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When is the Tokyo Quartet not the Tokyo Quartet?

11/1/2011

2 Comments

 
Picture
The Tokyos: Isomura (front centre) is the last founding member.
According to Norman Lebrecht’s blog, Slipped Disc, the Tokyo String Quartet’s two Japanese members – violist Kazuhide Isomura and second violinist Kikuei Ikeda – will be retiring in 2013 This will leave the Canadian first violinist Martin Beaver and the English cellist Clive Greensmith to rebuild the group.

A year and a half is plenty of advance notice, and I’m hopeful that Beaver and Greensmith will come up with two more fine string players to “fill in the middle” (so to speak) of the quartet.


But it won’t be the Tokyo Quartet any more. And this new configuration – which will not contain a single member of the original group – should not call itself as such.

I raise this issue not on a point of abstract morality, but in order to say something about the intrinsic nature of chamber music.

With long-lived chamber groups, this issue comes up from time to time: both the Juilliard and the Borodin quartets have none of their original members today. There are probably a few more examples to be found out there, so what the Tokyos are doing is hardly unprecedented.

And those who would defend the continuation of the Tokyo Quartet could point out that the overlap in players over the years has been gradual. It’s not as though a new quartet is being built from scratch. And when the replacement players are selected, I fully expect to hear that the new configuration is “founded in the aesthetic traditions” of the original Tokyo Quartet. And perhaps it will be.

Furthermore, in the Tokyos’ defense, it could be argued that there are no original members in the New York Philharmonic, either. The NYPO is an institution: that’s the way large orchestras work. And when they perform, their interpretation is not the sum total of the ideas of the 100 players on stage (that would be chaos) but the vision of one conductor on the podium.

However, when a chamber group comes to view itself like as an institution, and acts like one, it sets aside a fundamental value: chamber music is about interaction of the specific individuals who play it. That’s why the proposed continuation of the Tokyo “brand” seems more about marketing than about art.

When the number of original members in a chamber group drops to zero, I think it behooves the remaining players to find a different name for themselves. How’s about the “New Tokyo Quartet”?


© Colin Eatock 2011
2 Comments
Paul Rapoport link
5/2/2012 12:41:47 pm

You argue well for and against your own point. There have been many quartets that continued a name despite having no founding members left. Having one founding member remain doesn't guarantee a particular kind of continuation; and eventually having none doesn't mean that the quartet has little or no connection to its (original) past.

Names of quartets may indicate various things, including a city or sponsoring organization. In the latter case especially, the function of the ensemble may be more to the fore than how it plays.

If the Tokyo Quartet had actually been in Tokyo, would successive Japanese players have brought a different result? Has this Quartet been more a New York or New England quartet from the beginning? It's likely that Martin Beaver or Clive Greensmith could carry on their quartet's traditions as well as Japanese players.

Changing a quartet's name because of the absence of one or a specified number of players would be chaotic. I don't see the need for it, nor any false implications in continuing a name for a long time.

The Pro Arte is an obvious case, being 100 this year. When Rudolf Kolisch became its 1st violinist in 1944, he considered changing the name to the Kolisch Quartet, partly because he saw it as a continuation of his ideas that had more or less just died with the impossibility of continuing his ca. 20-year-old (Kolisch) Quartet.

"Pro Arte" remained, of course. Its last sort-of founding member left in 1947, although the earliest history of that quartet, in the First World War, is murky. Indeed, there were probably enough changes of personnel in those years to make the question of "who were the original members" moot, or at least unimportant.

The current Pro Arte doesn't sound like the Pro Arte of the 1930s. I doubt that the Quartet of 1946 sounded like it either.

Perhaps with some justification, the English still refer to the 1st violinist as a quartet's leader, even if naming a quartet after said person made much more sense in Joachim's time than it does now.

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    Eatock Daily

    I'm a composer based in Toronto – and this is my classical music blog, Eatock Daily.

    When I first started blogging, Eatock Daily was a place to re-post the articles I wrote for Toronto’s Globe and Mail and National Post newspapers, the Houston Chronicle, the Kansas City Star and other publications.

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    These days, my blog posts are infrequent, and are mostly concerned with my own music. However, I do still occasionally post comments on musical topics, including works I've discovered, enjoyed, and wish to share with others.


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