Kronos Quartet in Ireland: ‘Every note, every piece we play, every composer, every collaboration - everything has meaning’

Kronos Quartet, the United States’ best-known string quartet, famous for its crossover projects and advocacy of new music, has been celebrating its 50th-anniversary season with a Five Decades tour. It began in Bogotá, Colombia, last September, and will end at the Ravinia Festival, in Illinois, in June. The National Concert Hall show in Dublin, next month, comes between Toronto and Hamburg, with significantly different programmes each night.

Given the anniversary, I ask the players about their ideals and experiences of concerts, programmes, venues, rehearsals and favourite parts of their repertoire. I use the word “perfect” in a question, and the group’s leader and artistic director, David Harrington, puts me in my place by offering John Cage’s 4′33″, his notorious silent piece, as the perfect concert.

He also demurs at the idea of a perfect programme, and offers instead a big plug. ”Why don’t we just look at the programme we’re going to bring to Dublin?” he says. “So we’re going to start off with a bang, right? With Jlin’s piece. Every cellist that comes to that concert is going to want to have her or his own bass drum after they hear Paul [Paul Wiancko, the quartet’s cellist] and Kronos play Jlin’s Little Black Book.

“Then, after that, we’re moving into music of Terry Riley. And we’re all going to be ordering a meal as we’re playing Terry’s piece,” he says, referring to Lunch in Chinatown, from Riley’s work, This Assortment of Atoms – One Time Only! “We’re going to be playing Peni Candra Rini, and there’s nothing like Peni’s music in all of string-quartet music that I know of. She’s accomplished something that, to me, is very significant and beautiful and wonderful. Additionally, she’s a great singer.

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“Then we’re going to be playing music of Sun Ra that Terry Riley, Sara Miyamoto and Paul Wiancko brought into our world. It’s called Kiss Yo’ Ass Goodbye. Then Nicole Lizée’s ZonelyHearts. It was in an interview, something like the one we’re doing right now, only I think it was an Irish radio interview. I wish I could remember the name of the interviewer who said to me, ‘Have you heard the music of Nicole Lizée?’ I hadn’t. And he sent me Nicole’s music.

I am very, very happy that two members, two great members, are joining the group, and they’re very competent and they grew up listening to our music

—  Departing Kronos member, Hank Dutt

“That’s one way we get to know new things. People recommend composers. Then music of Laurie Anderson and Sigur Rós. And we’re going to end up with Different Trains by Steve Reich. So hopefully we’re going to take our audience through a large section of sounds, feelings, textures.”

Wiancko is the newest arrival in the group, having become a member only last year. Kronos was already 10 years old when he was born, in 1983. He describes joining as “like a dream come true, like a dream I didn’t know I was allowed to have, to be honest, to join the Kronos Quartet. I grew up listening to the group, and my whole generation – my colleagues these days, especially the ones focused on new music – we grew up swimming in the channels that were dug by the Kronos Quartet. That’s extremely satisfying and an honour to be a part of, and to understand both sides of it as a performer and a composer.”

[ A trad take on Terry Riley’s In C: ‘It’s totally out of the comfort zone for all of us’ ]

Wiancko had contributed as a composer to the group’s 50 for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire project, 50 specially commissioned works with free recordings, as well as scores and parts, available online – material that has been downloaded more than 20,000 times and in 98 countries. He had stood in for his predecessor, Sunny Yang, while she was on maternity leave. So he was already part of the family when he formally became a member.

He sounds as if he’s still genuinely awestruck. For him, “every Kronos programme is perfect. Everything I’ve ever wanted to hear as an audience member is encapsulated in every Kronos show. Every note, every piece we play, every composer, every collaboration, everything has meaning. Everything in some way or another has significance, either in the messaging or the music in what the composer is going through in their life. There’s just no wasted airtime in a Kronos concert. There’s just no time, you know, to dilly-dally or to play fluffy, meaningless things. You know, everything is beautiful and exciting. And, more importantly, it just has that extra layer of music that has something to say. So, to me, every concert is perfect.”

The quartet’s second violinist, John Sherba, and viola player, Hank Dutt, are at all times more measured in what they say. Both are also moving on at the end of the season. Sherba explains his decision. “First of all, I’d like to say that the members who are replacing Hank and I” – Gabriela Díaz and Ayane Kozasa – “they’re really terrific musicians and players. So I feel the quartet is going to be in great hands as it moves forward. And that really, really makes me very, very happy, you know, that I can watch this from afar and see the group continue.

