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Engegård Quartet are Arvid Engegård (first violin), Alex Robson (second violin), Juliet Jopling (viola), Jan Clemens Carlsen (cello)

Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in music?

AE: When I was born my father supposedly said “He is going to be violinist”. I grew up in a very inspiring musical environment.

AR: My parents were both musicians.

JJ: Music means so much to me on so many levels, it’s pretty much impossible to choose any other career. I’ve been lucky enough to meet several extremely talented musicians and composers who have both inspired and helped me, and am eternally thankful to my quartet colleagues and the quartet repertoire for on-going tolerance, motivation and inspiration.

JCC: Both my parents are musicians and classical music was always present during my childhood. I started playing an instrument myself very early. On my tenth birthday I received a collection of CD’s featuring many great works and cellists. The individuality of different musicians from Pablo Casals to Truls Mørk, their individual sound, style, vibrato and interpretations really intrigued and fascinated me. About the same time I became a part of the Barratt-Due Music Institute’s program for talented young musicians where I met many like-minded young people who shared my interest and passion. I don’t remember when I decided that I wanted to become a musician, but I know for sure that I never considered anything else!

Who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?

AE: Sandor Vegh. I was his concertmaster and assistant for many years

AR: My teachers Bjarne Fiskum and Levon Chillingirian

JJ: My family, including my Mum, Dad, aunt Louise Grattan, sister Daisy and brother Orlando. Martha Argerich, Dinu Lipati, Pablo Casals, Sandor Vegh, Alban Berg Quartet, Borodin String Quartet, Hagen Quartet.

JCC: I have been blessed with great teachers. All of them had very different personalities and approaches towards teaching and cello playing. Hans Josef Groh was my teacher for 9 years and shares a lot of the blame for me becoming a cellist! Apart from memories of many wonderful lessons with him, I still remember his impeccable left foot skills on the football pitch (my second passion).

I began my studies in Salzburg with Heidi Litschauer. The most important thing she taught me is the connection between how you sit, the posture while playing and what kind of tension there needs to be present in the body to influence the sound you make. You have to feel well to play well. My next teacher was Christoph Richter (Folkwang Hochschule, Essen). From him I learnt the importance of hard work and also the importance of trying to unearth the composer’s thoughts and wishes from the score, even though that can be very tricky. My final teacher was Truls Mørk (Norwegian Academy of Music). Just to watch him play and see how easy cello playing can be taught me a lot of important lessons!

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

AE: To find the right people to play in the Quartet with.

JJ: Moving from England to Norway in 2004. The continual transformation from dreams to reality in Quartet life.

JCC: Finding the balance between being a father to four children and being married to a musician has been, and still is challenging at times. Finding a balance between family life and being a free-lance musician is not always easy. There are always sacrifices that have to be made.

Which performances/recordings are you most proud of?

AE: I am very proud of the last recordings we have made for LAWO (Schumann piano quintet and quartet with Nils Anders Mortensen, Mozart String Quartets).

AR: Our Mozart, Schumann and Grieg quartets

JJ: I am pathologically critical of myself so that’s an incredibly difficult question to answer. Perhaps the recording of Mozart kv 387, 458 and 464 will be the one! Memorable performances… Beethoven’s opus 132 in Oslo’s Gamle Logen a couple of years ago. We managed a shared focus level that was very powerful, and the music really shone through.

JCC: It is hard to choose, but I’m really happy with our Schuman quartets recording. We are in the middle of a complete Mozart recording project that also seems very promising!

Which particular works do you think you perform best?

AE: This is impossible to say. Maybe Haydn op 76 or Beethoven op 132..?

AR: Mozart, Beethoven and Bartok string quartets

JJ: I guess one gets good at what one does most often. And we have a great focus on the classical repertoire, so it feels great to work on Mozart and Beethoven together. It’s also good fun to let ourselves go a bit in Norwegian repertoire like Grieg’s g minor quartet which we more or less know from memory, so it feels joyfully free.

JCC: As a quartet we have played a lot, and that I think one piece we do particularly well is Grieg’s wonderful string quartet in G-minor. We also share a great passion for the quartets of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven that have led to some very good performances.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

AE: We try not to have too many works going at the same time. Our “123” festival in Oslo is an important factor.

AR: One great composer after another.

JJ: We have built up an annual festival called “På 123”, when we perform one composer over three days. This obviously is both hugely rewarding and demanding, and it certainly shapes our work in the long term. This September 4th to 6th, we’re presenting Mustonen på 123. (Finnish composer and pianist, Olli Mustonen f.1967). I can’t wait!

JCC: We have a festival in Oslo, featuring a different composer each year, that determines our main focus for the coming year.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

AE: I love the churches in Lofoten where I have my chamber music festival. Lots of great memories.

