Kazuhide Isomura Bottom: the 1969 Originals: (L to R) Koichiro Harada, 22 Winter 2013 Yoshiko Nakura, Sadao Harada, Kazuhide Isomura by DAVID PATRICK STEARNS
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LEAVE-TAKING Top: Founding Violist: Kazuhide Isomura Bottom: The 1969 Originals: (l to r) Koichiro Harada, 22 Winter 2013 Yoshiko Nakura, Sadao Harada, Kazuhide Isomura BY DAVID PATRICK STEARNS AFTER A 43-YEAR CAREER, THE TOKYO STRING QUARTET WILL DISBAND THIS SUMMER. BUT FIRST, THE ILLUSTRIOUS Tenth Anniversary: S. Harada, Kikuei Ikeda, ENSEMBLE IS REVISITING ITS MOST TREASURED REPERTOIRE. K. Harada, & Isomura Beaver, first violinist since 2002, citing Philadelphia, Houston and New York’s 92nd Street Y as the group’s ooking back, the signs are all there. mainstays. “We’re very close to the people involved.” LEAVE-TAKINGEven if the Tokyo String Quartet hadn’t In truth, most of the repertoire omens suggesting the announced its forthcoming breakup, the group end were accidental: Programs are often planned two years just finished recording the late Beethoven quartets in advance, and it just so happened that lots of swan songs —for the second time. Then came a Schubert figured into what the group wanted to do. Given the diffi- Quintet in C major recording—another piece that culties of post-9/11 travel with a quartet of Stradivarius Lquartets want to do one last time. Concerts included the instruments on loan from the Nippon Foundation, you can last quartets of Schubert and Bartók. On the cover of understand the psychology of playing the most substantial the quartet's latest recording, a Dvor˘ák/Smetana program, repertoire once finally arriving at the concert venue. the players are standing with their coats on, getting ready At first, the two older Japanese members announced to leave. their simultaneous retirements; applications were taken And they are. for replacements. But even with the precedent of the “I'm still obsessed with the string quartet literature, but Budapest Quartet taken over by Russians, Beaver and 43 years playing with the quartet is not a short period of Greensmith couldn't decide how to respect the group’s time,” says the ebullient, 67-year-old violist Kazuhide ethnic history. Should replacements be Japanese born? And Isomura, a founding member. “The end came sooner than I trained? Finally, in the spring of 2012, the quartet’s joint thought...but now, I can’t wait.” decision was announced—with a formal ending on “When I joined I wondered, How long am I going to be July 6, 2013, at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. There, living this life? I hoped to have more than a handful of the Tokyo Quartet plays goodbye with Haydn’s String years, enough to learn the repertoire and to become Quartet Op. 77 No. 1, the Debussy String Quartet, and immersed in it,” says Clive Greensmith, only the second Bartok’s String Quartet No. 6, written by the composer in cellist in the quartet’s history. “After 14 years it was easier ambivalent anticipation of leaving his home in Hungary. to say that there was an investment of time and energy, “Usually we don’t argue very much,” says second violinist and we've covered all the standard rep.” Kikuei Ikeda, “but we talked a lot about this last program.” “A good adjective would be bittersweet, especially when What might Ikeda most like to do before that July we visit places where we really felt at home,” says Martin disbanding? “Play with different violist, right?” interjects 23 Beaver counts Josef Gingold and Henryk Szeryng among his teachers and won a silver medal at the 1993 Queen Elisabeth Competition. His placid exterior is known to mask a particularly wicked sense of humor. British- born Clive Greensmith, known to be the smoothest talker but also perhaps the most outspoken, grad- uated from the Royal North College of Music and Isomura. the Musik-hochschule in Cologne, and counts pianist “I read your mind!” Simone Dinnerstein among his in-laws. Today’s Tokyo: Ikeda, Greensmith, Beaver, IsomuraThere’s laughter all around. Because Ikeda is reserved—he doesn’t want to give The rest of the chamber music world isn’t so jovial. “It reasons for his departure except to say that “it’s personal”— feels much like being told that a close friend is terminally Kazu is the one who gives a candid picture of the postwar ill,” wrote Toronto music critic John Terauds on the Musical Japanese culture from which the Tokyo Quartet originally Toronto blog. emerged. The Suzuki method was everywhere. Kazu’s Though the Tokyo Quartet has had more first-violin mother associated Western classical music with a more changes than any major quartet in recent history, it has peaceful world. Though his father wasn’t especially attuned pursued a surprisingly consistent course since 1969 (with to music, he was seized by the romance and prestige of the exception of its late-1990s years with violinist Mikhail the Western string