Leiden Shostakovich weekend

We’re still glowing from the fantastic weekend in Leiden - the stunning new chamber hall of the Almarktzaal - for the complete Shostakovich cycle. The audience was great, so enthusiastic and engaged throughout. Susanne Lammers is the perfect host: full of great energy and love for the music as well as her knowing her audience and trusting them with imaginative programming and innovative themes. Great plans for the future... 

This has really added to our sense of growing excitement in anticipation of the cycle this time next year at the Musiekgebouw, Amsterdam, which will be recorded live for release through Chandos the soon afterwards. It’s wonderful to have another chance to put these giants of the repertoire into our catalogue, 25 years after we first recorded them.  

2015 begins!

So great to be starting the season with a tour of Holland and Belgium, motherlands of two of the quartet, Daniel and Jacky. And what greets you as you enter International Gare de Midi in Brussels ? Our national hero, Tintin! 

Bruges was great - a concert in the round in a very beautiful chamber hall at the Concertgebouw, and we played 'musical chairs' so we could each face a different way for every piece on the programme. The first concert was in Overveen, a lovely small town with a thriving music society, which I discovered with great interest to be the home for several years of the great violinist Zoltan Szekely, exiled from Hungary in the '20s and offered a home, food and security here in return for concerts. ("l'art pour lard" as it was known!) He and fellow refugees actually founded this society and he became concertmeister of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, before fleeing the nazis and finally settling in Canada, where we had the good luck to study with him many years later.

Heading back into Holland now for concerts in Utrecht - in the wonderful newly developed Vredenburg - and in Leiden - the complete Shostakovich cycle over the coming weekend.

Sitting here on the train I'm looking back over the last year and trying to work out how I let this Blog slip off my radar so badly! The last entry was in 2013! Very bad…will try better this year. 2014 was indeed a bumper year with lots to report, so there was no excuse! The year was beautifully bookended by concerts in the fantastic Chamber Music Unwrapped season at Kings Place, London, where we are delighted to be quartet in residence. The series was a ground-breaking show-case of the top 50 chamber works as voted by the public and performed by many different groups. We had three concerts throughout the year, including two Beethovens, two Bartok and the two great clarinet quintets, with Michael Collins with whom we released a recording of the Brahms earlier in the year. 

We were also busy recording all the Zemlinsky quartets - what a fantastic and sadly neglected output. The release is this spring and will be accompanied by a day at King's Place at which we will perform the whole set. 

We also took part in the centenary celebrations of Andre Panufnik, also coinciding with the release of the string quartets and sextets, as well as a new work written for us by his daughter, Roxanna. Throughout the year we were delighted to meet and make friends with that wonderful family and to discover the music of this great man. Again, King's Place pulled off a brilliant event. 

As well as these home-based activities, we did a lot of travelling, most notably a return to Mexico for a really great tour. Starting in Oaxaca where we spent 10 days with lovely, talented and enthusiastic students of the fantastic 'Instumenta' festival. It is so heart-warming to come across such a well-organised and friendly festival, with the highest cultural values as well as a good sense of humour and adventure,and most of all great food and drink! Tomas Barreiro, Gustavo Martin and the team gave us such a great time.  And to top it all, an excursion in our one free afternoon to the top of Monte Alban, the extraordinary ancient city of the Zapotecs, which should surely be one of the wonders of the world.

Then on to Mexico City, Morelia and Leon, under the great care of the Anglo-Mexican Foundation completed a great couple of weeks.

