Cuarteto Quiroga comes to St. Paul’s
This Friday, the exquisite interior of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in downtown Chattanooga will be filled with equally exquisite music.
Highly acclaimed Spanish string quartet Cuarteto Quiroga will present a diverse evening of classic compositions, including Joao de Almeida’s “String Quartet in D Minor, Op. 6, No. 2”, Alberto Ginastera’s “String Quartet No. 1, Op. 20”, and Beethoven’s “String Quartet No. 16, Op. 135”.
Aitor Hevia and Cibrán Sierra (violin), Josep Puchades (viola), and Helena Poggio (cello) make up Cuarteto Quiroga, which was named for one of Spain’s most famous violinists. Via email, Sierra provided some background on both the quartet and the pieces they’ll perform.
The Pulse: How do you choose the pieces you want to perform? And what is your rehearsal process like?
Cibrán Sierra: We want the programs we offer to have some meaning. A concert should be more than just a collection of beautiful pieces. It should propose an experience which tells a story and invites the listeners to reflect upon a certain aspect of the musical happening.
Our rehearsal process is the result of many years of work. It reflects who we are and how we approach musical interpretation. We are a very democratic group; every member has equal time to tackle the issues he/she finds necessary or important. Every voice is heard and each one of us feels equally responsible for the rehearsal process and its final result…for us, debate and dissent are powerful tools of progress, not means of confrontation.
A quartet should never repress the four individualities. It should enhance them, make them visible within a harmonious, generous, and democratic dialogue. That’s how Goethe saw it, and it’s why the quartet became the musical flagship of the Enlightenment.
TP: One of the pieces to be performed is the Argentinian composer Ginastera’s “String Quartet No. 1, Op. 20”. What is meant by his use of the “guitar chord”?
CS: Ginastera works with materials that come from the folklore of the pampas, those fascinating, treeless plains of South America. The gauchos (pampas cowboys) use guitar as their main instrument. Therefore, Ginastera refers in this quartet constantly to the sound of the six open strings of the guitar (the “guitar chord”) to embed the whole musical material and frame it within a sound universe which is genuine from this specific folklore.
TP: Another piece, Beethoven’s “String Quartet No. 16, Op. 135”, is said to be the last major work he completed. He wrote on the first part of the manuscript, “Must it be?” and on the second part, “It must be.” What did he mean by this in context of the music?
CS: Well, this is a very controversial issue. Everyone wanted to see behind those mysterious handwritten sentences some philosophical, transcendent meaning. The latest musicological studies point, however, towards a more trivial explanation (money issues with his publisher, or maybe even the housekeeper). We will never know for sure if the riddle is serious, irrelevant, or simply a joke.
Rhetorically, the introduction of the last movement is a dramatic question, and the finale opens with a joyful, outspoken answer. The important thing is to go beyond the text itself and to understand that the linguistic-rhetorical element in Beethoven’s music is—with or without riddles—fundamental to build an eloquent interpretation.
TP: When the quartet is in Madrid, it has a royal commission to play the set of decorated Stradivarius instruments from the Royal Collection. Can you describe what it is like to play a Stradivarius?
CS: The Royal Stradivarius quartet cannot leave the Royal Palace of Madrid. It is never played outside its walls. The instruments are absolutely unique and their value is immense. Although there are 11 decorated Strads in the world, the four that are kept in Madrid are the only ones designed and built as a set, to be played together.
Because of this, playing those instruments as a quartet is true bliss. As Antonio Stradivari designed them to sound as a group, it is so easy to blend their voices and match their tone. Projecting as a quartet a unified sound quality becomes so easy with [these] four jewels.
However, every great Strad is like a great horse—it has a strong personality and it is really not easy to ride it. You need to find a very delicate balance between what you give to the instrument and what the instrument gives you. When you manage, the feeling is absolutely amazing.