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Like love, chamber music involves both individuality and togetherness. In a string quartet the separate voices—violins, viola, cello—are meant to blend in harmony, but not to blur into an amorphous composite. Eliciting the “voice of the quartet” is an art achieved over time; a process that will be approached differently by every ensemble.
A free concert at Stony Brook Southampton on Saturday, June 7, at 4 p.m. in the Duke Lecture Hall, will present three carefully selected young string quartets that are engaged in the study and practice of this sophisticated balancing act. The concert is the culmination of the Emerson String Quartet’s International Chamber Music Workshop, an intensive, week-long session in which the seasoned professionals of the Emerson, the quartet-in-residence at Stony Brook, offer coaching and master classes along with discussion of performance technique, concert programming and the historical background of their music.
The participating quartets, chosen from hundreds of applicants worldwide, are the Cameleon from Vienna, Austria; the Hausman from Kent, Ohio; and the Jasper from Houston, Texas. The concert program will include repertoire of the Classical and Romantic eras. The specific works to be performed are still being chosen as coaching and rehearsals continue at Stony Brook’s main campus. Each quartet was asked to prepare two pieces from a list of works by Mozart, Haydn, Brahms, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, and Schumann.
The Emerson String Quartet will not perform, but its members will be present to hear the concert and to meet and mingle with the audience at a reception after the concert, starting at about 6 p.m.
The three quartets were chosen because their level of accomplishment shows them to be “ready to do the kind of intensive study offered by the Emersons,” Bärli Nugent, program director of the workshops and assistant dean at the Juilliard School in New York City, explained in a telephone interview.
“It is fascinating how each group differs from the other … and it is critically important that each quartet find its own path, its own way,” Ms. Nugent said. “We would like the audience to listen—really listen—for the unique quality of each group, its individual identity. My hope is it will not be seen as a competition.”
Ms. Nugent also encourages audience interaction with the musicians after the concert. “We are having a lovely reception afterward … we definitely want people to ask questions, to talk with these performers, get to know them.”
In Ms. Nugent’s view, a “total immersion” workshop such as the bi-annual sessions led by the Emerson String Quartet, offers “incredibly rich results due to a different pace” of learning from the steady, day-to-day work every group practices. Interaction between the members of the three quartets is built into structure of the program as well. Although each group has its own rehearsal room, members do not live in the same house. Groups are “broken up,” and assigned to housing with musicians they might never have met before, so that they will mix and get to know each other. “Links formed now will last,” Ms. Nugent predicts. “It’s cultural diplomacy.”
The quartet which has traveled the farthest to attend and perform is the Cameleon from Vienna, whose members are Polish musicians studying in Austria. Founded two years ago, the quartet has received the Bela Bartok and Ignaz Pleyel Awards at the 17th International Summer Academy Vienna-Prague-Budapest, among other honors. The ensemble is a member of Yehudi Menuhin’s “Live Music Now,” and is planning to enter competitions all over Europe in the coming year.
The Hausman String Quartet, now based at Kent State University in Ohio, was formed four years ago at New Jersey’s LyricaFest music festival, making its debut with the Lyrica Boston Chamber Music Players. In addition to performance and teaching, the Hausman Quartet musicians are advocates for new music and community engagement, and have worked to bring creative musical programs to children with special needs in various regions of the United States.
The Jasper String Quartet is currently the graduate quartet-in-residence at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and will continue their studies at Yale University in the fall. The ensemble has recently won three prestigious prizes—the grand prize and audience prize at the 2008 Plowman Chamber Music Competition, the silver medal at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, and the grand prize at the Coleman Competition. Originally formed at Oberlin Conservatory in 2003, the ensemble is dedicated to presenting both standard repertoire and contemporary music.
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