Ravel: String Quartet

Maurice Ravel was a meticulous craftsman, yet in his only string quartet he managed to create something so naturally expressive, idiomatic, and “right” for the ensemble of two violins, viola, and cello. “Ravel’s String Quartet is one of those pieces that you can sort of sink deeper and deeper into and it never gets old,” Attacca Quartet’s co-founder, cellist Andrew Yee, tells Apple Music Classical. You can immediately hear the freshness of the Attacca’s approach to the work, the music gently gathering pace like a train pulling out of the station. The two violins—Schroeder and the quartet’s most recent recruit, Dominic Salerni—are perfectly matched in tone and expressive phrasing as they pass a phrase back and forth. Besides the dazzling ensemble work involved in the second movement, with its brilliant pizzicato episodes, and the fast and furious finale, there is also a great deal of gentle, soulful music to be found in the third movement. What is striking is how very different ideas from various members of the Attacca of what is happening in this movement somehow blend into a coherent account by all four members of the quartet. Just how richly layered their interpretation of the third movement is can be gathered from the alternative views of Schroeder, and the quartet’s viola player Nathan Schram. While Schroeder sees the movement as “a cross between a fantasy and a meditation,” Schram sees something far more poignant: “For me, this movement is a long farewell—like saying goodbye to a family member or a dear friend. There’s also the anger and the frustration with having to say goodbye when you don’t want to, when you’re not ready.” Schram is referring to the moment when Yee’s wonderfully sonorous cello breaks the mood midway through. Yet, Schram adds, “That’s the beautiful thing about music and instrumental music in particular—that it can be about different things for different people, and we can still play it really beautifully together.” It’s a performance full of character, spontaneity yet precision. And it’s no surprise to learn that, although recorded in time for the composer’s 150th anniversary, Attacca’s interpretation has been mulled over decades. “We’ve been working on our interpretation for 22 years,” says Yee, who points out that Attacca has been through several changes of personnel over the years: “In a lot of ways, our interpretation of the Ravel is bigger than all four of us. It exists only because of each current member and past member of the group having played their part in forming our understanding of the work.” Repertoire performed in earlier years has also played its role, as Schroeder explains: “I think Ravel encompasses pretty much every style that you can possibly imagine in a string quartet. One of the projects that definitely formulated the way that we look at musical gestures is when we did all 68 of the Haydn quartets years ago. I think we learned how to play gestures from those and applied them to the Ravel.” Music from today also played a formative role, particularly the quartets by the American composer Caroline Shaw (recordings of these secured Attacca two Grammy Awards). “The Ravel encompasses a really special chordal sound in the quartet—four-voice harmony in its purest form,” says Schroeder. “For that, having played a lot of Caroline Shaw has been really helpful for us, involving just playing with non-vibrato and trying to get as many overtones as possible. That was something we definitely wanted to bring out in the Ravel because the harmonies are so special.”