We had a fabulous time in the autumn touring Sweden and Denmark, which meant several journeys over The Bridge, singing to ourselves the wonderful song that evokes so well the dark atmosphere of that brilliant TV series…

A few trips around Europe completed a really great year. Now embarking on another with exciting trips ahead, which I will do my best to report on… ;)

We've just performed the Wheel of 4Tunes concert for the last time – at least until it gets picked up again at some point in the future. Two lovely concerts in Wales and Dorset – Lower Machen and Beaminster Festivals. Brilliantly the promoters in the Lower Machen decided to let the audience vote for the last piece on the programme. No surprise that they chose Death and the Maiden! Then in Dorset, the Wheel chose the only piece that had never yet come up – Lavista's Reflecos de la Noche! And for the final work, Death and the Maiden again – a suitable ending to an amazing adventure. We have put the Wheel of 4tunes in storage now ( in my basement!) but there is a lot of interest for it elsewhere in the world so we hope to see it again soon. 

Now we are in Australia and embarking on the second of our Shostakovich cycles here. Melbourne was a triumph – we worked with students at the incredible ANAM conservatoire. The students performed with us in some of the quartets, performed some on their own, and left the rest to us. It was really a fantastic event. We are full of admiration for the adventurousness and ingenuity of all involved at this brilliant institution. Now we are in Sydney to repeat the cycle alone at the Opera House. Very much looking forward to it but we will miss our lovely students. Then on to Brisbane for another weekend of Shostakovich and before that working with the exciting group Topology again, who we have performed with twice now. 

Winter in Australia is pretty damp and chilly but the sun has just come up over Darling Harbour, so I may go out for a walk before our rehearsal begins. It's tough to know – from watching Wimbledon on the television – that London is enjoying a heatwave! Never mind – at least it helped Andy Murray to complete his triumph. It was wonderful to watch in the middle of the night after our final Shostakovich concert in Melbourne - I felt super patriotic.

Wow, we've just heard we got guest tickets to hear Tosca at the Opera House tomorrow night. That will be an absolute treat... Must go out now and get some air - the sun's actually beaming down now. What a city!

We've had some great reviews here so far – check out our Facebook page for the links.

Sent from my iPhone

 Lost and Found

In Holland for a fabulous six-concert tour of Wheel concerts with a new wheel made specially for these dates so we don't have to hoik it over and back from the UK. It looks great - quite a different design to the original, this will probably become our International Wheel and be shipped from one country to the next as the UK one stays on home territory.

So... the concerts have been going really well, the Wheel serving up some great programmes, audiences getting right into the spirit of it, promoters loving it. Each night we’ve been winding down in some great restaurants and tonight is no exception - we’re in Haarlem for the penultimate concert and the restaurant stayed open specially for us. After a delicious meal we returned to the car in the town centre parking garage to find that several cars, including our own, had been victims of smash-and-grab. The horrifying discovery that two bags were gone from the boot - one containing my laptop, passport and various personal things, the other, much more shockingly, containing all the viola and cello parts for ALL the music to be performed in these concerts. That means 40 string quartets, the parts we’ve worked from and carried with us for many years, some going back as far as the beginning of the group in 1972. It’s hard to explain the enormity of this - any musician will know the importance of having your own well-loved marked part, with fingerings, bowings, cues, as well as clever page-turn tricks, all essential for a smooth performance under pressure, especially when the Wheel can throw up any one of 40 works! We were devastated. After chasing madly round the immediate vicinity of the garage, we made our way to the Police Station where we spent the next 3 hours filing a report. It appeared we were not alone - this had been a professional job and 7 or 8 other cars had been done at the same time. Though they got a laptop from us, we had to laugh at the image of the thieves discovering only clothes and string quartet parts in the other bag! “Goddammit Henk, these are only viola and cello parts too!”....The lovely young man from the concert hall who stayed with us till 3.30 am was a star - buying us tea and coffee to keep us going, helping us get phone numbers etc. to start the recovery process from this horrible event.