“As for my decision, it was actually very simple. It wasn’t difficult for me to make. Basically, I wanted more family time, less airplane fumes for my 69-year-old body, more time home, a freer calendar.” He has what sounds like supreme confidence about his future. “I think about my life as a whole. I started playing violin when I was four, which means I was a pretty curious four-year-old, you know, and that’s been part of my personality. I’m just very thankful that I’m a curious person.”

Dutt says, “For me it’s a bittersweet decision, for I love Kronos and I love the mission that Kronos has and I love playing and I love performing. The problem I have is the travel is just so difficult for me and my body at this point. It’s the 50th season, which is a wonderful celebration this year. We’re playing in great places, and I’m able to see old friends and actually say goodbye to audiences that I’ve been able to play for before. And, like John, I am very, very happy that two members, two great members, are joining the group, and they’re very competent and they grew up listening to our music. And, you know, these young kids can play circles around us old guys anyway.

“When Joan [Joan Jeanrenaud, the quartet’s cellist from 1978 to 1999] left the group, we had been together 20 years. And that was such a comfortable group. You know, we all felt great about each other. And to change someone in the midst of that was very, very difficult for me... Anybody that was auditioning just didn’t sound like Joan. They didn’t talk like Joan or whatever. But since we changed, I learned so much from each cellist that was in the group. They brought something new.”

Harrington adds a different perspective. “I just want to make it clear that you do not replace Hank’s 46 years of total involvement in Kronos. And you don’t replace John’s 45 years. What a group can do is pivot and find something new and find itself in a new way. And that’s what I’m intending that Kronos will be doing.”

Sherba takes the perfect-concert question from an audience perspective. “What brought me to a concert can be many, many different concepts. It could be the composition. It could be, if it’s a violinist, maybe I wanted to watch the violinist’s fourth finger. Maybe I wanted to hear the violinist’s instrument. Maybe I wanted to hear the violinist’s strings. The baggage that brings me to that concert is a very personal thing, and it’s constantly changing. What is the perfect concert?”

And as a performer? “I think that’s constantly changing when I’m on stage. Let’s say I’m having a rough time with a particular rhythm, and it goes well, everything clicks really beautifully. I’m very happy. The other pieces, maybe there were mishaps there. But I got that rhythm correct. And I had worked really, really diligently, really hard on it. I listened to other people’s suggestions and incorporated all of that. And it went well. And I walk off stage and I tell you, I’m smiling. But was it the perfect concert?”

My idea of a perfect performance is actually something that happens very often, which is just we’re all healthy, and we’re all communicating, and we’re all sort of just in the right headspace together

—  Paul Wiancko

Dutt says, “I find that, for me, when we work hard in rehearsal and attempt to get a cohesive and solid interpretation of a piece, and when we play it on stage and there is this intent to do it the way we rehearsed, but also to elevate each of us in how we’re playing – I find having that focus and also that drive and also the group intent is very exciting for me. That’s a high.

“And when someone does something spontaneous and you follow it, that to me is a real high in a performance. It may not happen the whole performance, but when it happens in a piece it’s so exciting. And that’s one of the reasons I play chamber music, is to be inspired by my colleagues. It’s almost like when you’re playing tennis with someone better than you are, and it elevates you to new heights. That’s what I feel is really terrific about a quartet, that it can do that for everybody.”

Wiancko chimes in. “My idea of a perfect performance is actually something that happens very often, which is just we’re all healthy, and we’re all communicating, and we’re all sort of just in the right headspace together. When that happens, you know, we get to share the things that need to be shared and express composers’ ideas in the way that composers wanted them to be expressed. I think just the format is kind of perfect in itself.”

Harrington takes over. “The perfect... I’m not thinking of, like, a concert that I’m involved with necessarily, but let’s say a musical experience. What I’m looking for would be those sorts of experiences that make me want more, more life, more music. They challenge me to take larger, bolder steps in the future. And I’ve been really lucky in my life so far that I’ve encountered music like that and people like that, that have created those kinds of experiences. And, you know, when you hear a composer who’s done that, you want to bring them into the work that you get to do and that you will do in the future.

“And so is it perfection? No. But I have found certain notes that people have made that I find to be so beautiful. One of them I was just remembering this morning. If you listen to Fritz Kreisler’s Humoresque recording on the Edison cylinder – I think it’s from 1906 – that very first note, you know, the way he plays into that note, for me, is the essence of the violin. And ever since I heard that, I wanted to be able to do that.”

Kronos Quartet is at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on Sunday, May 12th