‘MUSIC WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN’

Alabyrinthine philosophical industry has grown up around the analysis of time and our subjective experience of it. The members of the Henschel Quartet could add invaluable insights to the harvest of existentialist literature, illustrated with lessons learnt since they made their first professional bow three decades ago and reflections on how the days since, in the words of the psalmist, have passed as a handbreadth. On 11 June they are set to mark their 30thanniversary return to the Aldeburgh Festival, where they made their professional debut. For this occasion, they’ve chosen to pair Beethoven’s String Quartet op.18 no.1 and his ‘Rasumovsky’ op.59 no.3 with the belated world premiere of Freda Swain’s ‘Norfolk’ String Quartet, which will be given a whole century after it was consigned to a drawer by its famously contrary composer. While the Beethoven connects with the programme of the Munich-based quartet’s first Aldeburgh outing all those years ago, Swain’s score reflects the players’ trademark spirit of adventure.

When I speak to the group’s co-founder and violist Monika Henschel-Schwind, our conversation lands on the time-shrinking power of memory and the proximity of the past. ‘I think it has a lot to do with people; it’s not only about recalling things that have happened over time,’ she comments. ‘It’s amazing how shared emotions can take you back all those years. That’s why the beginning feels like it happened yesterday. We were so close and everything was so intense.’ Those heady early days were preceded by a long gestation period during which three members of the proto-quartet, violinists and twin brothers Christoph and Markus Henschel and their elder sister Monika were joined and left by a procession of cellists.

Close to disbanding their ensemble after a series of false starts and swift departures, the Henschel siblings found their perfect partner in cellist Mathias Beyer-Karlshøj (born in Germany and resident today in Copenhagen and Munich), who instantly clicked with them. The quartet’s line-up remained unchanged until 2010, when Markus Henschel left to join the Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg. His place was taken by Nottingham-born Daniel Bell, an alumnus of Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music and former member of the Petersen Quartet, who is currently in his second spell with the Henschel.

Mention of their anniversary outing to Aldeburgh unlocks a flood of happy memories. ‘I have goose pimples just talking about it,’ says Henschel-Schwind. ‘We’re so excited about returning to the festival. It’s so important to us personally, coming back to where we began all those years ago. It reminds us of the stories that members of the Amadeus Quartet, who were so important to our development and recommended us to the Aldeburgh Festival, told us about working there with Benjamin Britten. I hadn’t thought of these things for 30 years, but suddenly they’re here again. That’s the remarkable thing about how our brains store deep memories.’

Late Beethoven was on the bill for the Henschel Quartet’s first visit to Aldeburgh in 1994. Edward Blakeman, then a producer at BBC Radio 3, travelled by motorbike to the Aldeburgh Cinema and was so impressed by what he heard that he handed the Henschel a date at the BBC Proms. The following summer they headed to the Tanglewood Music Festival, where they were coached by violinist Louis Krasner and violist Eugene Lehner. As a member of the Kolisch Quartet, Lehner had taken part in the premieres of works by Bartók, Berg, Schoenberg and Webern, while Krasner had been soloist in the first performances of the violin concertos of Berg and Schoenberg. ‘We were the very young quartet-in-residence, and they would tell us about how Bartók wished his music to be performed,’ recalls Henschel-Schwind. ‘When we speak to our students nowadays, they look at us with big eyes, not quite believing these stories. But yes – they’re true! We had the same experience with the Amadeus Quartet’s first violinist Norbert Brainin telling us that when he was young he heard an old gentleman talking about how Brahms had wanted a particular work to be played. Just imagine!’

The sense of being heirs to a magnificent tradition of European quartet playing helped motivate the Henschel Quartet during its formative years. It certainly shaped the group’s telos, the purpose shared by four young people determined to hone their collective skills and use them to fathom the very depths of artistic expression. Their goals were doubtless shared with countless other emerging quartets who, like the Henschel, scored headline-grabbing competition victories, drew critical acclaim and began making recordings. But an early commitment to excellence and a vision of how to achieve it are no guarantors of longevity, as the list of defunct chamber ensembles shows. What has sustained the Henschel Quartet over the years?

‘WE’RE SO EXCITED A BOUT RETURNING TO THE A LDEBURGH FESTIVAL. IT’S SO IMPORTA NT TO US PERSONALLY, COMING BACK TO WHERE WE BEGA N ALL THOSE YEARS AGO’

The Henschel Quartet in 1994. (Below) The Henschel siblings at the piano in 1972

PHOTOS COURTESY OF MONIKA HENSCHEL-SCHWIND

‘It’s the passion that drives us,’ Henschel-Schwind replies. ‘It’s simply impossible not to do it! Music will never let you down. It’s always there and takes you to extraordinary dimensions or, when you play, to what I think of as eternal moments. Music puts you in contact with something so much bigger than self – we’re so privileged to have this experience.’ She laughs when I interrupt to mention the complex psychodynamics of sibling love and rivalry, and the inevitable tensions that arise when any group of musicians strives to realise cogent interpretations of equally complex artworks. The antidote to interpersonal disputes, she suggests, requires building resilience as part of an evolutionary process. It flows above all from a blend of listening and communication that depends on understanding how four pairs of ears work together.

