Quartett Blog

Recordings

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:10:11 +0100

Here we are “in the deep mid-winter”, and the Carmina Quartet has been particularly busy with recordings – brand-new and in front of the mike; editing recently made recordings; mourning missed opportunities; and brainstorming for the next round of projects.

Just after the new year we traveled to Lübeck to record clarinet quintets (Brahms and Mozart) for Sony Classical with Wolfgang and Sabine Meyer – I more or less went straight from my Christmas visit in Ohio to recording in Lübeck; Matthias had been holding down the fort in Zürich, and keeping his primarius’ chops in shape for this important recording.

Lübeck seemed magical and otherworldly – covered in snow, with short days and twilit afternoons. We recorded in a hall in the Hochschule, which is only a few blocks away from the home of Sabine Meyer and her husband, Reiner Wehle, as well as the simple hotel where we were staying. We spent nearly every evening after recording at Sabine and Reiner’s home – a row-house in the old city of Lübeck which is under “Denkmalschutz” and full of impressive old stone and wood; but the atmosphere was really homey and warm, with comfortable corners to drink wine and gossip in, and candles glowing on the Christmas tree for the last few days of its glory.

Typically for us, recording is so exhausting and nerve-trying that we tend to go our separate ways as soon as the session is finished. This time around however was anything but typical: our recording engineer, Holger Urbach (who we’ve worked with for years, ever since the height of our DENON series) said (and I agree) that this was one of the most pleasant projects he had ever taken part in. Reiner took us all on a walking tour of Lübeck, Stephan and Holger bought Marzipan (ruining their appetites), and we ate in a restaurant where seamen and captains have been meeting for hundreds of years. Wolfgang is such a dear friend whom we have known for so long; I think this facilitated our entering into this intimate atmosphere with Sabine and Reiner as well – their hospitality and warmth was really striking.

It was deeply satisfying to be recording Brahms with Wolfgang. On the one hand, this is a masterpiece that we have been playing for decades, and know down to its toes; for us, it was a recording waiting to happen. On the other hand, we have played this work so often with Wolfgang that our interpretation has developed of a piece; it felt like recording with a fifth member of the Carmina Quartet.

Recording Mozart with Sabine was truly remarkable. We would play half of the slow movement, for instance, and the take would end with Holger (on the external mike) as well as the quartet gasping at the beauty of what she had just played. Then her eyes would light up and she would seem eager to do another take, inspired to out-do herself. She just seemed to flower like a rose in front of that microphone. After a quarter century of work, the Carmina Quartet has played with so many artists, with so many histories, reputations, and characters; younger and older than we; more and less established on the classical music scene. It was really satisfying to be experiencing exactly why Sabine has the towering reputation that she does.

Back in Zürich, we had the first edit to work on of a recording we made last June for cpo: Juon quintet and sextet with Oliver Triendl and Thomas Grossenbacher. June seems so long ago! It was fun to listen to this repertoire again; the recording sound was pleasant, and the Juon works fascinated us all over again – a curious mixture between Brahms and Shostakovich, if you can imagine that.

While we were hard at work on the Juon, we got some startling and sad news: our long anticipated DENON recording of Brahms quintet with Kyoko Tabe, which was to be made in Zürich at the end of January, was postponed (or cancelled, in the worst case) – it seems that DENON is having to submit to draconian financial measures forced upon them by the mega-company that owns them (Columbia something-or-other). I guess this was really traumatic for our recording engineer and friend at DENON, Hiroshi Kunisaki. We have really loved working with him for the last few years – he has an idealism, a passion for perfection, and a clear and incisive ear that was a real gift to us, in these cost-cutting times, as the market transforms itself into a shape we cannot yet see, and the record companies lose power and become shadows of their former selves. I hope he’s OK, and I hope we are able to collaborate again in the near future.

This means we are more invested in ever in our partnership with Sony Classical; we have lots of interesting ideas for upcoming projects – but I won’t let any cats out of the bag at this point!

So that’s all for now, folks – see you in the springtime (which, for me, officially starts on Feb. 23)!

