Octobre 2010 - La Scena Musicale

CECILIAQUARTET
TAKES BANFF COMPETITION
L.H. Tiffany Hsieh
They knew it would be a high note,
but they didn’t imagine how high. As
first violinist Min-Jeong Koh of the
Cecilia String Quartet put it, “We
made history.”
The last time a Canadian quartet triumphed
at the Banff International String Quartet
Competition (BISQC) was in 1992 when the St.
Lawrence String Quartet won, propelling them to
international recognition. Last month, eight
Canadians took home top prizes at the 2010
Competition: the Cecilia won first place and the
Afiara String Quartet came in second.
“I didn’t think we would win BISQC,” said Koh,
who is married to the Afiara’s cellist, Adrian Fung.
“I was just thrilled to be at the competition.”
The Cecilia quartet, which takes its name from
St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music, was founded
in 2004 by violinist Sarah Nematallah and cellist
Rebecca Wenham at the University of Toronto.
Koh and violist Caitlin Boyle make up the other
half of this all-female ensemble.
“When we played together, we felt something
special happening and audiences seemed to
respond to us. It was then that we decided to see
how far we could take it,” Nematallah said. “It
was scary, but it was a wonderful period of
growth and learning in all of our lives.”
Just days after their big win in Banff though,
the Cecilia announced Wenham was leaving the
group for California and being replaced by
Canadian cellist Rachel Desoer, whom the girls
said they already knew by reputation.
“The timing of Rebecca’s leaving was unfortunate…although
her decision came at a difficult
moment, the four of us have been working
THE CECILIA STRING QUARTET, WITH ANDRÉ ROY
towards BISQC for years,” Nematallah said. “It
made the whole experience that much more
emotionally intense. It was a bittersweet win.”
While making sacrifices for the quartet was
“mostly worth it,” Wenham said life had begun
pulling her in different directions.
“Playing string quartets is about the best
thing you can do as a musician,” she said. “But it
does come with complications unique to the
genre. As a young quartet you never fully unpack
your suitcase; when you get home from touring,
you start packing again because you are moving
to a new city, a new residency.”
So after six years of rehearsing six hours a day
in her living room “with nothing more than some
hope and lots of snacks from Rosie Robin’s,”
Wenham decided it was time to move on. “Now I
think I’ll do some yoga, eat some Mexican food
and be in love,” she said. “And maybe I’ll unpack.”
The winning group banks $25,000 and a coveted
concert tour at BISQC and Shiffman, who
last month joined Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of
Music as associate dean of its Glenn
Gould School, where the Cecilia was
recently appointed resident quartet
fellows, said the Cecilia and the Afiara
are two of the greatest quartets to
have emerged from Canada in a long
time.
“This is by no means a fluke. It’s a
huge recognition of the significant
commitment this country has made
in chamber music,” he said. “It was
emotional to see them take the stage
with no apologies. The juries cried—
they went through three boxes of
Kleenex. The levels of the top groups
were quite close (with Quatuor Zaide
from France in third place), but it was not a contentious
vote at all.”
André Roy heard every note played at the competition.
Despite some bias—he coached the Cecilia at
McGill University for the last two years—he said it
was the group’s willingness to adapt to changes and
let go of ego that made them a winning team. “The
pressure was big. It’s like going to the Vancouver
Olympics and playing in front of your own crowd,”
Roy said. “I had the feeling the extra pressure made
them come together more as a group.”
As for the new girl who has to fill Wenham’s
shoes, “I’m not feeling (the pressure) too much at
the moment, because I have too much work and
I’m having so much fun doing it,” said Desoer,
who studied with many of the same teachers as
her new colleagues.
Asked what change Desoer has brought to the
quartet aside from a new mix of musical energies
and ideas, “Different hair colour?” Nematallah
said. “I’m still the shortest girl, so no change!”
added Koh. ■
MCGILL’S NEW QUARTET ACADEMY
L.H. Tiffany Hsieh
THE FIRST-EVER MCGILL INTERNATIONAL String
Quartet Academy launched during the summer at
the university’s Schulich School of Music Aug. 15-26.
This was where Canada’s Cecilia String
Quartet, along with Germany’s Asasello, France’s
Noga and United States’ Peresson quartets, finetuned
their repertoire going into the 2010 Banff
International String Quartet Competition.
“The idea was simply to bring different quartets
from around the world together,” said academy
director André Roy. “In the world of string
quartets, you learn a lot from one another and
from other groups. So I wanted to bring them
together in a non-competitive environment.”
Roy, who has been teaching viola, chamber
music and orchestral studies at McGill since 1988,
put together the academy, complete with seven
concerts and eight masterclasses, in three months.
For the first year, they invited the four abovementioned
quartets, four distinguished professors
(violinist Walter Levin, violinist Gerhard
Schulz, cellist Philip De Groote and violist Volker
Jacobsen), and four up-and-coming junior quartets
(Duchow, St-Urbain, Flambeau and Fidelio).
The Taiwanese-American Formosa String
Quartet, winner of the first prize and the Amadeus
prize at the 10 th London International String
Quartet Competition in 2006, kicked off the festivity
with a gala opening concert in Pollack Hall.
“To play at a great hall in front of 500 people two
weeks before the (Banff) competition—all of the
groups benefited from the academy,” Roy said. “It’s a
big step up from the academy to the competition.” ■
54 OCTOBRE 2010 OCTOBER