‘MUSIC PUTS YOU IN CONTACT WITH SOMETHING SO MUCH BIGGER THAN SELF – WE ARE SO PR I V ILEGED TO HAVE THIS EXPER IENCE’

‘In the string quartet world, we’re aware of our super-skills. Imagine what society would be like if, among all the competing voices, we were able to sense the needs of our neighbours, respond to that skilfully and come together without argument. That’s the art of string quartet playing.’

The Henschel Quartet’s foundations, which long pre-date the group’s Aldeburgh debut, were constructed under ideal conditions. ‘It was so natural for Christoph, Markus and me to make music together, as children from a family of musicians,’ recalls Henschel-Schwind. The siblings’ mother, Marga Scheurich, was a fine harpsichord soloist, while their father, Walter Henschel, was principal violist in the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Their household grew after the Romanian conductor, composer and general force of nature Sergiu Celibidache declared that he was unwilling to stay in a hotel during his visits to Stuttgart as the orchestra’s principal conductor; that he, his wife – the formidable artist Ioana Procopie Dumitrescu – and young son wished to lodge in a private house. Knowing that the Henschel home contained ample room for guests, the orchestra engineered a ‘temporary’ solution to the conductor’s housing needs. ‘My mother was really surprised when my father announced that Celibidache would be staying with us. We thought he’d be there for two or three weeks, but he stayed for two years! He was so nice with us children, but he could be a devil in front of orchestras; and when he and Ioana argued, it felt like the house would fall apart! This was part of our upbringing.

‘Our parents decided that a string quartet was something really important for us to do, so we started around 1985, when we were in our mid-teens, and they found really good teachers for us.’ The siblings and their first cello colleague, Stefan Schütz (now assistant principal cello in Munich’s Gärtnerplatz Theatre Orchestra), were introduced to Franz Beyer, professor of viola and chamber music at Munich’s Hochschule für Musik und Theater and grandfather of future Henschel Quartet cellist Beyer-Karlshøj. Beyer was about to lead a Munich masterclass in company with the Amadeus Quartet’s second violinist Siegmund Nissel and invited the Henschel ensemble to take part.

‘That was a great start,’ recalls Henschel-Schwind. ‘The quartet became such an important part of our lives. Of course, we had no idea that it would last; we were certainly not thinking about becoming a professional string quartet when we were teenagers. But I remember the moment when we three siblings decided that it should be professional. We were in the audience at the Amadeus Summer Course at the Royal Academy of Music in London, listening to the Danish Quartet perform Haydn’s “Rider” Quartet. When they’d finished playing, we all thought: “Yes, this has to be it!” We didn’t even speak about it; we just knew that that was what we were going to do.’

Thanks to the siblings’ studies with violinist Felix Andrievsky (below) in Tel Aviv and at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London, they were ready to overcome every technical hurdle in the quartet book. ‘He was the centre of our musical lives,’ observes Henschel-Schwind. ‘The Amadeus players taught us about interpretation, not how to play our instruments. What we learnt about string playing came from Felix. We’re so grateful to our parents for introducing us to him.’

Andrievsky was steeped in the wisdom of the Russian violin school, which he had absorbed from his teacher Yuri Yankelevich, who in turn had learnt it from Abram Yampolsky. ‘You cannot fail when you’re taught in this way. It has an answer to any question about playing the instrument! So when we coach quartets and see someone with a technical difficulty, we will help the player find a way to solve the problem – even though that’s not really what chamber music coaching is about.’

The Henschel Quartet’s collective technical command and a suite of fine instruments, allied to decades of deep listening, help account for their characteristic tonal richness and exquisite blend. Christoph Henschel plays on the ‘Cobbett’ Stradivari from 1721; and Daniel Bell plays on a Nicolò Amati violin from c.1650–84, begetter of a bright yet warm sound.

Henschel-Schwind, depending on her workload, alternates between two violas: ‘My Gasparo da Salò viola is quite large and has an amazing sound. It has a more typical booming C string in comparison with my second viola, by Pietro Guarneri of Venice, which is smaller but also extremely beautiful.

