Edward Dusinberre, first violinist of the Takács Quartet, writes about playing Benjamin Britten’s last string quartet, a way to bridge distance during the COVID-19 pandemic. This excerpt is adapted from Dusinberre’s Distant Melodies: Music in Search of Home, published by Faber.
Tuning our instruments backstage, we miss the sounds of enthusiastic chatter before our concert in Grusin Music Hall on the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus. Our feet clatter over the wooden floor before we bow to the livestream camera. I imagine our friends listening over loudspeakers in their living rooms and my parents who will watch our performance the next day in Cambridge, in the same part of the world that Benjamin Britten’s String Quartet no. 3, Opus 94 was largely composed. The menthol drop I slip into my mouth underneath my mask adds an extra sting to the hot breath that fogs my glasses. When we start to play, the facial clues that we usually rely on to communicate changes of character are hidden. From the sparkle in violist Richard O’Neill’s eyes I can imagine his smile. Our cellist, András Féjer sometimes raises his eyebrows sceptically against the dubious rhythmic instincts of a first violinist – now they seem manically animated.
Approach to rhythm is critical at the beginning of Britten’s String Quartet no. 3, Opus 94, The first movement of this five-movement piece is entitled ‘Duets’ and features all the different combinations of instruments playing in pairs. Harumi Rhodes (second violin) and Richard set the opening mood; together they play the first eleven bars, taking it in turns to present the primary melodic line. Syncopation between the two parts in a piano dynamic creates a sense of undulation. How clearly one articulates the rhythm influences the character: crisp bow-strokes will convey a sense of menace but I prefer less defined and breathier approach to create a more mysterious atmosphere. The idea has its pitfalls. In an earlier rehearsal, when András and I played a similar duet, there was too much mystery in our rhythm, caused by indistinct bow changes and my bad habit of hanging on to tied notes for too long. As we tried to play our rhythm with more precision, we discovered a natural ebb and flow within each bar. The oscillating quavers between the two instruments could evoke a gondolier propelling his boat forward while, at the end of the bar, a smoother rhythm and melodic contour suggested less momentum as he lifted his oar.
As we prepared for the concert, Harumi drew attention to the shifting and elusive characters of this opening movement. To experience the lilting motion of the ocean might be hypnotic, but the latent power of the undercurrent is simultaneously unsettling, reminding us of forces beyond our control. Onstage Richard and András play a duet of contrasting character, abrupt chords thrown back and forth, stubbornness replacing fluidity. In order to prevent the music sounding too chopped up, they hurry through the semiquavers that precede each group of chords, adding a sense of forward drive and anxiety.
Britten completed what would turn out to be his third and final quartet in November 1975, the same month in which he celebrated his sixty-second birthday, against a backdrop of fragile health. In his quartet Britten revisited his earlier opera Death in Venice, based on Thomas Mann’s novella, quoting several themes from the opera at the beginning of the quartet’s last movement.
Britten worked on this movement, ‘La Serenissima’ in Venice. His nurse Rita Thomson and two friends explored Venice in the mornings, taking vaporetti all over the city to view pictures, carrying the composer over bridges in his wheel-chair. In the late afternoon Thomson positioned Britten in a chair by the open window, from where he loved to listen to the bells.
‘La Serenissima’ ends with a passacaglia: András repeats an insistent bass line beneath a melody that I play first, followed at twelve-bar intervals by Harumi and Richard. We find it hard to gauge the dramatic balance between melody and unyielding bass. Britten marks each entrance of the melody at a higher dynamic, but as our volume increases we can easily play too fast, the melody too easily sloughing off its burden. Even the ecstatic cascades of bells that occur roughly two-thirds of the way through the movement should be held in check by András’s notes, under which Britten has written ‘very marked’.
Compared with the tortuous anguish that dominates Death in Venice, the music that ends this quartet is more serene. Britten’s music can offer consolation, connecting us over distance, taking performers and listeners alike to Aldeburgh and Venice. There is even an advantage to playing in an empty hall: the silence after András’s last note fades away is more effective when not followed by a tentative trickle of applause. And yet it is only an act of communion between live audience and performers that fully reveals the many dimensions in Britten’s last quartet. We eagerly await a time when we will again travel to perform this bleak yet comforting music.
Distant Melodies: Music in Search of Home by Edward Dusinberre is published by Faber. Available now for £18.99.