FINDING THE POWER WITHIN

Escher Quartet cellist Brook Speltz talks to David Kettle about the foursome’s original interpretations of Janáček and Haas quartets, and how the recording had an unusually tempestuous start

E scherQuartet cellist Brook Speltz has one abiding memory of recording the ensemble’s new disc of Janáček and Pavel Haas: that it almost didn’t happen at all. What threatened the project was Storm Eunice, which sent winds of more than 120mph tearing through southern England in February 2022.

‘It’s quite a story, actually,’ Speltz remembers. ‘We’re based in New York, but we recorded the album in England, at Potton Hall in rural Suffolk, and the previous evening we’d been playing at London’s Wigmore Hall. We’d arranged to pick up a rental car the morning after the concert, and drive from London to the recording venue.’

There was a further complication, however, caused by an unusual addition. The final movement of Haas’s Second Quartet ‘From the Monkey Mountains’ – which the Escher players (violinists Adam Barnett-Hart and Brendan Speltz; and violist Pierre Lapointe, alongside cellist Brook Speltz) had decided would complement Janáček’s two quartets – calls for a percussionist to join the four string players. For the recording, that person would be British percussionist Colin Currie – who himself had to dash off for other engagements around 11am the following day. Plenty of time, you’d think. Speltz continues. ‘Storm Eunice hit during the night after our Wigmore Hall concert. Some of the motorways were closed the next day, so we were stuck in London. And in any case, at Potton Hall the power had gone out. We finally left London about 7pm, and arrived about 10pm – far too late to work. So we were up about 6am the following day with Colin to rehearse and record that final movement. It was just one of those moments when you have to sit down, focus and get it done. We were even doing jumping jacks in between each take to keep our hands from freezing!’

‘WE WANT TO RECORD PIECES WHERE WE FEEL WE HAVE AN INDIVIDUAL VOICE’

With just 25 minutes to spare, however, the five musicians managed to capture the Quartet’s hectic, jazzy finale, all nine minutes of it. ‘If we hadn’t been able to get it done, it might have been a death sentence for the whole album,’ Speltz admits. ‘It just wouldn’t have been economically feasible for us to fly back again specially from New York, even supposing we’d managed to find a new time to work with Colin.’

After that somewhat stressful beginning, however, Speltz remembers the recording sessions as calm, well organised, even relaxing. ‘We had four days – we were working hard, and we set ourselves the schedule of recording three movements a day, starting at 9am and working through to 5pm.’ The players were keen to finish on time, Speltz says, to take full advantage of Potton Hall’s facilities. ‘There was a hot tub and a sauna, and in the evenings we couldn’t wait to cook dinner, relax and look up at the stars.’

Perhaps not surprisingly, the project’s origins lie in Janáček’s two string quartets, which had been in the Eschers’ repertoire for a long time. ‘They’re both powerhouse pieces,’ says Speltz, ‘and hopefully we’ve come up with our own identity for them that works well in performance.’ That’s one factor, the cellist explains, behind the quartet’s decision to commit the pieces to disc. ‘First and foremost, it’s music we feel strongly about: we want to record pieces we feel we play well, but also where we feel we have some kind of individual voice.’ Another factor, inevitably, is the number of recordings that already exist. ‘There’s no shortage of Janáček quartets on disc, but there are probably not as many as there are Beethoven quartets, or even Debussy and Ravel. And if you listen to recordings of the Janáček quartets, they all sound different sometimes wildly different. It’s obviously music that lends itself to lots of variety in the way it’s approached. I think that’s a good vehicle for our own way of playing, where we try to let the individual voice of each quartet member come through.’

In the end, little discussion was needed about complementing Janáček’s two quartets with the 1925 Second Quartet by Haas, one of the elder composer’s few students, who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. ‘Adam Barnett-Hart, our first violinist, was fascinated by the piece. We knew about Haas as a person, and his tragic life story, but we hadn’t played his quartets so it was definitely a journey for all of us. But it’s stunningly beautiful music, and crafted with such skill for the instruments. The second movement is almost like a carnival that veers into the grotesque, and there are all kinds of jazz influences with the percussion in the fourth movement.’

Did the Escher players do any specific preparation for the recording sessions? ‘I don’t think there’s any better preparation for recording than performance,’ explains Speltz. And though they’d included both Janáček quartets in concerts many times, for Haas’s Second Quartet, that meant slotting some last-minute performances into an already busy schedule. ‘We set up little house concerts or private performances, just playing for a couple of friends or colleagues – by the time we’d confirmed what we’d be recording, we’d already finalised our main concert schedule. It’s amazing how often the work you do in rehearsal can feel meaningless without a performance, so we tried to perform the piece as many times as possible, which made the job in the studio far easier.’

The other crucial player in the Eschers’ Janáček and Haas project, of course, is the quartet’s record company, BIS. And, as Speltz explains, musicians and label have a largely equal say when it comes to new recordings. ‘BIS has a catalogue, of course, and other artists who might want to record the same things, so it’s absolutely a 50/50 discussion between the label and us. Sometimes they suggest an album idea to us, which we might accept or tweak, but it’s always something that they’re interested in adding to their catalogue that also lines up with music we’re performing, or that we want to perform.’

Speltz also credits BIS with establishing the Quartet’s close relationship with Swedish engineer Thore Brinkmann. ‘He’s become very much an artistic partner – we’ve learnt to trust him completely, and I think he’s learnt a lot about us and the kind of sound we’re aiming for.’ Which, Speltz reiterates, may require slightly more focus on the players as individuals than is the case with other quartets. ‘Our individual lines might not line up quite perfectly, or might even come into conflict with each other, which is actually something we enjoy. And I think Thore has adjusted to that sort of style and sound. In turn, we have complete faith in his ear.’

Indeed, Speltz points to just that issue as a potential pitfall in the recording process. ‘You have to fight against the idea of working towards perfection – it’s such a dangerous hole to fall into. If your focus is on not messing up because you’re being recorded, then you’re just not expressing yourself. You have to fight against that kind of monotony.’

The Escher Quartet: (clockwise from top left) Pierre Lapointe, Brook Speltz,Adam Barnett-Hart, Brendan Speltz

PHOTOS ANNA KARIEL

Despite its difficult beginning, however, the Eschers’ Janáček and Haas disc is particularly close to their hearts. ‘It’s one of our most personal projects, and I feel emotionally most attached to it, for several reasons,’ Speltz explains. ‘It’s the combination of pieces, the way we miraculously had to get through it because of the storm, not to mention that it came at the end of the creative pause in our lives for two years, and was our first time being back in Europe since the pandemic. Willing ourselves to get it done despite horrific weather and freezing temperatures – that was really rewarding.’

WORKS Janáček String Quartet no.1

‘Kreutzer Sonata’; String Quartet no.2

‘Intimate Letters’

Haas String Quartet no.2 op.7

‘From the Monkey Mountains’

ARTISTS Escher Quartet, Colin Currie (percussion)

RECORDING VENUE Potton Hall, Suffolk, UK

RECORDING DATES 19–22 February 2022

CATALOGUE NUMBER BIS-2670

RELEASE DATE out now