AR: Carnegie and Wigmore halls.

JJ: I think that the audience is much more important for me than the venue. A responsive, engaged audience gives us huge inspiration. Which has made these Corona times so very demanding. And the two things probably go hand in hand, at least to some extent. An attractive venue often attracts great audiences and great musicians, win win all round.

JCC: I really enjoy playing at Oslo Quartet Series in Gamle Logen in Oslo. The audience is wonderful and just being part of this fantastic series is an enormous pleasure!

What is your most memorable concert experience?

AE: Maybe when we have played the same piece many times in the Quartet. Then we get to a new level.

AR: Too many to mention!

JJ: Schubert 5 with Camerata Academica in Salzburg under Sandor Vegh. Not long after, I had the huge honour to perform at Sandor Vegh’s funeral.

JCC: I am not able to choose one I have played myself. I have had the privilege of playing for so many wonderful audiences. However, as a young boy, aged about 14, I attended a concert with Steven Isserlis and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. That concert was hugely inspiring at that time, and is still a fond memory!

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

AE: To play in the way you wish to.

AR: That the audience can see that we really understand a certain piece.

JJ: On a personal level, to achieve focus, both in rehearsals and on the concert platform. On a professional level, to sustain a career as a string quartet, with a balance of international and domestic concerts, recordings, and educational activities.

JCC: As long as I develop as a musician and am able to share my feelings with an audience regularly, I consider myself successful. 

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

AE: Music is life and death!

AR: To believe in yourself and go your own way.

JJ: To be in touch with one’s passion and motivation, one’s love for music, and to hold that close through thick and thin.

JCC: It is easy to say: practise, practise, practise, but the most important thing is that you really have to ENJOY what you are doing and know WHY you are doing it. If this is missing all your hard hours of practising will be fruitless. Also, there are a lot of concerts to be heard in every town – GO TO THEM and get inspired

 

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Guest post by Sylvia Segal

Sylvia is a music-lover and The Cross-Eyed Pianist’s most longstanding reader

Dear Fran,

Your blog’s 10th anniversary reminded me that I’ve been meaning to send you a musical message. Lockdown has meant a lot more listening time which, though solitary, has been a great pleasure.

As you know, I have a tendency to have mini love affairs with selected composers, meaning that temporarily I listen to little else. You’ll remember my ‘Chopin period,’ I’m sure. Before that there was Ravel. And Mendelssohn’s chamber music. Bach puts in an appearance regularly, as does Haydn, who always lifts my spirits. And so on.

Anyway, lately it’s been all about Schubert’s piano sonatas for me. Not necessarily the final three, but early and middle ones. Years ago, I bought a 7-CD set of them, played by Ingrid Haebler. The earliest sonata on there is no. 3, and already he’s modulating in a way that reminds me of a tightrope walker without a safety net! It makes me smile to hear him tie himself up in knots, only to untie them a moment later, as if by magic.

Beethoven famously remarked that the piano “couldn’t sing,” but I think Schubert put paid to that idea. (And Mendelssohn.) If you’re able, listen to the slow movement of Schubert’s sonata in B major (D.575). It’s a song. It IS a song. A beautiful, sad one.

On the subject of whether the piano sings or not, I have never forgotten the study day that Robert Levin presented at the British Museum about the evolution of the piano. Focusing on the period that is his forte (sorry, pun), late 18th/early 19th century, he made the very interesting point that composers like Mozart and Haydn didn’t expect the piano to sing, they wanted it to SPEAK, in the manner of well-argued discourse or civilised conversation.

I was reminded of this in Paris in February, where I picked up a free copy of the New York Times in our hotel, and read an article about John Eliot Gardiner entitled “Treating Beethoven as a Revolutionary.” It was about rehearsing Beethoven’s symphonies with his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique in connection with Beethoven 250 (I expect those performances didn’t happen, sadly), and he said something that really struck me:

“Another thing I think is important [as well as the clarity and exhilaration you can achieve with original instruments] is to encourage the players to “speak” their lines, so that each phrase emerges as a kind of sentence made up of words that they articulate with consonants as well as vowels. Beethoven, it seems to me, is asking for declaimed narration. He conceives of his symphonies as developing and dramatic narratives, and that, in turn, demands an acutely conscious declamatory approach from the players.”

So interesting! I do often think of music as a language, and individual composers’ styles as their ‘handwriting.’ This wordless language has its own structure, vocabulary, grammar—none more so than the music composed around the time of the Enlightenment. Mozart and Haydn spoke it fluently and effortlessly, and we as listeners need to be familiar with the rules of the language before we can experience the thrill that comes when we hear them broken.

