The workings of a professional string quartet are mysterious. The musical literature for quartet is both the greatest and most extensive in the area of chamber music and consequently the number of performers active in quartets is greater than for any other chamber combination. But the mystery remains. The chemistry of four individuals living and working in each other's pockets, in a relationship that stretches most normal boundaries of tolerance and dependence, is not easy to analyse.
The Borodin String Quartet is among the most venerable institutions in the field. It was founded more than half a century ago, in 1945, when its players were students at the Moscow Conservatoire; the current name was adopted in 1955. The longevity of the ensemble is in itself remarkable, but even more remarkable is the fact that one of the original members, cellist Valentin Berlinsky, still plays in the group.
Berlinsky's special position quickly became apparent when I met the Borodins in London recently. I asked first for each player's view of the specific attraction of working in a quartet, and it was Berlinsky (who speaks no English, but seems to understand enough to be going on with) who marshalled the responses, indicating, in a manner somewhere between master of ceremonies and teacher, who was to answer, when.
The first to speak was the leader, Ruben Aharonian. In spite of his title he is actually the player who has been with the group for the shortest time, and is one of the two English speakers. In spite of his good communication skills in English, he mostly chose to work through the group's viola player, Igor Naidin, who bore the burden of translation at our meeting. First of all, Aharonian declared, working in an orchestra is completely different "in all parameters" from working in a string quartet. To play in a quartet requires each member to work as hard as a soloist, "but with maybe four times the kind of high-profile qualities".
For second violinist Andrei Abramenkov, "the quartet is the way to show your individual qualities, your individual style of mind, because in the orchestra there is no individualism. The conductor is everything."
Naidin comments sharply on the orchestral musician's lot. "My point of view is that, as a soloist, you're doing one job, you do what you like. In the orchestra you do everything you don't like. In the quartet, there is the possibility to be at the same time a soloist and also be accompanied by people who function as soloists. So, for me it's the best way to be a musician."
Berlinsky points out that working in a quartet is not just a way of presenting your thoughts, your style of playing or your way of being a musician. "The person who is able to play in a quartet should be seriously ill by the quartet virus." He says that the great French quartet leader, Lucien Capet, maintained that when trying to find colleagues for a quartet, "first of all he was looking for the human, for the person, and second only for the musician".
Many of the group's answers are given in short English sentences which arise out of much longer conferring in Russian. We skirt around questions about the greatest challenges for a quartet (the size of the repertoire and its diversity), the particular rewards (for Berlinsky "when I see my colleagues think our soul, everything, belongs to the quartet"), the marriage-like complexity of living and working together, day-in, day-out (Naidin says: "When you have all the same people playing day by day, year by year, definitely the results become better and you get to feeling each other, as we say, by the half-bar").
The Borodins' days divide up into private practice and communal rehearsal - the latter flexible according to the demands of the music they're working on. There's not much argument when they work together - not even, it seems, a great deal of discussion. If someone voices an idea, the others will pick it up quickly, and they prefer to communicate through their playing. More than once, Berlinsky dampens this discussion by declaring what goes on in rehearsal to be "our professional secret".
There's little reticence, though, when, on the general topic of changes in a quartet's personnel, he makes a bitter reference to "betrayal" with regard to people who leave "without any special circumstances or physical condition or force majeure" - a clear indication of his feelings about some of the membership upheavals he has lived through over the years.
Aharonian, a mere two-year-old in quartet terms, says the difficulties of changeovers affect everybody, old and new. "In 1996 and 1997 I was only a beginner, a newcomer for quartet art," and the work was ceaseless, no rest or intermission, not even on Sundays. Naidin, the next most recent arrival, recalls that, as he had studied with members of the Borodin Quartet, suddenly to have to be one was as daunting a challenge as he could imagine. Yet, as Aharonian puts it, "the work is our problem. The result on the concert stage, the reception during the concert, is what is most important."
The Borodins are clearly proud of the musicians they have collaborated with over the years - "legendary giants among musicians". Berlinsky reels off names, not all of them familiar in the West, beginning with the oldest generation: Neuhaus (Richter's teacher); Goldenweiser (dedicatee of Rachmaninov's Second Suite for two pianos); Oborin; Zak; Flier; Yudina; Richter; Gilels; Rostropovich; Oistrakh; Bashmet; Tretyakov; and Virsaladze. Aharonian attempts to start a list of non-Russians - Martha Argerich, Andras Schiff - but Berlinsky ignores this. Aharonian, too, speaks with evident pleasure of working more than once on the same piece, adjusting to, say, the Brahms Piano Quintet, with different pianists. "Sometimes," Berlinsky adds, "we don't need to adjust to new people. It's the other way around."
The Borodins liken the enriching experience of these collaborations to a form of study. "It was a school of music," Berlinsky says, "especially with Richter." It would take a book, he explains, to describe that particular experience. Over the years, the Borodins worked on around 25 pieces with Richter, and the Schumann Piano Quintet, their last collaboration, was also the last work recorded by Richter. This final collaboration will be released on CD later this year.
Rehearsal with Richter, Berlinsky says, was "incredibly interesting. He was inexorable, to himself and to his colleagues". Whatever you make of Richter's emotion, expression or inspiration, he adds, he was dogged about rehearsing. Yet in spite of this, Richter also maintained the view that "everything can be in the concert" - however precise and demanding he was in rehearsal, the occasion of the concert was still open to other eventualities. Berlinsky seems anxious to stress that a performer as inspirational and technically gifted as Richter took rehearsal very seriously indeed. It was Richter's idea for them to play Reger's dense Piano Quintet together, "very difficult, huge, over 40 minutes, lots of polyphony". They did 40 rehearsals, before playing the work twice, in Moscow and St Petersburg. And then they never performed it again.
Although the Borodins never premiered any of Shostakovich's quartets (that honour went to the Beethoven Quartet, close personal friends of the composer), they studied each of the first 13 quartets with him before playing them in public. And Berlinsky still has Shostakovich's detailed letter of response after he was sent the set of the Borodin's recordings when it was first issued in Japan. The Borodins can claim an input to the final shape of the Piano Quintet. A mistake made in a rehearsal of the Piano Quintet (by viola player Rudolf Barshai, now a famous conductor) caused Shostakovich, who was at the piano, to change the score, and incorporate the accidental "improvement".
Shostakovich "opened his mind and soul only for a few selected people. He had very few close friends with whom he felt very cosy, natural." He was, it seems, very different depending on who he was with. "He could be very joyful. He adored funny stories, anecdotes." It's at this point that Abramenkov, the Borodin's second violin, who has remained silent for most of 40 minutes, interjects a single word, "football", reminding everyone of the extent of Shostakovich's sporting enthusiasm. "He would go to matches in any weather."
At the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, the Borodins play Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms (the Piano Quintet with Hugh Tinney), and, of course, Shostakovich, whose quartets show his most private face and may surprise people who only know the symphonies. The Borodins liken the public/private issue to the case of Beethoven - with who, Berlinsky says, Shostakovich was obsessed, but never actually admitted to his list of favourite composers. In Bantry they will play in separate, late-evening concerts, the last quartet of each composer - and Shostakovich's Quartet No 15, a sequence of seven slow movements. This is a work the Borodins like to play by candlelight, a gesture which they think acknowledges its deep, requiem-like qualities. I heard them play it in a packed, darkened Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, where their playing, both ravishing and desolate, seemed a quintessential musical experience of our age.
The Borodin String Quartet's concerts at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival in Bantry are on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Saturday, July 4th. Information on the festival, which runs from Sun- day for a week, is available from 027-61485.
