In an age when marriage—considered the most sacrosanct of all relationships—does not last for too many years, the Endellion String Quartet has lasted for over 30. David Waterman (cello), Andrew Watkin and Ralph D’Souza (violin) and Garfield Jackson (viola) comprise the world’s leading string quartet and Mumbai had the pleasure of hearing them play early last week.
The Quartet has returned to India after a performance nearly 14 years ago, although individual members have returned from time to time to play at the Sangat festival in December. The band has another India connection in the Mumbai-born Ralph. “Heavyweight” musicians indeed, the sense of irreverence on the part of the band members comes as a bit of a surprise.The jokes start early in our conversation. What can the audience expect to hear at the concert? “A band that’s 15 years older,” says David Waterman, deadpan. On a more businesslike note, he outlines their programme — Schubert, Beethoven and Bartok among other pieces by other composers. Their Beethoven and Bartok cycles are what the Quartet has gained recognition for all over the globe. And we mean “globe” in quite the literal sense.
With concerts in all the major continents, including Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia, the band still manages to connect with all their audiences at a “very intimate level” as their reviewers say. How is it possible to connect with diverse audiences at the same level? “We make a connection through the music,” says David, “Because the emotions it arouses are universal. All the fundamental emotions, whether love or terror or humour or depression — everyone feels them. We’re just the vehicle that conveys the music. We try to be as communicative with it as we can.” David explains further: “See, we don’t play differently in different countries. Music has to speak to everyone. We might play differently depending on whether we’re playing in a very small hall or a very huge hall, because with time, you develop a sense of how your sound projects... you develop a sense of the space in which you’re playing. But apart from that, we play in the way that we think is truest to the music.” Another aspect of the band’s playing that reviewers comment on is the rapport between the members, “the sense of discovery” with which they play to each other. Keeping the freshness can’t be an easy task considering Andrew, David, Garfield and Ralph have played together for three decades, but David makes it seem natural and a matter of course. “It’s the music again that does this and the nature of the pieces we play. They’re such great pieces that we have to keep exploring them. I think it (our playing) would become repetitive if we stopped rehearsing the pieces that we know. But we never do that. We carry on rehearsing. And we never perform a piece without doing a few good rehearsals on it. It’s while we are rehearsing that we discover new things about it, which makes us feel a new way about it. So that’s where the sense of discovery comes from,” he says.
As for the unusually long time the band has been together, David says, “We travel together, we have our meals together. We have to come to an agreement about various business things and what pieces to play and those sorts of things. But there is no ‘leader’. We are all free to say what we want, try different things. Each one of us has a unique personality, and we have to accommodate and negotiate with each other. We have to learn to take criticism and give criticism, make suggestions and take suggestions and that’s something you learn to do over time. And just like in a marriage, you either learn to overcome your problems or it just gets worse and worse.”
Another interesting aspect of the band’s career is that they’ve been the resident quartet at both Cambridge University and MIT. What does that involve? “Well, it doesn’t mean that we live there,” laughs David. “What it does mean is that we have a series of concerts in the university’s concert hall. We coach the students, give lectures and demonstrations on the pieces we are playing, coordinate with course faculty. So that if they’re teaching the students about Bartok, then that’s what we play in our next few concerts. We have a very strong connection with the place...in fact, Cambridge is like our second home,” he says.
The Quartet seems to have pursued their music with a single-minded devotion, so much so that David professes not to know much about other genres at all. David admits, “Garfield and I like jazz, but as to the others...we’re just not very knowledgeable about other genres.” Well what music would he be likely to listen to if he was driving around in his car? “Oh it wouldn’t be music at all—I’d rather listen to a test match!” David interjects, adding after a pause, “It would be a classical piece—certainly not another string musician or a cellist—but a pianist.”
Humour aside, the music they play is deeply important to the Quartet and David says, “It’s a great privilege to be able to spend a lifetime doing something that you love which is something very few people get to do. It’s hard work and it’s a hard life in some ways, but we wouldn’t be doing anything else.”