Gigging in the German Boondocks

Mon, 7 Dec 2009 09:53:32 +0100

Hello, blog community – the Carmina Quartet has been intermittently gigging in Germany as November wound it’s way into December - I’m still having trouble believing that winter is really coming – it’s been so warm, and I have been too busy and wound up to register the seasonal rituals that are normally my inner signals at this time of year.

We drove for the first time in a while to Karlsruhe and back; we would have loved to check out Wolfgang Meyer’s bar and then spend the night, but Matthias had a rehearsal the next morning so we had to drive back after the concert. (Matthias is having a small “affair” with some other musicians – our friend Harry White’s group; I really enjoyed hearing Matthias play Ravel trio as an audience member: wow, he’s a good violinist!) The concert in Karlsruhe was fun (Haydn, Mendelssohn, Debussy) and the audience warm; and the drive home afterwards went fine – I am less eager to drive over 2 hours after a concert than I used to be, but in this case, I managed somehow to sleep almost until 10:00 on the morning of the concert (like a teenager!), so I was in extra-fine form. Our current driving music: Rachmaninoff preludes (Richter’s Carnegie Hall debut), and Brahms’ first piano concerto, with Claudio Arrau and the Concertgebouw orchestra. My whole family is having a “Brahms first piano concerto” obsession: does anyone have some good recordings to recommend? I am getting increasingly fond of this particular recording: an interesting energetic dialectic between a lush, rubato-laden pianist and a taut, disciplined orchestra.

Our next gig, out in the boondocks of greater Cologne, was an event we do periodically involving exploring the interface between excellence in music and excellence in business, as a part of seminars organized for leaders in business. I know, I know, this sounds pretty far-fetched; but the event repeatedly surprises us with a certain intensity and directness, as we interact with small, exclusive groups of people who are involved in professional activities that are, on the surface, far removed from our own. The high point of our program (hold on to your hats, now) involves a joint performance of these pillars of the business world and the Carmina Quartet, prepared in a rehearsal led by yours truly. In order to accomplish this (what wouldn’t I do for the Carmina Quartet!), I depend on skills I learned conducting a youth orchestra (from one of my secret parallel lives). However, as a basically shy person (particularly shy of men! Even more particularly shy of Business Men in Suits!), the only way I could originally pull this off was with some serious role playing - acting out some sort of caricature of a dominatrix; being very strict about perfect ensemble skills, etc. Lately however I have, even in this most bizarre corner of my life, been experiencing a sort of “life integration” – my more authentic self is daring to come out, and doing a fine job. In the most recent event, despite a certain necessarily tongue-in-cheek attitude to this rehearsal and “performance”, making music together with these business men (and a few women), I was astonished and touched to feel that some genuine need was being met, and a genuine intimacy was being created. The most satisfying aspect of all for me of this type of event remains, however, the reactions of my own Carmina colleagues – it cracks them up, seeing the extent to which I will go when I start out on the riff; the crazier I get, the more disbelieving and amused they get. And they never fail to be genuinely grateful – they know me well enough to know what a big step it takes for me to take that role.

We are now seriously rehearsing and practicing for the convergence of two big recordings in January (Sony Classical and DENON); aside from a few Christmas events, we are eating, breathing, and sleeping Brahms, Brahms, Brahms, and a side of Mozart. Chiara and I plan to visit my family in the US for a quick visit over the holidays – Matthias will stay home to practice extra hard, and be completely fit for our first recording (I will depend on my sleeping skills, my good nerves, and my viola status to get me through). I probably won’t be blogging again until 2010 – to all of you out there: “slide well” into the new year, as the Swiss say!

Happy 25th Birthday, Carmina Quartet!

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:20:43 +0100

We had a fantastic birthday celebration on Friday the 13th. It was almost overwhelming ahead of time, with the public crammed full with beloved friends of ours and VIPs from near and far (including some who fit both categories) – I hardly dared to step outside of our warm-up room; it reminded me of my own wedding. Once we were onstage however it felt great – the evening unfolded with a grace that felt inevitable. The sense of history was tangible, and the deep sense of connection with the audience was remarkable. I have to say, what started as a dream of Susanne’s (and pursued with an admirable sense of purpose by, principally, Susanne and her team – you know who you are) looks now like an event that just had to happen. Thank you so much, members of the Carmina Quartet Verein, and all of the many people who believe in us and have supported us over the years – I feel personally blessed to be playing viola in this string quartet in this lifetime, and an artistic endeavor like the Carmina Quartet can only survive and flourish with support like this – practical and emotional.

