Two groups of ambitious music students on continents 3,900 miles apart had the same idea in 1989: form string quartets.
The ensembles have inevitably followed divergent paths – the Boston-based Borromeo String Quartet gaining almost immediate attention at an international competition in 1990, the Berlin-based Artemis Quartet taking a bit longer to flower.
But today they share an almost identical level of success. Both have to be considered potential successors to the Emerson, Takács and other long-established groups at the pinnacle of the quartet world.
In an unusual coincidence, these two 17-year-old ensembles will make stops in Colorado about three weeks apart, beginning with the Borromeo’s appearances Tuesday and Wednesday with 25-year-old pianist Jonathan Biss.
That these two quartets will be in the same state and not have any contact is typical. Although the groups express respect for each other, they have never had an opportunity to meet – an oddity of chance that mystifies their members.
“It’s really funny, because normally, young string quartets of our generation, they all know each other,” said Eckart Runge, the Artemis’ cellist. “But somehow, we never got to know the Borromeo, although I’ve heard so many great things about them. I guess one day we’ll meet them.”
First violinist Nicholas Kitchen and cellist Yeesun Kim, the Borromeo’s two remaining founding members, had played together for several years when they joined forces with two other students at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Success came quickly. The group earned top prizes at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France, in 1990. The next year it won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions.
The group has gone on to appear on concert stages worldwide. Typical of praise for this group is a November review by New York Times critic Bernard Holland:
“Young, accomplished groups are everywhere: beautifully trained, smart and eager, sometimes to a fault. The Borromeo String Quartet … is a particular success story.”
The Artemis came together at the Musikhochschule in Lübeck, Germany, but it was not until 1994 that the ensemble took itself seriously and turned professional. It added a new player that year and began rehearsing in earnest.
But the student days were not wasted. The group spent two summers at the Center for Advanced Quartet Studies at the Aspen Music Festival and studied in Cologne with its most important mentor, the vaunted Alban Berg Quartet.
Like the Borromeo, it went on to win prizes in several major competitions and embarked on an international career. A big turning point came in June when it signed an exclusive recording contract with Virgin Classics.
In October, the label released the Artemis’ recording of two Beethoven quartets and
rereleased its earlier recording of the two string quartets by celebrated Hungarian-born composer György Ligeti.
Although the Borromeo has made two commercial recordings, it has focused its attention in that realm on an innovative project called the Living Archive. Since October 2003, it has recorded almost all its concerts, making them available on CDs or DVDs on its website.
Artists achieve a level of energy, excitement and immediacy in a live performance that is often not attainable in the studio, Kitchen said. Each performance inevitably differs, sometimes considerably, from another.
“I realized, as I learned about technology, that there was no reason not to try and capture that and sort of see: Is there really that special magic that’s part of it?” he said.
Attendees at the concerts are the main buyers of these unedited recordings, but Kitchen said some listeners will sample concerts they have not attended to make comparisons and hear unfamiliar repertoire.
“It doesn’t tend to be more than 30 orders for a concert. That’s kind of where it usually would be. And then, sometimes, it’s just a few. Sometimes it’s 10. Sometimes it’s 15,” he said.
The Borromeo’s Colorado appearances are part of a four-concert tour with Biss. Their program will consist of Bela Bartok’s Quartet No. 5 and Antonin Dvorák’s Piano Quintet in A.
The Artemis, which has traveled once a year to the United States for about eight years, is returning for a two-week visit. Its Feb. 8 program will include Ligeti’s Quartet No. 2 as well as works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Schubert.
That neither of these quartets has made a big name for itself yet in the classical world at large is not surprising. Quartet careers are built painstakingly, and stardom in the field can take a few decades to achieve.
“It’s like a turtle,” Runge said. “It’s not like a comet that rockets into a career. It takes years and years, and I think no quartet became famous overnight, in contrast to a soloist or a singer or a conductor.”
Borromeo String Quartet, Jonathan Biss, pianist Lincoln Center’s Classical Music
Series | Edna Rizley Griffin Concert
Hall, Colorado State University, Fort
Collins; 7:30 p.m. Tuesday | $22
general public, $12 students
| 970-491-4849
Friends of Chamber
Music | University of Denver, Gates
Concert Hall, Newman Center for
the Performing Arts, 2344 E. Iliff
Ave.; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday | sold
out | 303-388-9839 or friendsof
chambermusic.com
Artemis Quartet
Friends of Chamber Music | Gates
Concert Hall, Newman Center; 7:30
p.m. Feb. 8 | sold out | 303-388-
9839 or friendsofchambermusic
.com.
