‘We just love what we do’
The members of the Sacconi Quartet chatted with The Strad about their guiding principles throughout their shared history together, as well as as some memorable performances.
The Sacconi Quartet celebrates its 21st birthday with a recording of two of the finest works in the repertoire: Beethoven’s magnificent late quartet, the String Quartet No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 131 – a work particularly close to the Quartet’s heart – and Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ Quartet.
Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ represents a young man grappling with mortality, resulting in some of his most hauntingly beautiful music. At around the time Schubert worked on this piece, Beethoven was composing his late quartets, including the seven-movement String Quartet Op. 131 – the quartet he is said to have considered his greatest. He was not the only one: Schubert himself wanted this work to be played on his deathbed.
The Sacconi Quartet has been exploring Beethoven’s Op. 131 for over a decade and in different contexts, from a performance on Howard Goodall’s programme The Story of Music, to a collaboration with artist Kate Beaugié, Beethoven on the Beach, that saw the Quartet performing and later filming the work on Sunny Sands beach in Folkestone.
The Sacconi Quartet’s most dramatic interpretation of the work has been taking shape in collaboration with the director Tom Morris, with whom they have been developing a stage version. Unencumbered by sheet music, stands or conventional seating, the musicians perform the piece from memory, free to move around the space in order to accentuate the connections between different aspects of the music. The four musical parts become four characters with complex interrelationships, at times in dialogue, at others pushing against one another. As Robin Ashwell, the Quartet’s viola player, observes, Beethoven’s late music is enigmatic, but ‘this approach crystallises the emotional content’, helping the Quartet to explore the seven movements of Op. 131. The work becomes a stage play that unfolds in one huge sweep from start to finish: a journey with enormous scope for dramatic expression. The Quartet has learned to find and emphasise the work’s moments of light within its contrasts of human emotion, especially in the beauty of the inner movements.
It was perhaps inevitable, then, that Beethoven’s Op. 131 would be one of the works recorded by the Sacconi Quartet to celebrate its 21st birthday: this is a work with which the group has a long-standing, intimate, ever-evolving relationship. As for the choice of Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’, this popular work always stays within the group’s repertoire, yet their relationship with it is continually developing. The piece is another vast journey navigating contrasts between darkness and light, between major and minor, and its enduring appeal stems from its heartfelt nature as well as Schubert’s gifts as a melodist.
Beethoven and Schubert, both taught by Salieri, share an emotional immediacy in their music that is echoed by the emotion felt by each member of the Sacconi Quartet when they perform together – feelings deepened by their years of friendship. They remain keen to explore, continuously re-evaluating their repertoire and trying new things so that every performance is fresh. They aim to play as though these well-established works had been written, as Robin Ashwell puts it, ‘earlier the same day, the ink still drying on the page’ – as though they are playing, and the audience hearing, this music for the first time. They share a determination to keep the music alive and in a state of renewal.
This recording captures a moment in time on that journey together, communicating the spontaneity and freshness that the Sacconi Quartet brings to every performance. As Ashwell puts it in the album booklet: ‘For two decades and more, we have strived to bring this music to life. Music that we hold so dear to our hearts; music that we believe in, that we are passionate about; music that we are committed to sharing. We are still learning, still exploring, still discovering.’
