Brooklyn Rider — The Wanderer (Icy Cold Records)

“We think of the string quartet as a laboratory and learning experience of which there is no end,” says Nicholas Cords the violist for Brooklyn Rider. “We've done so much over our nearly 20-year history, and I think it would be as interesting to us if we only stayed in the world of what we knew.”

Cords says Brooklyn Rider is a string quartet that always has irons in the fire. The ensemble’s latest album, The Wanderer, is its first digital-only release and live album.

“These things often come about through happenstance and opportunity. One of those opportunities was that we knew we would be on tour in Europe last spring,” Cords says. “We would be in Lithuania. We had heard through a friend that there's this amazing place to record there called police. It's about ten kilometers from the Russian border.

“This was a very interesting time to be there as the conflict in Ukraine was not so old at that point. Everybody was on edge,” he says. “But here we were in this amazing retreat that used to be a horse stable. It was enclosed in glass. It turns out this was an amazing place to record.“

Can you talk about the themes in the recording?

“The album is called The Wanderer. We chose this title because it's a famous song by Franz Schubert. Also on this recording is his Death in the Maiden for string quartet. We've all experienced that life has changed over the last few years. This album combines certain dualities in life, such as memory, remembrance, melancholy and bliss, old and new, and life and death, as represented by Schubert's work. It's an album about life's journey.”

Can you talk about Gonzalo Grau’s Aroma a Distancia?

“Gonzalo is a Venezuelan composer but has called many places home. You can hear those influences, from Venezuelan music to Afro-Cuban music to the flamenco.

“The more you dig into any work, you discover it's a web of influences that created that music. All these traditions we have musically are living traditions that continue to change and morph because of other outside influences. That is on display in Aroma a Distancia.”

Can you talk about Osvaldo Golijov’s work he commissioned for Brooklyn Rider?

“This five-movement work depicts a life story from morning to midnight and beyond. It's sort of a metaphor told in the day. A metaphor for life's journey that also ties to the theme of this album.”

Is this the first time Brooklyn Rider has recorded Death and the Maiden?

“Absolutely. It is our first time. This felt like a natural connection, especially with Osvaldo Golijov's music. We were workshopping both quartets at the same time. Osvaldo's favorite thing to do was sit in the room and be a fly on the wall as we rehearsed this Schubert quartet. Schubert is one of his favorite composers.”

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Brooklyn Rider — The Wanderer (Amazon Music)

Brooklyn Rider — The Wanderer (Bandcamp)

Brooklyn Rider (official site)

Hilary Hahn - Eugène Ysaÿe: Six Sonatas for Violin (Deutsche Grammophon)

“This was my grand homage. And I really put so much love and time and energy and respect into the recording,” violinist Hilary Hahn says. “I really wanted to focus on that aspect, almost like giving a gift to a relative on their birthday. This is my gift to my musical grandfather on his hundredth birthday.”

Hahn is talking about her new recording featuring the violin sonatas of Belgian violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe. He composed these masterpieces 100 years ago this month. Each one was dedicated to a top violinist of the day.

“I am one generation removed from him musically. He was born in the 1850s. I was born in 1979, but my teacher was born in 1907 and studied with him. So there was something about listening to him, listening to the early recordings of his I when I hadn't heard them for a while, that was very surprising for me.

“I have spent most of my career trying to get closer to my own way of playing, my own sense of expression and my own sense of freedom within the instrument. And I realized that instead of getting closer to myself as an individual, I've gotten closer to myself as part of a long history. Because when I heard Ysaÿe, it was like opening a box in your grandparents attic and looking at a photo of an ancestor. But it is also like looking in the mirror, because they might be wearing different clothing but there's something about them that's just like you.

“While listening to his recordings, I realized there is musical DNA. Somehow, deep in my soul, I have internalized a set of values in my playing that I must have inherited.

“Ysaÿe also wanted to lift up some incredible violinists of his day, and he dedicated these sonatas to several of those. I don't know if it's obvious to the listener or the performer, but the deeper you get into the pieces, the more you realize it's customized for different players. The feeling of playing the instrument is different in each piece, and it's a bit of an insight into what it must have felt like to be that person. Also, there are lots of hidden messages in these pieces that were never written down in the music. So it's kind of a little game of Clue.

“A very good example of that is the beginning of the Sonata No. 2, Obsession, which was dedicated to a violinist who played fast but also practiced in a very fragmented way. So he would kind of start with one thing and quickly work on a phrase of something else and go back to the other thing. A sort of free-flowing mentality is in practice that Ysaÿe brings that into his writing for that particular violinist.”

You said listening back to yourself playing these pieces gave you goose bumps. What were you hearing that caused that?

“I think the most goose bumpy thing for me was just listening to Ysaÿe’s own playing and then getting as close as I wanted to these pieces in a total immersion studio situation. Listening to the playback and drawing these connections back to the past, but also knowing that what I do now is very much geared toward the future. And so that feeling of inheriting this sense of mission, of passing things on from the past to the future generations.”

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Hilary Hahn - Eugène Ysaÿe: Six Sonatas for Violin (Deutsche Grammophon)

Hilary Hahn - Eugène Ysaÿe: Six Sonatas for Violin (Amazon)

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