-examine the group’s identity. For example,since Harumi [Rhodes] joined the group in 2018, we’ve commissioned composers she champions, including Clarice Assad, Gabriela Lena Frank and Nokuthula Ngwenyama.’

‘CO-LEADERSHIP EMANCIPATES A QUARTET. IT’S MORE OF AN OPEN CONVERSATION’ – GARY POMEROY, HEATH QUARTET VIOLIST

WHAT NEXT?

The mechanics of finding a replacement part are outlined straightforwardly enough. The professional world is more like a Haydn op.20 quartet than a Mahler symphony. Everyone knows everyone else. ‘You basically pick up the phone,’ says Pomeroy, ‘you talk to other quartet members, and you ask them if they met any good players at summer festivals, or anyone who’s looking out for a place in a quartet, or is eligible. It’s quite cringey. It’s like you’re divorced, and then you have to get married a week later. But you can’t just put an ad in The Strad!’

Holding the auditions themselves feels ‘a little bit like speed dating’, he says. In the process of replacing Johnston with Roos, the Heath members played through the same few pieces with prospective violinists, then sat down and chatted. Cellist Marie Bitlloch and her colleagues in the Elias Quartet undertook the same process in 2018, in search of a violist to replace Martin Saving, who like Johnston was forced to retire from playing by chronic injury (another path untaken here: quartet playing is not always good for you. But is it more dangerous than an orchestral career? Are you more at risk of repetitive strain injury by playing Haydn, or by playing film soundtracks?).

The Elias Quartet with violist Martin Saving (second from left)

The Elias Quartet: (l–r) Sara Bitlloch, Simone van der Giessen, Donald Grant and Marie Bitlloch

KAUPO KIKKAS

‘Those who felt good with us,’ says Bitlloch, ‘we invited to play a concert or two – dates that were already set in the diary. It was a bit of a juggling act, if I’m honest, but changing a member often is. Because Martin was already no longer playing with us, there were dates to be to be fulfilled. And so we used those concerts to get a feel for who the next violist would be. I really believe that you can’t know at all what it’s like to play with someone until you’ve been on stage together.’

Pomeroy agrees. ‘I enjoy performing, and playing to a high level – and being kept there by dates at the Pierre Boulez Saal, Carnegie Hall and so on. For me, the most exciting part of playing quartets is rehearsal: the discovery and the camaraderie in figuring out this music are what I love. But concerts are the currency.’

Both Bitlloch and Pomeroy found themselves surprised by candidates who had given off all the right vibes in rehearsal, but didn’t gel with the quartet in concert. The operative term is energy. ‘Not necessarily that there wasn’t enough of it,’ says Bitlloch, ‘and it can develop. It’s such an intimate experience. It can be surprising and even destabilising to play on stage with someone, but it normally gets better over time.’

In playing with one prospective new member after another, Pomeroy observes, ‘It just takes one asymmetry of energy on stage to throw a group. And that’s interesting, because then you realise how synchronous and harmonious it is when you do have somebody who’s on the same wavelength. We never got lost! But there were times when we found ourselves surprised on stage by how things went. And sometimes the chaos is good. It gives its own energy and momentum. But sometimes it feels really unnerving, and unsupportive.’

‘WHEN YOU LOOK FOR A FOURTH MEMBER, IT’S NORMAL TO TRY TO FIND SOMEONE WHO’S LIKE-MINDED – AND LIKE-HEARTED’

FINDING THE FORMULA

For Reisinger, who has seen several violists pass through the Minguet Quartet during its 35 years on stage, ‘If the humour is the same, usually the rest fits too!’ According to Dusinberre: ‘The most important feelings are of empathy, curiosity and flexibility. We also look for someone with a strong voice.’ In his recent memoir, Distant Melodies: Music in Search of Home (2022), he recalls the process of auditioning Richard O’Neill for the violist’s chair in the Takács, and how Rhodes had recently introduced him to the concept of an ‘alley-oop’ in relation to string quartets.

