This happens just about every February. The gloom lifts, the days start to lengthen, the sun comes out, and the temperature rises. The daffodils which popped up their greenery a couple weeks ago suddenly have their colorful clown collars on, and my brain goes straight out the window! Add to this the fact that we’re not working (at least at the Schnitz) this week, and it’s a brain cell bloodbath!
I’m knee-deep in listening to quartets on the iPod and looking at the scores as well. What I love about chamber music in general, and string quartets in particular, is that there are virtually infinite depths to plumb. You can easily spend an entire lifetime exploring and performing any of the great composers’ string quartets (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Ravel, Shostakovich, Bartók), never mind trying to play them all. Then there are the isolated works which might not rise to the highest levels of genius (Janacek, Tchaikovsky, Wolf, Sibelius, Verdi, Grieg), and then there are the more recently composed works which have not had the tests of time quite yet (Adams, Kurtag, Ligeti, Kernis, Rorem, Schnittke). What a mind-boggling array of great repertoire!
On top of that, there are so many incredibly gifted young string quartets (Belcea, Miro, Hagen, Fry Street, Chiara, Pacifica) out there ready to take up the mantle from the preceding generations of great quartets (Berg, Guarneri, Juilliard, Emerson, Amadeus, Takacs). The sheer amount of chamber music talent is a challenge for both audiences and performers (competition and overcrowding), but it’s also seemingly a new golden age of the string quartet in both Europe and North America.
Ok, time to get back to work, and stop looking wistfully outside at the sunshine!