Forming a string quartet seems to be a bit like forming a personal relationship. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The members of the Vogler String Quartet got together as students in East Berlin in the mid-1980s, when their teacher cautioned them that "you can only be good musicians if you know the chamber music repertoire". So, wanting to be good musicians, they started playing together, "just sitting down and reading through things, practising a little bit," explains second violinist Frank Reinecke, "until the possibility of a competition came up, at Evian in France". The competition was a spur for more than musical reasons. If they were allowed to enter, it meant they could get to see the world outside of the Eastern bloc countries. And that, of course, wasn't all they achieved. They took first prize at the competition, the invitations flowed in, and their career was launched.
Well, in truth, it wasn't really quite that simple. As cellist Stephan Forck points out, there wasn't much that they could actually perform in concert. They had worked hard at the pieces they needed to play at the competition. "But we had practically no repertoire. Just four pieces, maybe a fifth and a sixth one". And on top of that, the head of the conservatory ruled that, as they were still students, they should finish their studies before they were allowed to pursue a career as a professional string quartet.
The big break, after their success at the Evian competition, was in being allowed to study abroad. "In 1989," says Reinecke, "we were the first musicians from East Germany who were ever allowed to study in the US. It was a very unusual thing, and a great time for us." They studied in Cincinnati with the LaSalle Quartet, a group who specialised in 20th-century music, from Schoenberg, Berg and Webern down to contemporary work. "And when we came back we had a great opportunity, getting jobs at the Hanns Eisler Conservatory as assistant teachers, something that we kept until the wall came down." The four-and-a-half months in the US were crucial to the quartet's development, enabling them to learn new repertoire, adding pieces like the Berg Lyric Suite and Beethoven's Op 130 to their existing small core. "Before," says Reinecke, "we didn't have that many concerts, and we studied everything with our teacher. We really had to see that we widened our repertoire a bit. You can't play the same thing at every concert."
The quartet made their Irish debut, courtesy of John Ruddock's Limerick Music Association in 1988, and have been frequent visitors ever since. At this stage, they seem unable to recall whether it was Ruddock or the Music Network's chief executive, John O'Kane, who sent them on the details of the quartet-in-residence scheme for Sligo. Either way, says Reinecke, "it wasn't love at first sight, although I personally thought it was a great thing. Slowly, we thought about it again, and, actually, the whole programme started sounding very interesting to us, something that really caught our interest, especially the aspect of being able to work on unspoiled ground for music education. You know," he says, rather tangling his English in the effort to be tactful, "the audience is getting not younger."
"We think it's a very smart idea," he continues, "and really very thoughtful of the people in Sligo, the County Council, to have this idea and to put it into practice the way they have." It's at this point that the quartet's leader, Tim Vogler, makes his first intervention. "We think many other countries could learn from this project, Germany included - there is nothing like this in Germany." It's the quartet's hope, he says, that by coming here they will send a signal out to the rest of the world, about the project itself and about Ireland. He's looking forward to establishing relationships with younger people. For the Voglers, he sees the Sligo project, which has a high educational and community content, as being an important counterbalance to the normal routine of concert-giving. "When we came to Sligo first for the audition," recalls Reinecke, "the audition was playing for a school class of, I think, nine-year-olds. This really was a very nice experience. They were very open, very disciplined - really not running around, or anything. We played part of Ligeti's Second String Quartet, and they were just so thrilled, hearing something like this. Normally, adults, with their preconceptions, might say that's something they don't want to hear.
`YOU can learn a lot from children who are so open. They just listen to what's offered. They like it or they don't like it. It's amazing that they are much more advanced through this open-ness than some adults. There seems to be a great interest in Sligo. They've started this pre-musical class to lead into the instrumental programme. In one day, they got 70 applications - from the day they sent it out to the next day, they got 70 replies. This is amazing!"
Forck sees the interest in the quartet's work as stemming from some of the restrictions of modern life. "We play instruments, and it's in a way old-fashioned - we use a bow, we use strings, we use material you can see. Nowadays, children look at television. There's a tendency to lose contact with nature, with how sounds are produced." He thinks the sensitivity involved in making music by traditional means is particularly important. "The children were very curious. After the audition, they came and they wanted to touch the instruments, wanted to know how to do it. When you have an experience like that as a child, your life will be different."
AND the way things are planned for Sligo, the Voglers' contribution will amount to much more than the educational commitment. There will, of course, be concerts. Tomorrow night, the Voglers join forces with the RTE Vanbrugh String Quartet at St John's Cathedral in Sligo, for a concert in which they'll each be heard separately and then together in Mendelssohn's Octet. And there's an annual spring festival planned for the May bank holiday weekend in Drumcliffe Church. They'll be playing new pieces, commissioning new work, providing a platform for Irish music, and inviting guests to form quintets and sextets.
Their track record with 20th-century music is good - they've included works by Berg, Ligeti, Lutoslawski and Cage in their Irish programmes to date, and their programming in Berlin has included a Schoenberg cycle, and also Morton Feldman's four-and-a-half-hour, Quartet No 2 from 1983. And, says Vogler, if the festival is a success, "we might continue it after the residency, as well".
The Vogler Quartet and RTE Vanbrugh Quartet play at St John's Cathedral Sligo, tomorrow night at 8 p.m. The programme includes Haydn's Quartet in G Op 76 No 1, Bartok's Quartet No 5 and the Mendelssohn: Octet. Booking and information from 071-44131. The three-year Sligo quartet-in-residence project is a ground-breaking partnership between Sligo Co Council, Sligo Corporation, the Arts Council and Music Network, with support from the ESB and the IRMA Trust. For details contact the Sligo Co Council Arts Office, 071-56629.
