What is a string quartet? These days, as often as not, the ensemble is defined by a tendency to wear designer clothing and pose for quirky publicity shots. "Hmm," says David Waterman, cellist with the Endellion Quartet, one of the most highly-regarded English ensembles of the moment. "We don't dress in designer suits. I suppose we're just not beautiful enough. I don't think we'd ever get away with trying to look trendy . . . "
As the photograph on the right clearly demonstrates, however, the Endellions are perfectly happy to have a go at the quirky posing - in fact, says Waterman, he's prepared to do pretty much anything which will convince people that string quartets are not for ancient fuddy-duddies who want to listen to impenetrable music in stuffy surroundings. "The term `chamber music' is terrible, isn't it? It needs to be replaced, for a start." Four musicians working in unison - nothing fuddy-duddy about that, for, as he points out, it was adopted as the basic format by pop groups from The Beatles onwards.
But isn't string quartet repertoire just a little more demanding, for the listener, than a well-worn old Beatles album? Don't you need to be a serious sort of person to enjoy a chamber music concert? Rubbish, says Waterman. "I can't think of anything more witty than a Haydn string quartet, or more exciting and dangerous than Bartok or Berg. OK, you do need to work at it, but it's only a question of listening, after all. The way to get into classical music is, take one movement and listen to it about 15 times. That's the way it's done with pop music - a song comes out, and it's played every day on every station until everybody knows every note of it." Listening to Waterman talk about the pieces the Endellions will play on their forthcoming Music Network/ESB tour, which begins in Clifden on Friday - a "good-natured, happy Beethoven", a new piece by Ian Wilson, "largely slow and exploratory, avant-garde to a point, but one of those pieces where you would know if there was a wrong note" and the famously sublime Schubert quintet - gives a flavour of his group's approach. The Endellions have constantly been praised, not just for the beauty and distinctiveness of their sound and the musical truths they uncover, but for the sheer infectious joy of their playing.
What? Joy? For here's another received notion about string quartets - they're supposed to fight all the time. But the Endellions were founded in 1979 and the current ensemble has been playing together since second violinist Ralph de Souza joined in 1986, so if they look as if they enjoy playing together, then they probably do - or they would have broken up by now. For a string quartet is, he says, rather like a marriage. "Some of your best moments are together, and some of your worst moments are together. You're totally dependent on each other for your artistic life; and the group, on the whole, will only play as well as the person who's playing worst, because you can't carry anybody. Rehearsal is basically a situation where you're telling very, very experienced professional players what you don't like about what they're doing - and that's hard." If it's hard for the regular members of the ensemble, it must be pretty tricky for a visiting soloist, too, especially for a celebrity who is used to being the top dog, musically speaking, all the time. Chamber music is notoriously resistant to the idea of "stars", since in a quartet or quintet the melody is never the preserve of one person, but is constantly passed from one voice to another. Soloist on this tour will be the young English cellist Thomas Carroll, a former BBC Young Musician of the Year and, if our brief conversation on the phone from his study base in Vienna is anything to go by, a model of enthusiasm and diplomacy.
"I've played the Schubert quintet before, yes - though never with the Endellions, and I'm sure the way they play it will be very different. It should be fun, though." Fun? No fights? "Hmm. Sometimes there are. Some people do actually quarrel. But I've had very lucky experiences. I've never had a problem in that way," he says.
As for David Waterman, he says he always wanted to play in a quartet, and 20 years on, he can't think of anything he'd rather do. "There are all sorts of things which are irritating and disappointing about working with a chamber group - it's terribly difficult to make a living out of it, for instance," he says, pointing out that Ireland, with a population of three million, is doing supremely well to support both the RTE Vanbrugh quartet and now, with their Sligo residency, the Vogler Quartet, on a full-time basis. "But for me, in the end, the best thing is this wonderful repertoire of fantastic works," he says. "We have a repertoire of 250 pieces now, by a pantheon of great composers - Beethoven, Brahms, Britten - composers whose best music, often, is in their quartet writing." No wonder he doesn't want people to come to concerts to admire his suit.
The Music Network/ESB tour with the Endellion String Quartet and Thomas Car- roll, cellist, begins in Clifden on Friday and continues to Carlingford (Sunday), Castle- bar (Monday), Letterkenny (Tuesday), Drogheda (Wednesday), Knocktopher (Friday) and St Patrick's Hall in Dublin Castle on Saturday December 4th.
