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Interview
13 September 2020 2.00 h

Quartet Gerhard

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“Coming back home is the best way to celebrate 10 years”

“Berlin opened a lot of doors for us and being in Germany has been crucial to our career”

The Quar­tet Ger­hard, one of the Cata­lan music groups with the most in­ter­na­tional recog­ni­tion, has left Berlin after seven years to re­turn to Cat­alo­nia, where they formed 10 years ago. Lluís Castán (vi­o­lin), Judit Bar­do­let (vi­o­lin), Miquel Jordà (viola) and Jesús Mi­ralles (cello) cel­e­brated the an­niver­sary in Au­gust with a con­cert at the Palau de la Música, the Barcelona con­cert hall where this in­ter­view took place.

You’ve left Berlin after some years and re­turned to Cat­alo­nia. Why?
(JB) We’d been liv­ing there for al­most seven years, and we feel it’s been an amaz­ing stage in the quar­tet’s growth. It’s opened a lot of doors for us in­ter­na­tion­ally and being in Ger­many has been cru­cial to us de­vel­op­ing a ca­reer abroad. Now, how­ever, co­in­cid­ing with this 10th an­niver­sary, we feel the quar­tet has reached a point that means the place where you live is no longer so im­por­tant. And we are Cata­lans, we love our coun­try and we like being here.
What was the most im­por­tant thing about being in Berlin all these years?
(LC) Meet­ing mu­si­cians and that feel­ing of free­dom that cities like Berlin pro­vide. We felt like we weren’t re­ally tied to any­thing, which as a quar­tet al­lows you to grow in your own di­rec­tion. It’s been quite an ad­ven­ture.
Where is the quar­tet at now?
(MJ) Num­bers al­ways have a sym­bol­ism and it’s been 10 years, a re­ally in­tense 10 years! I don’t know if be­hind this mile­stone there’s also a change but we no­tice the ef­fect of these 10 years on the way we work, in how we ap­proach our reper­toires, in how we think about the fu­ture. Cel­e­brat­ing any birth­day usu­ally gives you per­spec­tive.
How was the quar­tet founded?
(LC) There’s a vo­ca­tional com­po­nent be­cause when we were lit­tle three of us stud­ied at the same music school, in Vi­laseca, and we played to­gether. We’d go to one of our houses and, if need be, spend the whole night play­ing. Yet, there was al­ways some­one miss­ing and Ju­dith began join­ing in. Straight away there was a spe­cial feel­ing.
How does a quar­tet usu­ally evolve?
(JM) It’s usu­ally a very com­plex process, but also a very nat­ural one. You have to spend many hours to­gether, re­hears­ing, work­ing on tech­ni­cal, emo­tional and com­mu­nica­tive as­pects. It’s con­stant work, which you do with very clear ob­jec­tives and which allow you to grow day by day. (LC) There are no two quar­tets that sound the same. Quar­tets are al­ways very trans­par­ent re­flec­tions of the artis­tic per­son­al­ity of their mem­bers. Yet, the path for­ward isn’t easy be­cause while you have your own voice you get a lot of out­side input. You need to be able to grow from those in­puts but at the same time fol­low the voice you carry in­side.
You’re the same four who started out, which isn’t com­mon in quar­tets.
(JB) No. The per­sonal part is very pow­er­ful in the Quar­tet Ger­hard. Ob­vi­ously it’s not all fun and games, but there’s a very im­por­tant per­sonal com­po­nent that’s re­flected in our sound. (LC) Emo­tion­ally it’s very in­tense. I guess that’s the rea­son why there aren’t many quar­tets in which the same mu­si­cians keep play­ing to­gether for so many years. You spend five hours re­hears­ing a day with three peo­ple who are al­ways judg­ing you for the good of the group. It’s an on­go­ing strug­gle against your ego.
I imag­ine you also need to be per­sonal and pro­fes­sional at the same time.