Beethoven and Schubert – both voracious readers – inherited this formal language. But I think they became less and less interested in the discourse/conversation aspect, focusing rather more on what Gardiner calls “dramatic narratives.”

Lockdown has afforded me time to think more about the music I’m listening to, which is one of the many good things that have come out of it. A good friend and I keep marvelling at how unconstrained we’ve felt (I know, a contradiction!), and how the extra time we’ve had has not been a burden. Rather, it’s been a gift.

I’ll leave you on that happy note.

With love and warmest congratulations on The Cross-Eyed Pianist’s tenth birthday,

Sylvia

A note from The Cross-Eyed Pianist:

Sylvia is a good friend of mine and, when she lived in London, a very keen concert-goer, especially at the Wigmore Hall. It was Sylvia who encouraged me to start going to classical concerts again, when my son was at an age when he could be left more happily with a babysitter, and we have enjoyed many memorable concerts together. Sylvia was this blog’s first reader and remains a loyal supporter (and eagle-eyed proof-reader!).

 

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Guest post by Christine Kammer

I hear this sentence from friends and colleagues all the time. Why add another obligation to our busy lives when we are in our thirties or forties? Many people seem to believe that taking lessons and practising the piano, violin or flute takes too much time and energy. They may be afraid that it could turn out to be a lonely and frustrating activity. And yet, I chose a different path… When I started taking piano lessons again several years ago at the age of 35, I didn’t know any other adult amateur musicians. An extrovert by nature, I soon started looking for like-minded people. And I discovered a wealth of possibilities: online music forums, piano summer courses – a whole new world opened up. For years, I spent lovely summer weeks together with other piano enthusiasts at workshops in Tuscany, France and Scotland. To meet fellow musicians in my home town Vienna, I founded the “Vienna Piano Meetup”. Since 2014, we have been meeting regularly to play for each other, informally and in a friendly atmosphere. And we’re not just pianists: some of us found their flute or violin partners via our group. I was thrilled to discover that there are similar activities all over the world. Over the years, our group has had visitors from Hong Kong, Canada and the UK – and I joined piano meetups when I visited cities like New York. In times of social distancing, many of these amateur music groups continue to socialise online. Occasionally, professional musicians discover our little get-togethers. Whenever they come along, they seem impressed by our spirit. What we do is not about competition – we welcome musicians at any level and encourage everybody to play. It is purely about sharing our love for music. “I envy you guys. You make music just for fun, without any purpose“, a stressed orchestral violist once said to me. In return, I can say that my admiration for any professional musician has grown tremendously since I started learning an instrument myself. Over the years, I have expanded my musical activities: Together with a software engineer and amateur flutist, I founded the non-profit association MUSEDU. We organise workshops and events for hobby musicians, like a cello workshop for beginners or a visit to a violin maker‘s studio. We offer a bilingual platform where local music teachers can promote their music lessons. And I enjoy sharing my thoughts on life as an amateur musician and other topics in our music blog. Learning an instrument takes time – that is certainly true. But it brings endless joy, energy and inspiration in return. And many new and interesting social contacts, if we‘re up for it. I‘m truly glad to have started this adventure! In fact, just earlier this year, I took up a second instrument – the lovely cello. Why wait until we’re retired?

Christine Kämmer is an intermediate pianist and beginning cellist with a degree in Asian Studies and Philosophy. In 2017, she founded the non-profit association MUSEDU in Vienna, Austria, together with amateur flutist Matthias König. musedu.at/en

 

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Guest article by Adrian Ainsworth

The discussion that will not die: elitism in classical music. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve taken part in it, both in conversation and, here and there, in writing. What keeps it grinding on, blocking the through-routes to open-hearted enjoyment and appreciation?

Don’t worry – I can hear your response: people like you keep writing pieces like this! Well, touché. But this time, there are two particular prompts. First of all, pianist/composer Ludovico Einaudi – a genuine phenomenon – has made the news through one of the major music examination boards adding his work to their new piano syllabus. Einaudi appears to be an almost satanic figure to certain folk in the classical music sphere, inviting levels of dismissiveness and vitriol in line with his sales.

In parallel, we are living through a very specific, unusual period where artists and musicians are suddenly without income and, in many cases, are forced to consider the future viability of their planned projects, even careers. The ‘normal’ to come may not be the ‘normal’ we had before. With that in mind, isn’t it better to consider and examine – rather than dismiss – what could make more classical music more popular?