We made our sorry way back to Utrecht, cold air blowing in through the broken side window, no-one saying much. Bed at 5 and up at 8 to start contacting the British Embassy for a replacement passport to get me home the next day - had to go back to Amsterdam and wait three hours while it was processed. In the meantime the others were busy sourcing replacement music, not only for tonight’s performance but also for the many concerts in the coming weeks, through buying, borrowing and downloading. Our manager contacted the media and had an amazing response - TV, radio, Online media and newspapers all grabbed the story and ran. We had appeals for help in finding the stolen bags, we offered a reward for anyone who did, and we had literally hundreds of messages of sympathy from colleagues worldwide offering to send music. To ease the stress we decided to offer a fixed programme for that night’s concert - pieces which could have come up on the Wheel - the audience were delighted and full of compassion for our plight (especially me in a borrowed dress and ill-fitting shoes - our concert clothes were taken too...). Amazingly, when we were about to perform Shostakovich 8 we asked a lovely man from the front row to spin the Wheel just for fun, and it landed on... Shostakovich 8!! 

The next day we made our weary way home and began the huge task of assembling all the missing music for the following concerts. This meant getting composers to email their scores, searching through all our spare music, asking friends for lends, and buying the rest. The free weekend was not as relaxing as we’d hoped... And the heart sinks as you look at the virgin score, all that work needing to be replicated in the next days.

The title of this Blog suggests that there was a happy twist - and that was indeed the case. On Monday morning as I was about to start the long-winded process of filing an insurance claim, (how do you explain the value of all this music to a loss-adjuster??), I got a call from a Dutch policeman. He said he had a couple of bags belonging to me, with some clothes, passport, various things including...“sheets of music”! The excitement in my voice probably seemed over the top to him, but I tried to keep calm as I asked how many “sheets”? “Lots”, he said. YIPPEE!! Incredibly, this guy knew nothing of our filed report but had been attending a road traffic accident on a flyover when he spotted lots of dumped cases in the wasteland under the bridge. There was a canal they were probably aiming for but, happily for all their victims, they missed! 

We had a few more days of suspense before finding out what we had actually recovered. Our manager was in London so couldn’t go and sign for the stuff till Thursday, by which time we were already in Glasgow for  a couple of days’ teaching and our next Wheel concert. This being a lunchtime hour-long show, there was less pressure to have all the music to hand, but nevertheless the wonderful staff at RCS sourced the last remaining missing works from their library. We were able to play everything the wheel selected and even added a little extra as an opener. All went well and the audience had a ball, but I was still eager for the tantalizing possibility of getting my own precious parts back. Unbelievably, though Constance our manager moved with fantastic speed to collect the stolen goods and get the music to DHL, they managed to mess up somewhat, so instead of the music being at home on our return we had to wait till Monday, exactly a week since hearing of the recovery, to finally receive that parcel, open it and find... ALL the missing music! Not a sheet out of place, as if the thieves had carefully packed it back knowing its importance!

This delivery came just in time for us to set off for Birmingham where we had some masterclasses to give at the Conservatoire followed by another Wheel performance that night in the fabulous Town Hall. It was lovely to have all the original parts back but we’ve also had our eyes opened to the freshness of a performance from an unmarked part that isn’t totally dog-eared. Some of those old parts may be consigned to the archive...and we’ll definitely get round to scanning the entire 250-odd string quartets repertoire one day and saving it to a memory stick. Wonder how long that would take...

For anyone wondering, we did of course have our instruments in the restaurant with us. I have no idea what possessed me to leave that bag in the boot of the car, but I never would have thought it necessary to haul cases of music around with us for security. As one supportive Tweeter commented in response to a rather ungenerous Tweet berating us for being so stupid as to leave all that precious music in the car, “Yes, I suppose the only option left open to touring quartets is to eat at drive-in restaurants!”

What a life-affirming story this was. We’d like to send out many heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped along the way and for all the support and generosity of spirit we were lucky enough to receive.

