I know that this will come off as a bit extreme, but I have to say, if you are a string player and you do not regularly indulge yourself in playing string quartets: you are a fool. You are missing out of the best of the best of music, and of musical experiences. I’m not saying that you should perform several
concerts a year for paying audiences. Just get together with some friends and colleagues and read some quartets that you’ve practiced on your own over a glass of wine or two. An ‘informed reading’ can be every bit as satisfying as an extended rehearsal period, and can reap surprising dividends in your orchestral life.
I cannot tell you how much playing the string quartets of Beethoven has informed my playing of his symphonic music. The same with Mozart, Brahms, Haydn, Shostakovich, and Bartók. Not to mention the string quartets by those composers not so well known for their chamber music: Verdi, Sibelius, Janacek, and Tchaikovsky. When you play a composer’s string quartet, you are peering deeply into that person’s musical soul. As you study more and more of their quartet output, you begin to see how their musical language strengthens and deepens, and perhaps how their personal narrative begins to make itself visible in their musical oeuvre.
In addition, there is that sense of connection that you seldom get (short of a long-term friendship or physical relationship) with your fellow quartet mates. You begin to understand them on a deep emotional level that comes from hours spent rehearsing on good days and bad – with rehearsals either matching the mood of the day, or defiantly opposing it. There is something so deeply satisfying about opening the score to an unparalleled masterpiece and diving right in for the sheer joy of it. Something that we seldom get to do in our orchestral lives.