Of course, programmers and marketing departments have grappled with this conundrum since the year dot, and concerns about bringing in audiences persist, even in a pre- or post-covid scenario. There is no magic solution. We’ve seen venues try wildly different approaches: adding new or untried pieces to a bill featuring a dead-cert, bums-on-seats, absolute banger; staging concerts or musicals ‘off-season’ to help fund opera; performing short, sharp rush-hour sets to whet commuters’ appetites for more… and so on. The outbreak is driving even more innovation along these lines – English National Opera’s upcoming ‘drive-in opera’ performances at London’s Alexandra Palace, for example.

But it’s up to us – the audiences, the listeners, the teachers, the fans – to grapple with this, too. Our minds need to be as open and welcoming as the doors to our favourite venues. Our conversation, our social media accounts, can spread the word as efficiently as fliers and mailing lists.

Because love of music will always revolve around taste, ‘arguments’ against Einaudi don’t really stick.

  • “Just because it’s successful doesn’t make it good.” No, but it doesn’t make it bad either (leaving aside the obvious problem of who decides whether something is ‘good’ or not). In the same way, a piece is not ‘good’ just because it’s obscure.
  • “It’s so simple, anyone could do it.” But ‘anyone’ didn’t do it. Perhaps they didn’t have the ideas or techniques after all. Or if they had the ideas, they didn’t have the patience, staying power and determination to get it all down and produce it.
  • “It’s just pandering to popular culture / taste.” Well, isn’t that what composers and musicians want to do? If you have an income away from music that allows you to be utterly fearless and experimental in your art, fine: but surely everyone else is striving for the balance between staying true to themselves creatively and putting food on the table.

It’s not really a case of “I’m right and you’re wrong”: there is no right and wrong. If I like Einaudi, why should I care what the ‘establishment’ says about him? On one level, I don’t care one iota.

But widening the picture, it matters to me more, because to dismiss something because it’s too popular, not complex enough – not ‘good’ enough – is a form of gatekeeping, however accidental or unwitting. Whatever surface ‘elitist’ practices in classical music we may eventually conquer – high ticket prices, impenetrable etiquette, imaginary dress codes – a refusal to engage with and even embrace what fires up a wider, casual listenership will always stop us reaching the maximum possible audience.

I always have to remind myself that the dividing line between classical and popular music was only drawn in recent history. To pare one specific cliché down to its essence: “Modern classical music – where are the tunes?” As unfounded as that remark is, it comes from somewhere, and can’t be ignored. Perhaps during the twentieth century, as consumers increasingly got their ‘quick fixes’ from red-hot jazz sides, 3-minute salvos of rock ‘n’ roll and instantly alluring soul numbers, classical music went somewhere else: innovative, exploratory and definitely, even defiantly, more niche. (Otherwise, why would we need the term ‘light classics’ – themselves under fire from time to time – if there wasn’t some serious ‘heaviness’ elsewhere?)

Isn’t it time to bring these worlds together again? Isn’t it already happening? I type this on a Sunday in July. Only last night, Nicky Spence brought a superb online concert (part of Mary Bevan’s Music at the Tower series) to a close with ‘Nessun Dorma’ to the audience’s utter delight, and no wonder: it’s one of opera’s bona fide entries in the hit parade, thanks to Pavarotti. And the ‘Bitesize Proms’ series posted a performance by counter-tenor Iestyn Davies and lutenist Elizabeth Kenny of… ‘There is a Light that Never Goes Out’, by The Smiths. Other examples spring to mind: Sheku Kanneh-Mason taking Elgar into the Top 10 mainstream album charts; Anna Meredith making electronica albums alongside her classical commissions; Max Richter curating a multi-disc compilation for Rough Trade introducing modern composition to indie/underground record buyers…

Information overload, shorter attention spans, more urgent need to multi-task: our culture and society is not just continually changing, but compressing. Like it or not, more people respond to the immediate, the impactful. For example, as an artist-led listener, I favour the increasingly popular approach of programming discs as though they were ‘albums’ rather than recordings. I willingly accompany certain artists on their creative journeys: the perfectly natural behaviour of a fan, essentially.

As listeners, the more that we can do to bring some of the impact found in other genres into the classical music world, the better. There’s no need to dilute the music itself – but no need to rarify it, either. We need to communicate our enthusiasm and excitement about classical music without embarrassment or inhibition…. And to do that, you have to let people in: not shut them out.

Adrian Ainsworth is, by day, a copywriter specialising in plain language communications about finance and benefits. However, he spends the rest of the time consuming as much music, live or recorded, as possible – then writing about it, often on Specs, his slightly erratic ‘cultural diary’ containing thought pieces, performance and exhibition write-ups, playlists, and even a spot of light photography. He has a particular interest in art song and opera… and a general interest in everything else. He is a regular contributor to this site and is also a reviewer for its sister site ArtMuseLondon.com.