‘Just as a basketball player could throw the ball in such a way as to invite a teammate to jump up and slam it through the hoop,’ he says, ‘a quartet player could, with a slight preparatory acceleration of tempo, launch her colleague’s melody, or by ending a phrase with a questioning gesture on an up bow invite an emphatic answer. Even in this first read-through, Richard seemed as comfortable asserting himself as he did facilitating someone else’s melody.’

This kind of intuitive synergy is what makes the sound of a quartet more than the sum of its parts. Both Bitlloch and Pomeroy talk about ‘the quartet’ as a fifth element. ‘If you have a relationship between two people,’ says Pomeroy, ‘the relationship is an extra thing, right? It’s a triangle. And in a quartet, the dimension of the relationships is just the sum of its experience.’ As Bitlloch observes, a change of membership is a more radical version of the evolution that a quartet experiences every day, through life. ‘Having said that, when you look for a fourth member, it’s normal to try to find someone who’s like-minded – and like-hearted.’

‘One of the magical things about quartet playing’, she continues, ‘is when the members make each other better. You can have four amazing players who love each other, but they don’t necessarily make each other shine. Another four players might be a little less good individually, but they play with each other better.’ Simone van der Giessen replaced Saving as the violist of the Elias: a process complicated by her leaving the Navarra Quartet, of which she had been a founder member in 2002. ‘I was very clear that I wanted to take what she was bringing,’ says Bitlloch. ‘She is such a generous player.’

MOVING ON

What does this process feel like from the other side, for the new player? ‘It’s an intriguing balance between integrating and finding one’s own voice,’ says Dusinberre. ‘It’s 30 years s=ince I joined the Takács, but I still gratefully remember the flexibility and warmth of the others in letting me try out ideas, encouraging me to experiment rather than feel like I just had to fit in.’

‘As an inner voice,’ says Rhodes, ‘when I joined the Takács in 2018 it was all about the process of learning how to place my musical personality and sound within the group. Five years later I love the feeling of being spontaneous on stage, a liberation that comes from the discipline of rehearsing, oddly enough. The practice of listening in the moment is what helps me to lead and follow at the same time.’

The Minguet Quartet: (l–r) Annette Reisinger, Ulrich Isfort, Aida-Carmen Soanea, Matthias Diener

MINGUET PHOTO IRÈNE ZANDEL. ELIAS PHOTO KAUPO KIKKAS

The Elias Quartet

Even once made, a change of personnel takes time to bed in, but that period of adjustment can’t be defined or accelerated. The sound of a quartet may emerge and evolve to its listeners, but this does not bear comparison with the analogy of development from infancy to adulthood through tricky teenage years: everyone involved is a mature professional already at or near the top of their game.

In Reisinger’s experience, ‘The sound of each long-time member also changes over many years. Life with all its beautiful and sad facets shapes the sound as well as this articulation or that tempo. You become freer with experience, the sound becomes warmer, the tempos rather calmer, because you feel like illuminating and enjoying the music. When one is younger, one prefers to play with virtuosity, which often does not lead to the goal. And the sound of the quartet is also shaped by new pieces that we learn: special harmonies that require an unprecedented tonal colour, or special playing techniques in new music.’

As Dusinberre observed above, in so many words, the music makes the quartet as much as the quartet makes the music. ‘The masterpieces that we play have a life of their own,’ says Bitlloch. There are positive and negative aspects to addressing late Beethoven with a prospective or a new member. Fresh input and new ideas often bring renewed energy. On the other hand, it takes a while just to arrive at base camp together in a work like Beethoven’s op.131. ‘More often than not,’ Bitlloch concludes, ‘change brings something better in the end. Peter Cropper used to say that at its best, the quartet is better than the sum of its parts. It’s not just four people compromising to make something work; it’s four people challenging each other to find something that none of those four could have found by themselves. The identity of the quartet is a by-product of the work that we do rather than an endgame in itself.’