QUALITY ON THE CHEAP
posted by James Reel
Yesterday afternoon, six Naxos discs arrived in my mailbox. They contained the Schubert quartet cycle recorded over the past few years by the Kodály Quartet, something I need to listen to in preparation for a magazine feature I’ll be writing on that ensemble. A couple of decades ago, I would have anticipated seven hours of string-quartet playing on a budget label with dismay. Remember all those Vox Boxes? Interesting music you couldn’t find anywhere else, played by groups with wiry tone, sometimes ragged ensemble and the dull efficiency of sight-readers. The performances by the likes of the Kohon Quartet, the Copenhagen Quartet and the Macalester Trio weren’t fundamentally bad, just unpretty. Today, in contrast, it’s difficult to find scrappy chamber-music playing on even the bargain-basement labels. The worst you’ll find anymore is a group like the recently disbanded Lindsays, whose first violinist, Peter Cropper, would often sacrifice his intonation to the excitement or intensity of the overall performance.
We owe part of the change to the improvement of music education throughout the northern hemisphere; the situation in American public schools is difficult, of course, but at the college and conservatory level students are better drilled in technique than ever before. Even an out-of-the-way land grant college like our own University of Arizona is now graduating some fine young players. And there are more of these expert players than ever before, so record companies have a greater number of ensembles to choose from.
Is there work for all of them? Well, not as soloists, and the orchestra employment situation has its ups and downs, although every American and European city big enough to have two McDonald’s franchises seems determined to have an orchestra, too, even if the players would make more money and have greater job security flipping burgers. In terms of chamber music, more and more colleges are funding quartets-in-residence, and there are plenty of presenters like the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music creating a strong touring circuit. But the list of available ensembles is getting as thick as the Nogales phone book, and there aren’t enough concert slots to support them all, so many of these performers are spending more of their time teaching … grooming more expert young players with whom to compete.
An economist would probably warn us that a boom like this can’t be sustained, and will lead to a crash within a few years, so we music consumers should enjoy it while we can. If we can. I haven’t addressed the issue of interpretation, which is a concern that has fallen by the wayside in pursuit of technical excellence, but that’s a rant for another time. Meanwhile, I’m actually taking pleasure in hearing the Kodály Quartet play six discs worth of Schubert on a budget label.
