Banstead with a spring in its step

Just came from lovely Banstead in Surrey, where spring had truly begun. The sun was beaming down on this pretty village as we arrived and we enjoyed a stunning sunset from the dressing room window as we prepared for the concert. Wonderful Katya Apekisheva joined us for the Brahms Piano Quintet - how lucky we are to have so many such fabulous works in our repertoire. She was particularly magnificent in the long theme with which she opens the slow movement. Sublime!

Great audience. We gave them a little encore - the Shostakovich Waltz from Jazz Suite no.2...with a twist - quotes from the composer's works for cello solo make unexpected  appearances throughout - guess who made the arrangement! (Look for our Petits Fours cd to hear it...) We were delighted to have some very enthusiastic youngsters in the audience who came backstage afterwards looking for autographs and perhaps to get their hands on that arrangement!

A warm reception in Leamington Spa.

We had a very nice time in Leamington Spa, performing the Beethoven/Zemlinsky programme to rapt attention and enthusiastic applause. Such a great audience - seemed to take in every nuance and emotion and would have been open to any amount of challenging repertoire.
The dressing room was a first for me - in the Pump Rooms (beautiful building by the way) the ladies' changing room is shared with the caterers, so I had an ice-cream freezer as my companion. Warming up literally as the heat pumped out by the air exchange from the motor ensured true spa treatment temperatures! However, the charming caterers provided a lovely tea with excellent home-made cakes. Mmmm…

Trees, Walls and Cities to be set in stone!

Spent the weekend in Oxford at the Jacqueline du Pre concert hall performing and then recording the song cycle we commissioned in 2013 from almost 20 collaborators - composers and poets - for the Derry-Londonderry City of Culture and the City of London Festival. Ian Richie, who was one of the brains behind the whole concept and materialisation of the work, came to hear the performance so there was a real spirit of reunion. Lore Lixenburg is such a hoot and a fantastic artist, to sing in so many languages and be able to sound like a medieval chanter one minute and a mid-European peasant the next! On returning home I was delighted to receive this email from a family who attended the concert:

Dear Brodsky Quartet

Thank you for the amazing concert you gave in Oxford last Friday. I keep thinking about it. We were there with our two children. My daughter summed it up when said that you "played better than I thought it was possible to play!"

Warm regards,

Jane

This kind of feedback makes our work more even meaningful and satisfying.

On the banks of the beautiful Danube

Just returned from beautiful Budapest and its glorious Liszt Academy Solti Hall. We got a great response to a challenging programme - including Beethoven 131 and Zemlinsky 2 - from an audience which seemed well able to handle the challenge. Their rhythmic hand clapping which seems to go through a series of complicated pattern changes, like a Kodaly Method training exercise, is wonderful to be on the receiving end of! What an amazingly vibrant cultural tradition this city holds. Sight-seeing the morning after the concert, up the funicular to the incredible views from the castle and a warming coffee and apple tart in the ramparts cafe to escape the icy wind, I was inspired by the sense of history at this crossroad of central Europe… And yet, speaking to locals, I got a real sense of loss that entry into the new Europe has somehow taken a little of the identity and heart out of this place, and certainly many of its young people seeking jobs elsewhere, leaving it somehow feeling empty and tired. Hopefully as the dust settles it will recover and rediscover its national identity and pride.

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.

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