Now that Artur Godel, who emceed our birthday bash with such warmth and finesse, publically mentioned my blog, it’s extra important that I follow through on my commitment to being a live, active blogger; otherwise, how will I ever keep you all coming back for more? The last month has been particularly crazy for me in terms of non-bloggable activities (daughter: cello competition; student: cracked up); but that is really no excuse. I feel very at ease in this voice; as long as I can access this friendly, cheerful, slightly exhibitionistic story-teller side of myself, I’m ready to go.

Flashes from the day-to-day Carmina Quartet report:

Concert in Sierre – a lovely, traditional Quartet program (Haydn “Emporer”, Szymanowski, Schubert “Death and the Maiden”); and we are in such good form! The audience was so warm; three of us however have a bad conscience because we ran off far too quickly afterwards in order to catch a train. That meant Stephan was left behind holding the ball, trying to cover for the rest of us (usually the shoe is on the other foot, as insiders know). Given a do-over, we’d have organized this differently.

Upcoming projects: program with bass (Dvorak quintet, Strauss “Metamorphosen” in the arrangement for string septet) – a lot of rehearsal for one program, but fun music (Matthias is in seventh heaven over the Strauss). Tough rehearsal today (psychologically); I hope we get our act together tomorrow. Another nice quartet program coming up in Karlsruhe; and then our energies will shift in a major way to preparing the recordings planned for early 2010: Mozart and Brahms clarinet quintets (with Sabine and Wolfgang Meyer, for Sony Classical), and Brahms piano quintet and piano quartet (with Kyoko Tabe, for DENON) – lots of gorgeous, juicy repertoire.

That’s all for now folks – I’m burning the midnight oil, and it’s time to husband my energy and health for the busy time ahead.

On the road in Deutschlandsberg

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Hello, friends, family, fans, and whoever else is out there in Internet Land! The time has finally arrived to start on this blog-adventure; our highly anticipated Carmina Quartet website is about to debut online. Susanne asked me today what a blog actually is, and I realized that I don't really know - I am going to discover and create this as I go along, one step at a time.

We are on the road in Austria; the mood is good. Travelling by train with Susanne reminds me of the old days, when we used to trek back and forth across Germany for weeks at a time with a "Super-saver" group ticket. We were driven from Graz to Deutschlandsberg by Michael "no last name", who entertained us with amazing stories about Sviatoslav Richter, who apparently performed in Deutschlandsberg 7 times in the 1980s, often on as little as 3 days notice.

This series in Deutschlandsberg is something truly unique: great musicians have been appearing for decades in a unremarkable small hall in a provincial music school. The heart and soul of the series is Barbara Faulend (together with her side-kick, Michael); we met her years ago in Finnland (Matthias and I went swimming in a remote lake with her and the pianist Elizabeth Leonskaja –without clothes, if I remember rightly?!?). She is over 80 now, and still full of vital energy; I felt the same deep warm current when I greeted her that I remember feeling 18 years ago in Finnland.

The concert was a pleasure - we played the same program we will play tomorrow in Eisenstadt (Haydn/Bartok/Veress/Haydn). There were many of Stephan's students and colleagues in the audience; it was nice to see him operating on his "home turf", so to speak (or his second home, after Zürich) – he seemed happy, relaxed and strong.

Matthias and I had a distraction shortly before the concert, which (luckily) was quickly resolved: our daughter, Chiara, who is home alone, called, distraught, while we were catching a pre-concert nap in our hotel room. She was out running with our elderly retriever, Ginger; when they reached the woods, Ginger lost her head and took off, head-over-heels. Chiara of course feared the worst, but eventually met up with a kind woman, who had found Ginger, frantically searching for Chiara in another part of the forest.

We are now comfortably ensconced in our hotel in Eisenstadt (city of all things Haydn); we're looking forward to our concert tomorrow morning.

That's it for my First Blog: who knows where I'll be when I touch down again?