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Playing for Keeps By Jeremy Schlosberg There's always room at the top for a good string quartet, and that's where this Eastman student group is heading. At the end of a quiet hallway tucked into a fourth-floor corner of the Eastman School of Music, in a practice room crowded with two grand pianos, an assortment of creaky chairs, randomly placed instrument cases, and a half dozen music stands, the Meliora Quartet has just finished doing what it spends most of its time together doing -practicing. Its members are now undertaking what comes close to being their second most time-consuming activity-scheduling their next rehearsal. Before their instruments are secured in their cases, all four players have pounced on their appointment books. As Ian Swensen, first violinist, and Maria Lambros, violist, study their calendars, Calvin Wiersma, second violinist, proposes meeting the next morning, a Saturday, at ten-a suggestion that elicits a groan from the cellist, Elizabeth Anderson (known to friends as Betsy). "I've got to sleep, Cal, or I'm going to get pneumonia or something," she says. After a few minutes of haggling, they settle on a rehearsal at three o'clock, at the conclusion of which, of course, the foursome will go through their scheduling act all over again. No one said playing in a quartet was going to be easy. Winning the Cleveland Quartet Competition in April of 1983 has allowed the Meliora Quartet the enviable opportunity of studying for two years at the Eastman School with the internationally acclaimed Cleveland Quartet, which has been in residence at Eastman since 1976. "I remember The Meliora Quartet at the top of Wilson Commons: Elizabeth Anderson, cello; Calvin Wiersma, second violin; Maria Lambros, viola; and Ian Swensen, first violin 6
coming to Eastman hoping that I could work with the Cleveland Quartet for even one semester," says Maria. "So we've gotten awfully lucky." Maria may call it luck. But to the judges of the international competition it was rather more than that. "They simply happened to be the best," says one of the jurors, J on Engberg, associate director for academic affairs and associate dean for graduate studies at the Eastman School. Dating back to 1976, when the Cleveland joined the school, the competition reflects that well-established group's desire to nurture younger colleagues, something it believes in strongly. Eastman stages the competition biennially, when it invites quartets from around the world to audition. The winning ensemble, which receives tuition remission and a stipend, is invited to the Eastman School for a twoyear period to study with the Cleveland and other members of the string faculty. "The winner comes as a quartet," says Engberg, "and its first order of business is to study, rehearse, and perform as an ensemble. This group occupies a special place at Eastman." More than equal to the task, the Meliora players have, by the end of their first year, rapidly blossomed into one of this country's most promising young chamber groups, which means three things: They have talent, they have a flair for performance, and they get along with each other. The value of that last part cannot be overestimated. "Successful, professional chamber groups are very hard to keep together," Engberg notes. "There's an old cliche," says Cleveland Quartet cellist Paul Katz, "that says that a quartet is like a fourway marriage, with all of the disadvantages and none of the advantages. " "You get to know somebody musically, and that individual's personality is going to come out too," is the way Calvin puts it. "That's what the rehearsals are about," says Betsy. "Just as much as they are about learning the music and understanding the composer, they're also about understanding the people you're playing with well enough so that all four of you can understand the composer." Playing, therefore, isjust part of what being a quartet is about. Yes, the Meliora Quartet won the Cleveland Quartet Competition; yes, it has twice been accepted to participate in the Aspen Music Festival's Center for Advanced Quartet Studies; yes, it tied for top place in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition in South Bend, Indiana, in April of this year and then went on to win the Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition in Pasadena later that month; and yes, it will make its New York City and Boston debuts this fall. But kudos alone does not a quartet make. In many ways, the Meliora Quartet's most notable achievement is the maintenance and development of the positive chemistry existing among its members. "They have an attitude and enthusiasm that is consistent among all four of them, which is unusual," says Engberg. "Very often, you will find one or more of the people in a group to be somewhat of an outsider. But everybody in this group is really dedicated to one another. " Their spirited interrelationship is best on display in rehearsal, where they might be playing only half the time, discussing and critiquing individual and group performances the other half. Give and take is fluid, comments and suggestions readily requested and received. "Did the tempo seem slow?" "Yeah." "Oh, I liked it. " "J ust a touch faster-the whole thing. " "But it has a grace to it. " Short, explosive instrumental examples punctuate many of the discussions about particular passages. Likewise anyone of the group members may spontaneously sing a bar or two to illustrate a musical point. The playing itself is dynamic, energetic, assured, even in the rehearsal room's inevitable fragments. Heads, shoulders, forearms, elbows dip this way and that. First violinist Ian is animated facially-his eyebrows darting up and down, his eyes and mouth evincing the effort of playing, as if he were yanking the notes he plays from somewhere deep within. On all four faces is written one word, in bold letters, and underlined: concentration. For in a quartet, you must not only play-you must listen to three others play at the same time. "You're always reminding yourself to listen," says Maria. Betsy elaborates. "Sometimes you find yourself getting so involved in your own part that you realize you're not playing with the other people. At other times, you're sort of sinking in with the sound of the group so much that you don't really play your own line as convincingly as you could." This constant playing off from one another extends beyond the strings and bows. Even in conversation, sentences are sometimes started by one, completed by another, and interpreted by a third, each member's voice intertwining with and augmenting other voices much as their instruments do when the talking stops. One might wonder if this compatibility developed gradually or if it just clicked. "There's always something of an adjustment time," says Maria. "I think there really should be," adds Calvin. "But there's both things happening all the time," Ian points out. "There's also a click, there really is," concludes Betsy. Call it harmony at first sight-just an old-fashioned boy-meets-girl-meetsboy-meets-girl story. Calvin attempts to unravel it. "Two summers ago, at the Aspen Music Festival [a summer music school held annually in Aspen, Colorado], Maria and Ian and Betsy played in a string quartet together. The following year, Ian and I both came here to Eastman, where Maria and Betsy were both already studying." Ian, originally from Pearl River, New York, transferred from Juilliard, joining Maria, a Missoula, Montana, native, in the junior class. Calvin, from Grand Rapids, Michigan, went to Eastman for his Master of Music degree, after graduating from Oberlin College. Betsy, the celloplaying pride of Sacramento, California, received her Master of Music
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