quartet, made sure his four sons had Kopelman—more on that later), thanks to a peerless blend string-instrument lessons, and even had a portrait painted of sound and exceptional reverence for the music at hand. of what they might look like as a grown-up string quartet. Though known as Bartók specialists, they maintain a core It still hangs in their living room. repertoire of Haydn and Schubert. Interventionists, they’re Though Kazu and the original violinist Koichiro Harada not. During an afternoon at cellist Greensmith’s home in were similarly seized with interest in string quartet music Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., I described the group as “objectivists on and began exploring it together at age 15, the Juilliard steroids.” They liked that. Well, some of them. Quartet's 1965 residency in Nikko, Japan, was what sealed Though the Tokyo Quartet members have often seemed cut their commitment to the art form. All four future founding from similar cloth—the original members were all educated members of the Tokyo Quartet were there, and the impact at the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo, and the was seismic. However, they went rather separate ways current ones play the supposedly well-matched Paganini before meeting again at Juilliard. Strads—there’s no question that the famous blend is a Through contacts met during their summer at the Aspen product of much effort from a highly individualistic four- Music Festival, Kazu and original cellist Sadao Harada (no some. relation to Koichiro) were told they could earn money to The two Japanese members are in their 60s and are as attend Juilliard by spending a year in Nashville, where they much products of The Juilliard School as they were of the landed positions in the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, as Toho school in their native Japan. Violist Isomura—his well as recording sessions in the country-music capital of friends call him Kazu—is the most outgoing of the four; and the world. Kazu was heard alongside Chet Atkins and Glenn besides his Toho pedigree, studied violin with Ivan Galamian Campbell, though often in overdubbed orchestrations on and viola with Walter Trampler. Second violinist Ikeda is the what had already been recorded. Among Harada’s rock, though the least talkative of the four, a Toho graduate phantom collaborators was who studied with Dorothy DeLay at Juilliard, joining the Elvis Presley. group in 1974, replacing Yoshiko Nakura. The two younger members are in their mid-40s. Canadian-born , IT HAS PURSUED “THOUGH THE TOKYO HAS HAD MORE FIRST-VIOLIN CHANGES THAN ANY OTHER MAJOR QUARTET IN RECENT HISTORY A SURPRISINGLY CONSISTENT COURSE SINCE 1969.” pon finally migrating east to Juilliard, the quar- my siblings laugh. And I loved making them [the Tokyo tet formed; and success was all but immediate, Quartet] laugh.” with prizes from Young Concert Artists The language spoken at rehearsal needed to change International Auditions in New York and such from Japanese to English, which dramatically altered the praise at the Munich Competition that the jury group dynamic. “Japanese leaves a lot of room for ambiva- named the Tokyo Quartet first and refused to lence,” says Oundjian. “With English, they couldn’t beat give a second prize, feeling that nobody else around the bush. Rehearsals became clearer and freer. Our Uhad come close. relationship was very, very healthy in those early years.” “We never had to promote ourselves,” says Kazu. Yet He recalls high-spirited European tours, for which they never did they take their success for granted. The group's would rent a large Mercedes and drive from engagement to New York debut at Town Hall was still at a time when critics engagement all over the continent. “We were like the Rat wrote overnight for the New York Times, and the first edi- Pack,” he says. tion could be found in the wee hours. Like anxious Broadway But Oundjian was experiencing problems. Older members show producers, they waited up—and weren't disappointed. observed his exceptionally intense practice habits. For first Any number of other subsequent reviews, in the United violinists, the concerts themselves are the stress equivalent States and elsewhere, had a cynical streak, suggesting to playing three concertos. As early as the late 1980s, that the Tokyo Quartet was all about technical precision Oundjian was losing the use of his ring finger due to focal over feeling, even making comparisons with Japanese dystonia, but was clever enough to adjust his fingerings technology. The members, among the first native Japanese that even his close colleagues didn’t notice. Near the end, classical musicians to gain international fame, tried to give though, he was sometimes getting through concerts on the situation a positive spin: “We had a frontier spirit,” says two-and-a-half fingers. “Sometimes they sensed that I was Kazu. But those reviews hurt.