great words about chamber music

The great violist and educator Eugene Lehner was a Boston resident for many decades. He was a legendary and revered figure at Tanglewood while I was there as a Fellow (alas, I did not get to work with him), and he was the violist of the Kolisch Quartet, which performed many of its programs from memory, including the Bartók quartets and Berg’s Lyic Suite (!) and premiered works by Bartók, Berg, Schoenberg and Webern.

One group which did have the pleasure of working with Lehner is the Daedalus Quartet, which was grand prize winner of the Banff String Quartet competition and is a resident ensemble of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center under the Chamber Music Society’s CMS Two program.

Daedalus violinist Min-young Kim shares this quote from Lehner on the Chamber Music Society’s blog, Intermission Impossible:

“Children (he was in his eighties at the time), please sing out your own line like it is the most important melody there is. Do not defer to someone else’s melody and just accompany them. Play it like you are passionate amateurs.”

I love this quote – it’s important to remember the joy and importance of what we do as professionals. It’s so easy to get lost in the minutiae of rhythm, pitch, dynamics and phrasing. I still from time to time hear a work on the radio that I loved so dearly as a youngster (when everything in music was new and exciting), and it really transports me back to those days and makes me see the world anew again.

Last night I was listening to the local classical station (KBPS-FM www.allclassical.org) and there was a recording of the Beethoven Op. 135 quartet playing (performed by the late, great Cleveland Quartet). Instantly I was transported back to my first year at Tanglewood where my quartet performed that piece – it was my first late Beethoven quartet, and it was a magical process of learning the work with our coach, cellist Norman Fischer, and performing the piece as the concluding work on a TMC chamber concert. The way the chamber music program works at TMC is that you are just thrown into a group with people you either know (or most likely do not) and you do a number of coachings and are on your own for as many or as few rehearsals as you see fit. The schedule is always packed even without the chamber music, and you might even be in more than one group. Basically, you get thrown in the deep end and are expected to develop a perfect freestyle medley. I still remember the names of my quartet-mates: Helen Kim and Evangeline Peters, violins, and Kari Docter on cello. I haven’t kept touch with them over the years, but just hearing this piece brings me back into the practice studio with them as if it were just yesterday that we were working on how to develop the variation form of the slow movement or vary the thematic phrasing in the exposition repeat in the last movement.

I feel as though the phrase “keep it young, and keep it amateur” should be my mantra for the new year.