Page 33 - The Strad (February 2020)

ÉBÈNE QUARTET

and she was never free,’ laughs Colombet, ‘but Raphaël said,
“Marie will be the one. Everybody in France is talking about
her.”’ Smiling, Chilemme says, ‘I wasn’t deliberately not being
free, and I had no idea that this was a trial to be in the quartet
for real. ¡e tour repertoire was Fauré quartets, which were
totally new to me. Plus two big Beethovens, Haydn and jazz,
and I wanted to be good, you know? I was practising my viola
with the Ébène CDs. I wanted to be prepared enough to be able
to hear what was happening in the moment and to be free
enough to react.’
After the second concert she was o¦ered the chair, and while
she may be the newest human member, she’s been paired with
the quartet’s only other original true member – the 1625
Marcellus Hollmayr viola once played by Herzog, purchased
for the quartet by its long-term supporter, Gabriele Forberg
of the Forberg-Schneider Foundation. Meanwhile, since our
Verbier interview there have been new instruments for the
other three players, all loaned through Beare’s International
Violin Society: the 1717 ‘Piatti’ Stradivari for Colombet,
loaned by a sponsor; a 1727 Stradivari for Le Magadure, for
which a long-term patron is being sought; and a Carlo Tononi
for Merlin.
But to return to that sunny hotel terrace, our e«ciently
organised interview vastly overran at the quartet’s wish – not
that this a¦ected their performance that evening of Beethoven,
Brahms and Dutilleux, which earned them a standing ovation.
¡ey exuded the impression of being at home in their
environment and with each other, playing with a brilliance and
them to pursue their wider talents, most notably the rhythm freshness which bristled with anticipation for the future, and
that’s in their bones, beginning with the release in 2010 of the with the all-or-nothing passion of a team holding on to the
jazz CD Fiction. Another notable release is their 2016 Schubert illusion that they could leave tomorrow.
Quintet album with cellist Gautier Capuçon, which also features
Merlin’s own quartet transcriptions of Schubert lieder, sung by
baritone Matthias Goerne. WIN THE ÉBÈNE QUARTET’S
%1/2.'6'ǡ$''6*18'0ǡ%;%.'
his brings us to the subject of how to replace a quartet We have ten copies of the Ébène Quartet’s new
member, because the violist featured on the Schubert seven-disc Beethoven cycle on Erato to give
T album is Adrien Boisseau, Herzog having vacated the away. Released on 13 March 2020, this set of
viola chair in 2015 to pursue his conducting. ‘Nobody’s complete Beethoven String Quartets was
irreplaceable,’ begins Le Magadure, carefully, ‘but it’s a big recorded live in Philadelphia, Vienna, Tokyo, São
challenge to integrate somebody new. You have to respect all Paulo, Melbourne, Nairobi and Paris during the
the work that was done with the former member, but on the ensemble’s 2019-20 tour. For your chance to win,
other hand you have to consider the positive elements now submit your details at bit.ly/2YVUbYn
being brought to the table, even if they fundamentally Closing date 31 March
contradict the previous methods; and with Adrien, there
was often conŒict, but also lots of expression. We probably
chose him for what he could do as a soloist more than for
what he could do for the group, which was our mistake. Surveying the water in
Tongyeong, South Korea
We’re proud of the Schubert album, and we’re happy to
have shared Eternal Stories (2017), featuring saxophonist
Michel Portal, with Adrien. But we also went through
a pretty tough crisis.’
So when the mutual parting of ways came in 2017, they
knew that they had to audition for the role this time round
– but as the hunt for a new violist happened to coincide with
Boisseau taking four months out for an injury, the auditionees,
booked for short stints, had no idea that they were being tested
for a permanent place. Chilemme was the fourth violist they
tried, for a Japan tour. ‘We had wanted her for a long time,

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