Old post which was never published - from February '12

Embarking on the Wheel of 4tunes concerts, which is one of the projects we've devised to celebrate our 40th anniversary, is a scary prospect. The lovely team at Lancaster's Great Hall are completely up for the occasion - the Wheel has been assembled and lit beautifully so it can be seen from all parts of the hall. Our music is strewn over the stage in piles of ten - one for each section of the concert - and the realization that we will only know what we are about to perform when the wheel is spun is beginning to dawn, terrifyingly. Fiona, tonight's promoter, will be the first to spin - we hold our breath as she gives the wheel a determined yank - Daniel films it on his iPhone. The wheel slows and comes to a stop on Purcell's 'Chaconne' - we find the music, take up our positions and the concert begins. Everyone seems delighted - we perform three more times in the coming days to audiences excited by the spontaneity. Wheel concerts are booked across Europe and beyond throughout this anniversary year - they'll only get easier and more enjoyable.

It's hard to believe that as 11- and 12-year-olds back in 1972 we were creating something which would keep us busy for so many years to come. My brother Mike, Ian, Alex and I were as keen and eager for this incredible music as any teen band getting together in their dad's garage after school. Looking in my old diaries I witness the excitement I felt when we decided to learn a particular work, or traveling down to London for a competition we would raid the huge oak shelves of Foyle’s music department, spending our pocket money on expanding our library. Many years later when the new Barenreiter Edition of Beethoven landed on the doormat I felt the same sense of excitement - finally ensembles were being offered exceptional insight into these incredible works, freed from the delusions of earlier editions which sought to interpret Beethoven's detailed and specific markings, fabricating dynamics, bowings, articulation to the detriment of the music.
Shostakovich has been a huge part of our lives from the very beginning - No.11 being one of the first works we ever performed in ’72 - and we grew up as the later works were being written and premiered. When Paul joined in ’82 we gradually got all fifteen under our belts and gave our first complete cycle in the QEH in 1989, followed by recordings for Teldec. With Andrew’s and then Daniel’s arrival we have always kept these works close to our hearts - it is wonderful therefore that they will form part of our anniversary celebrations, with cycles over one weekend in several cities from London's King's Place to Sydney Opera House.
This anniversary season has been a whirlwind so far, with the launch of our exclusive contract with Chandos and the release of two cds as well as many exciting concerts. The first cd is a celebratory collection of our favourite encore arrangements, Petits Fours; the
second features Debussy’s wonderful quartet (possibly my favourite quartet of them all... yikes), the early Piano Trio and Danses Sacres et Profanes. To be joined by the fabulous Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Sioned Willliams and Chris Laurence for this cd has been a treat. Over the years we’ve recorded for various labels, including our own, but now feel really settled in the Chandos stable and look forward to many exciting projects ahead.
We have several masterclass events lined up for the season too - have just visited Glasgow and Cardiff colleges, with some London ones to come in the spring, as well as Sweden, France and Holland.
Coming to the end of this busy period which started in Japan and ended in Madrid: I'm on a flight back home after performing in the Auditorio Nacional last night. Just had a fun time with the airport staff - walking towards the gate I am spotted by Paco, a ground crew member, who claims I'm an angel from heaven and perhaps I should play a tune for them while we wait for boarding to begin. This takes me back to times when mouthy bus drivers in Middlesbrough would see me struggling on board and shout "shoulda taken up the flute" or "gizza tune"... But this time it seems genuine and something makes me want to oblige. I take out my cello and play The Swan for him... he’s beside himself with joy, the staff and waiting passengers applaud, I ask for an upgrade... it’s granted!

Another mistakenly unpublished - from April 2010!

May 3rd. Today we head North. Well, we think we're going north....in terms of Sweden of course...hardly. Someone told us that if you flip Sweden over you get to Milano! Anyway we're in Umea (Umayo) where there's a big festival going on. Great fun..sure; unless you're looking for a hotel room. Our management left it a bit late booking so we end up in a motel-like joint on the outskirts of town. Still the concert was nice and taken by Swedish Radio

Next day was a quick get=out and head another 3hrs north. Surely now we're actually north!!??...hmmm.....sorry, no, it's only Lulea. The reporter I spoke to from the local paper made me laugh. 'You're here at just the wrong time. We have a beautiful archipelago here but the ice has melted too much to drive over, however there's still too much to be able to take a boat!!' Interesting situation.