The Henschel Quartet during its 20th anniversary concert series in 2014

HENSCHEL PHOTO SUSANNAJUST. ANDRIEVSKY PHOTO ROYAL COLLEGE OF MUSIC

‘EV ERY DAY WE FEEL A LITTLE MOR E AT HOME IN FREDA’S MUSIC AND BECOME EVEN MOR E CON V INCED THAT THIS PIECE SHOULD BE PART OF THE MAIN R EPERTOIR E’

Norbert Brainin never tired of raving about its sound, which he said was the most beautiful alongside that of his colleague Peter Schidlof ’s Stradivari viola.’

Beyer-Karlshøj bagged his favourite cello, made in the early 1900s by the Copenhagen firm of Emil Hjorth & Sons, with help from his colleagues. While preparing for a Henschel Quartet concert in Denmark linked to one of their competition victories, he discovered that a Hjorth instrument was for sale at an unbeatable price and that the vendor lived a short drive from where they were rehearsing. Beyer-Karlshøj rushed to her country home and fell in love with the cello only to discover that she had already promised it to another player. He could have it, however, if the original bidder failed to return that day. ‘Mathias came back but was really nervous about losing this cello, so we stopped rehearsing and decided to visit the lady,’ Henschel-Schwind recalls. ‘I think we played the Cavatina from

Beethoven’s op.130 for her. We were beyond impressed by this cigar-smoking old lady in her little cottage. She was quite a character! Beethoven won her heart and Mathias took his beloved cello home. Although he now also owns another Hjorth plus other cellos, this one remains the “special one” for him.’

Freda Swain at the piano in the early 1970s

SWAIN PHOTO COURTESY OF TIMON ALTWEGG

With the Henschel Quartet being seasoned champions of unjustly neglected works, it is unsurprising to see a repertoire rarity in their 30th anniversary programme. Yet their choice of composer prompts questions of the ‘who’ and ‘why’ variety. Freda Swain appears to have deliberately cultivated obscurity, aided by her belligerent dealings with colleagues and decision to live in isolation in an Oxfordshire wood. Born in Portsmouth in 1902, she excelled as a pianist during childhood and later enrolled at the RCM, where she was among the last of Stanford’s composition pupils. Having married her piano professor, Arthur Alexander, and joined him on the RCM’s staff in 1924, she attracted attention during the interwar years with works such as The Harp of Aengus (1925) for violin and orchestra. Her output of more than 450 compositions, taken up by such luminaries as Scottish violist William Primrose and Danish violinist Henry Holst (a former leader of the Berlin Philharmonic), includes a magnificent Solo Violin Sonata, first performed by May Harrison at Wigmore Hall in 1933, the piano quartet The Sea (1938) and the folklike Song at Evening (1958) for viola and piano.

Swain’s star waned after the Second World War. Although she continued composing almost until her death in 1985, her gender, conservative musical language and retreat to a bungalow on Chinnor Hill all worked against her; her acerbic manner with prospective performers, meanwhile, served to alienate supporters and make enemies within London’s music scene. The Henschel Quartet was introduced to Swain by the Swiss pianist Timon Altwegg, whose immersion in her music began during his postgraduate studies at the RCM in the 1990s, after he met one of her former pupils; continued when he acquired eight large boxes of Swain’s manuscripts and the rights to her work; and deepened in the process of recording a landmark album of her piano pieces.

‘Of course, we’d never heard of Freda before Timon told us about her,’ says Henschel-Schwind. Swain’s First String Quartet, the ‘Norfolk’, she adds, caught the Henschel Quartet by surprise. ‘We couldn’t believe that something of such quality was not part of the repertoire. It’s obvious from the errors and other clues in the manuscript that the piece has never been performed, which is even more incredible! We know that Freda didn’t care who she offended, but it’s so sad that, for whatever reason, her first quartet has remained buried for a century.’ The Henschel will crown its anniversary trip to the UK by recording the ‘Norfolk’ Quartet, aptly enough in the Norfolk village of Old Creake, before returning home to present the work’s German premiere on 26 June as part of its own festival in Seligenstadt, a small town near Frankfurt am Main. It is set to give its first performance in Denmark this July at the Herlufsholm International Chamber Music Festival and will introduce the work to Japan when it visits in September.

‘Maybe it’s fanciful, but for me, Freda’s music has mystical qualities,’ says Henschel-Schwind. Certain passages in her quartet, she continues, offer strong markers of how they should be interpreted. ‘Others are a complete mystery. So we keep trying this, trying that, making many different attempts – some of which seem really convincing, but when we come back to it they don’t work. In new works for which they have no reference point in mind, four players will keep changing their individual interpretations and introduce many possible shades of colour, phrasing and expression. Every day we feel a little more at home in Freda’s music and become even more convinced that this piece should be part of the main repertoire. It’s too early to tell, but my feeling is that in her music there could be greater varieties of future interpretations to win audiences’ hearts – greater, even, than with some famous repertoire. Let’s hope that there will be many more performances, and that many other string quartets will introduce audiences to their ideas of Freda Swain.’