(MJ) Yes, we see it as a joint evo­lu­tion. We’re the same as 10 years ago but with a whole lot of ex­pe­ri­ence. A quar­tet is all about play­ing and play­ing. The live ex­pe­ri­ence is fun­da­men­tal, be­cause every con­cert is unique. The au­di­ence, the reper­toire and the place where you are emo­tion­ally are al­ways dif­fer­ent, and so is each con­cert.
Was it easy to find your own sound?
(LC) It’s a very long process. At first you look to­wards the mu­si­cians you ad­mire most but there comes a time when con­tra­dic­tions begin to emerge be­tween what the mu­si­cians you ad­mire do, what the teach­ers tell you, and what you think you should do. (JM) I’m con­vinced that in our case, part of our sound was there from the start and it had to be shaped. The four of us have mo­ti­vated each other every day and this has made us grow, but I think our sound al­ready had its own el­e­ments from the first week. (JB) Yet, it’s very in­tu­itive and it often takes a long time to find one’s own sound. These things are usu­ally per­ceived more from the out­side.
What’s the model quar­tet for the Quar­tet Ger­hard?
(LC) The Hagen Quar­tet [an Aus­trian quar­tet founded in 1981]. (JB) We spent three years in Basel study­ing with Rainer Schmidt, the vi­o­lin­ist, and I think that to­gether with Eber­hard Feltz in Berlin he’s the teacher who’s made the most im­pres­sion on us. (JM) Be­fore work­ing with him, we stud­ied this quar­tet a lot, lis­ten­ing to CDs and watch­ing videos. The Hagen has a very ho­mo­ge­neous sound, but at the same time four very clear voices and very well de­fined roles. It’s a quar­tet with per­son­al­ity that takes mu­si­cal risks.
Many of your ideas are typ­i­cal of jazz and im­pro­vised music.
(JB) Yes, many of our in­flu­ences come from jazz! (JM) We con­stantly tell our­selves that we want to feel clas­si­cal music like some peo­ple feel jazz. I’m sure many com­posers wanted this. They were writ­ing down the notes but they wanted what was fi­nally going to hap­pen with those notes to hap­pen on stage.
Why did you call the quar­tet after Ger­hard?
(LC) In Spain’s 20th-cen­tury mu­si­cal his­tory there was a French com­po­si­tional tra­di­tion that Ger­hard was not com­fort­able with. So he had to go out and find what he wanted. His music ex­presses things that are true and that come from within. (MJ) Yes, he in­spires us be­cause he was some­one who went look­ing for his voice and found it, even if it meant going against the tide. Break­ing away from a more im­pres­sion­is­tic French tra­di­tion at the time and turn­ing to Ex­pres­sion­ism was prac­ti­cally a leap into the void.
He died 50 years and there’s still a lot of talk about whether he is per­formed enough on the coun­try’s stages.
(MJ) I think Ger­hard has to be per­formed well. In fact, the bet­ter we play any music, the bet­ter. I think it’s more im­por­tant to in­ter­pret Ger­hard well than to per­form him a lot. I pre­fer that care be taken with the ma­te­r­ial and for it to reach the lis­tener’s ears in the best con­di­tion. If not, you dis­tort it, which is some­thing for which poor Robert Ger­hard is not to blame.
Any pro­jects to high­light?
(JB) In Jan­u­ary at the Palau de la Música, we’re plan­ning the pre­miere of a quar­tet writ­ten by Ramon Humet. (LC) We’re ex­cited be­cause this is the first time a quar­tet has been writ­ten for us in which we’re part of the cre­ative process.

in­ter­view music

A decade of strings

One of the most popular quartets in Europe, the Quartet Gerhard has recently returned to Catalonia after a long spell in Berlin. The band has taken part in many of Europe’s most prestigious chamber music seasons and has released albums such as ‘Portrait’ and ‘Quartet Gerhard Kurtag / Berg / Schumann’. This year they have dates at the Circuit de Lied in Mosqueroles (October 10), the Ateneu Center of Musical Studies in Banyoles (December 12) and the Josep Carreras Auditorium in Vila-seca (December 18).

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