Now here, the hotel makes up for the crumby motel. Next door is one of the best restaurants in all of Sweden and opposite there's a mega fishing shop....brill !(excuse the pun)

Can't resist a chat with the guy in the fishing shop who doesn't disappoint in being hugely entertaining to chat with. Turns out it's still mostly ice-fishing at that time of year; not really my scene. One bizarre thing he told me was that at his favourite, nearby river, he had been hooking spring salmon for 10yrs before he actually managed to land one!! They're so fresh, strong and crazed that's it's almost impossible to get them in. He said it's not uncommon to see people running full-belt down the bank or in some cases even swimming after their quarry!!! We're much more civilised in Donegal I told him, emerald green with envy.

Next day, up at the crack of dawn as usual to fly back to the big smoke for an afternoon gig. Stockholm is a most enchanting place and the hall there is simply stunning. The sort of acoustic you dream about. Now despite advertising it at the wrong time on the wrong day we manage to sell-out. After the show, Mats, our lovely manager takes us to a spiffing eating place where we were invited to order whatever we pleased except that we were going to start with herring-Swedish-style. What arrived was a dish from heaven. Served in 5 different ways and accompanied by a most exraordinary beer.....one of the culinary highlights of my life.

In March we went Zurich-Stockholm, seems only right that in May we go Stockholm-Zurich. A brief train-ride brings us to glorious Lucerne. Every time I go there I feel like I've entered a story-book. It is so beautiful. Another afternoon gig (not a bad thing at all...love 'em ). We still find time for a delicious lunch overlooking the river.....idyllic.

After the concert we have a taxi waiting at the stage door to whisk us off, back to Zurich Airport for the evening Easy home. Everything worked like clockwork. The taxi was great, check-in, trouble-free; waved good-bye to Daniel, who was off somewhere else and even had time for a beer and (would you believe it) curry at the gate.....amazing. Our flight was at 9.30pm and at 9.10pm a little sign illuminated above the gate. We struggled to read it at first but soon realised the full import of it's content.....CANCELLED. Nothing was said, no-one from the airline appeared....the ash had finally got us.

For anyone at our concert at Galway Festival on July 17 who was wondering what we played (we only realised half way through that there were no programmes!) it was:

Purcell 'Chaconne'
Tanaka 'At the Grave of Beethoven'
Respighi 'Quarteto Dorico'

Schubert 'Quartetsatz'
Puccini 'Crisantemi'
Debussy Quartet

encore: Debussy 'Beau Soir'

It's a really exciting looking festival so we were sorry to only be there over-night.

In the last month we've also been to Newbury, Portsmouth and Nailsworth festivals in the UK, and the wonderful Risor Chamber Music Festival in Norway. What an amazing group of musicians and a beautifully organised festival - incredible meals on-board a ship docked in the adorable little port, eclectic and varied concerts from early morning to late at night in a variety of amazing venues, helpers for whom no job was too much trouble willing to solve any problem, and a bit of nice weather which coming from the UK meant a lot. The Wheel made a few appearances in the portable form of the Brodsky Brolly - Paul's brilliant idea to get around the problem of transporting our rather heavy and cumbersome Wheel of 4Tunes. When the rain threatened to come and spoil the final night's open-air concert, it became quite an apt addition to proceedings.

Following this we came back to a Live Onto Radio 3 Wheel Concert for the amazing City of London Festival, also celebrating an anniversary - its 50th - and they really rose to the challenge of making this concert work for a radio audience as well as to the very appreciative and involved audience in the sumptuous Draper's Hall. I have to say it was extremely nerve-wracking to spin the Wheel and play whatever it threw at us straight onto live radio - but the Wheel was kind and we were happy with its selection.

Now we have one more concert - in the Spain's glorious Segovia - before a few weeks' holiday. Hooray!