The Marmen Quartet: a seamless transition

Some 2½ years ago the lockdown hit the Marmen Quartet very hard. The group, which was founded at the Royal College of Music in London in 2013, had won major competitions in Canada (Banff) and France (Bordeaux) in 2019. But the diary of over 100 concerts for 2020 just emptied after the World Health Organisation’s declaration of Covid-19 as a global pandemic.

The upheaval they experienced would go well beyond losing work. There were changes in membership, with two new players joining, Laia Valentin Braun from Switzerland was the new second violinist and Sinéad O’Halloran from Ireland became the quartet’s cellist.

The new members seem to have arrived close to seamlessly. O’Halloran had met the group’s viola-player, New Zealander Bryony Gibson-Cornish, at the International Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove in 2017. They “clicked” during “a really special walk together along the coast in Cornwall one day” and, O’Halloran says, “I was really lucky that I met Bryony and that she thought of me when the position became open and she reached out to me. And it all worked out!”

Braun had been studying in Basel with Rainer Schmidt, the legendary second violinist of the Hagen Quartet. “Rainer really looked after his students very, very well during the pandemic,” he says. “I was busy analysing Schubert songs, listening to recordings of Mahler symphonies, things like that, and practising the violin a little bit. And also fermenting food at home. I got into that. Things kind of aligned in an organic way. I bumped into some of my new colleagues in a project in the UK and things kind of worked out.”

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There’s a tendency for music lovers to focus special attention on quartets where the membership remains the same over a long period of time. Although the Marmen Quartet won’t turn 10 until next year, the leader, Johannes Marmen, who is Swedish, is actually the only surviving member of the original line-up.

So what’s it like to join an ensemble where the other members have been working together for years? For O’Halloran “it’s a real privilege to join a group that’s already so well established and that has figured out how to play quartets, but are still really open to fresh ideas and perspectives. I have learned so much in the past year. Literally every day I’m learning. We’re quite lucky in that I don’t feel like I am joining a quartet that isn’t open to developing more. It’s a great thing to be able to do.”

And Braun concurs. “It really feels like a musical home. It doesn’t feel we’re joining a fixed thing.”

Marmen explains the process from his perspective. “When we were searching for new members the idea was never to find somebody who fitted in or slotted in very well. But to find people who are just as interested and inspired by the process of rehearsing and understanding – looking into the score and discussing all the really deep aspects of playing together, both psychologically, technically, every aspect, human and technical that there is.

“That has always been our ideal in a way. In that sense you could say that the quartet never changes. It’s like a river or something. There is some famous saying, maybe Confucius, that a person is like a river and the water that flows through is always different but the river is still the same. The spot that we are at now is very beautiful, very nice.”

Gibson-Cornish adds, “What’s so wonderful about inviting new members to join is that we can find new perspectives on the same music that we may have been playing for a number of years. What I love is just that opportunity to see something that I’ve been staring at for all this time and see it differently because of new perspectives and influences. Both Laia and Sinéad have brought such interesting ideas, perspectives, approaches to the quartet that they’ve really allowed us to grow even more and develop in such a wonderful and exciting way.”

Marmen casts the whole notion of membership in terms of a relationship. “I think a really good relationship with someone is when you can feel like you can be your best self in that relationship. When changing members in a quartet you have an opportunity to explore and to be able to improve yourself as an old member, and to invite people who can make your self even better. It’s a pretty fantastic influx.”

They make it sound like an application process that was largely without box-ticking. Was it primarily intuitive then?

“Yes,” says Gibson-Cornish. “Without a doubt. It was clear pretty much from the first rehearsal that both of these guys were the right fit. Of course, we did give it a few weeks. But in terms of appointing new members that would generally be considered quite fast. As my husband likes to say, ‘when you know, you know’.”

Marmen elaborates.”It was a very important thing for all of us that we just really enjoyed spending time together. And that we respect whenever somebody might want not to do something that there is always this . . . " As his voice trails off Gibson-Cornish interjects with what’s so clearly a slogan that you can hear the capital letters, “Foundation of Love, Trust and Respect.” Everyone laughs.

“We’re designing a crest for the quartet,” Marmen says, “so we’re finding out the Latin words so it all seems a little bit less obvious. But it’s true. We do love and trust and respect each other a lot.” This is not just good for “the everyday things” but also for “when you are in rehearsal and it becomes really personal and intense because you’re trying to get to the bottom of the music. In all those situations everyone can feel safe and good.”

String quartets vary in the way they structure their work. The Marmens say they don’t really have any fixed rules. “The only parameters we have in rehearsals,” says Marmen, “is we try and discuss exactly what we will rehearse in advance. We always start the rehearsal with playing a Bach chorale. And we nearly always rehearse for two hours, twice a day, or sometimes one-and-a-half, plus two.” But, adds Gibson-Cornish, “we nearly always go over time.”

Quartet-playing is a difficult career, high in status but limited in remuneration, as uncertain as any freelance activity, and with a high administrative burden when there’s lots of touring involved. And on tour you’re away from family, partners and loved ones. On the other hand the repertoire is nonpareil.

For Gibson-Cornish the biggest challenge is that “when we are trying to become the very best musicians we can, we’re up against ourselves”.

“So there are always going to be our own demons that we have to figure out. And luckily, in a quartet, we have friends who can help us figure out those demons. In any other situation you would be stuck with yourselves, or maybe your teacher. From that perspective we’re incredibly lucky that we are able to be vulnerable and have the help to figure out what we’re trying to do, and also be able to help each other. It doesn’t change the fact that if you want to figure out how to be in a quartet you have to be willing to be completely vulnerable on most days.”

And one of the works they’re playing in Westport is Janáček’s Second String Quartet, titled Intimate Letters, and an open declaration of love for Kamila Stösslová, a woman 38 years his junior, with whom he had fallen hopelessly in love.

Marmen offers the view that the quartet, composed in 1928, reflects its composition at a time when “moral codes were starting to be more challenged”.

“You don’t feel very clearly what’s right and wrong in this music,” he says. “The heroic bits sound like they’re some kind of feigned heroism. And the really intimate, personal bits sound like they are regretful and painful, even shameful in their indulgence sometimes. It feels like these are dark, secret emotions that are not allowed, and that are actually wrong. They are possible to express in music. In a way it’s a safe place to utter those kinds of things. The conflict and unresolved nature and struggling with the moral code or fabric, I feel that quite strongly in this music. I must say I’m not so well read on all this. It’s just something I’m getting from the music. It’s also quite incredible that you can get something like that from music.”

The Marmen Quartet are at the Westport Festival of Chamber Music, which runs from Friday, September 9th, to Sunday, September 11th (www.westportchambermusic.ie) and play Bartók, Ian Wilson and Beethoven at the NCH Kevin Barry Recital Room on the afternoon of Sunday, November 27th (www.nch.ie)