Quatuor Ebène

The Quatuor Ebène turns to Mendelssohn: two quartets by Felix and one by his elder sister Fanny, who composed over 400 works and who, like her brother, died in 1847. “Felix’s quartets speak with intimacy, but are not devoid of violent, stormy emotion,” says Raphaël Merlin of the Quatuor Ebène. He praises Fanny for composing “with surprising freedom”, saying “we fell in love with her string quartet”.

In a characteristically imaginative stroke of programming, the Quatuor Ebène presents a total of three quartets by two Mendelssohns – Felix and his older sister, Fanny.

Like Felix, Fanny was a highly gifted child, but, as a woman, her life took a different path from his. Felix remained close to her and solicited and respected her opinions on his music. She, meanwhile, produced a canon of well over 400 pieces – although only one string quartet; by contrast, Felix composed seven works in the genre, one of them a youthful work that carries no opus number. This disc features the A minor quartet he composed in 1827, very much under the influence of Beethoven, and the F minor quartet of 20 years later, a highly emotional piece, expressive of the grief he felt at Fanny’s death, aged 41, in May 1847. As it turned out, the quartet was to be the last major work he composed: he himself died in November of that year, at the age of just 38.

In a genre set by Boccherini and represented in the nineteenth century by the masterpieces of Schumann, Brahms and Franck, Gabriel Fauré composed two scores that were very different from his early romances and the evanescent ‘lullaby of death’ that is the Requiem.

The Piano Quintet op. 89 remains little known, for reasons related to its composition as much as to its history. Regarded by Koechlin as one of Fauré's finest work, it serves as a transition to the composer's final stylistic period.

Opus 115, surprisingly less melancholy than its predecessor, is one of the composer's last productions. In the evening of his life Faure demonstrated his supreme mastery and prodigious creative power, giving French chamber music, which he served so well, one of its finest monuments.

The Ebène Quartet’s fourth Virgin Classics release brings works that lie close to the origins of string-quartet writing – Mozart’s so-called ‘Haydn Quartets’. “It’s such amazing music, so rich and filled with such subtlety; completely unpretentious, yet of such genius,” says the Ebène’s first violin, Pierre Colombet.

After their multi-award-winning Virgin Classics debut with a CD of Debussy, Ravel and Fauré, a programme of Brahms, and the pop-jazz collection ‘Fictions’, the members of the Ebène Quartet turn to works that lie close to the very origins of string-quartet writing – Mozart’s so-called ‘Haydn Quartets’.

Composed in 1785, the set of six quartets was dedicated by Mozart to his friend and mentor Haydn, the acknowledged ‘father’ of the string quartet. The most famous of the set is the quartet in C major, KV 465, the ‘Dissonance’. It opens with a mysterious introduction, with layered harmonies creating the dissonance that gives the quartet its distinctive nickname. It is coupled with the quartet in D minor, KV 421 (another of the ‘Haydn Quartets) and the Divertimento in F major KV 138, written when Mozart was a teenager.

Pierre Colombet, first violin of the Quatuor Ebène explains the ensemble’s approach to Mozart: “We felt that, after Fictions, it would be a good idea to choose something really very classical, essential quartet music which went back to the roots of the quartet. We made a Haydn disc for another label some time ago, and we felt we just had to do some Mozart now. Yes, we’ve been playing Mozart for a very long time, but over the past year or two, we’ve felt more and more of a need to do it – it’s such amazing music, so rich and filled with such subtlety; completely unpretentious, yet of such genius.

And as Mathieu Herzog, the quartet’ viola vividly confesses: “It’s hardly news that classical musicians consider Mozart one of the most difficult composers to interpret, to play, to realise … you have to invest yourself constantly in his music and it’s very powerful, very tough on your emotions. And you have a weight on you – more like a layer of concrete on your head – because you want to succeed in delivering a new vision of the composer … We’re following in the footsteps of people who have played his music so very, very well and we want to respect Mozart for what he is. The whole thing is as hard as dancing Swan Lake in Caterpillar boots, but it’s worth the effort.

Pierre Colombet explains the title of their new release : “It might seem a bit of a paradox to call a Mozart disc ‘Dissonances’, even though he did write a quartet which is known as the ‘Dissonance’, but beyond that it’s true that Mozart’s music has loads and loads of very complex harmonies, sounds which create friction with each other.

Ebène’s cello Raphaël Merlin on the quartet’s interaction “When we’re playing Beethoven, Bartók or our jazz or pop repertoire, we use our instruments in a way that’s more percussive, that is more about the pressure we apply. But with Mozart it’s a matter of finding a natural resonance in our instruments, of letting them express themselves … almost of letting them communicate with each other in order to find the right resonance for this music. There is a phenomenon of sympathy – when the wood of an instrument’s soundbox vibrates and causes a vibration in the wood of an instrument close by. It’s that harmony that must link our instruments and that we ourselves must feel. It’s a very, very sensitive matter.”

Described by the New York Times as “a string quartet that can easily morph into a jazz band” the Ebène Quartet - Ensemble of the Year at the Midem Awards 2010 – presents a programme of 16 pop and jazz tracks, with guest appearances from a quartet of female stars: soprano Natalie Dessay, jazz singer Stacey Kent, film icon Fanny Ardant and Spanish pop star Luz Casal.

The Ebène’s first Virgin Classics CD, quartets by Debussy, Ravel and Fauré, was Gramophone’s 2009 Record of the Year, also winning Germany’s Echo Klassik Award 2009, Belgium’s Prix Caecilia 2009 and a French Victoire de la Musique 2010, but this new collection, Fiction, sees them setting their special stamp on numbers from the pop and jazz repertoire.

“In everything we have been willing to do musically –- during all that time spent practising Haydn, Beethoven or Bartók –- there has always been a concealed dream of improvising and creating a new approach to playing string quartet,” confess the members of the multi-award-winning Ebène Quartet. This album brings that dream out into the open.

Its 16 tracks embrace figures as diverse as Charlie Chaplin, Bruce Springsteen, Chick Corea, Harold Arlen, Wayne Shorter, Lennon & McCartney, Brad Mehldau and, in the title track, Nicholas Roubanis, composer of the main theme to Quentin Tarantino’s career-defining film, Pulp Fiction. Guest appearances are made by Virgin Classics’ resident diva Natalie Dessay, American jazz singer Stacey Kent, iconic French actress Fanny Ardant (who proved a sexy chanteuse in the 2002 movie Huit femmes), Spanish pop star Luz Casal and drummer Richard Héry. The quartet’s members even do some singing themselves, with viola-player Mathieu Herzog taking the vocal lead in Springsteen’s ‘Streets of Philadelphia’ and all four performing a cappella in their rendition (en français) of ‘Someday my prince will come,” from Walt Disney’s Snow White – which has formed a surprise encore in such august venues as London’s Wigmore Hall.

Pierre Colombet, the quartet’s leader, explains that: “As an ensemble we try to be as broad in our repertoire choices as possible. Genres like pop and jazz are often overlooked by the classical world because classical music is so intelligent, but when other musical genres are played really well they can also reveal treasures. This is why it is important for us to play jazz and other styles of music for a classical audience – because it introduces them to something new; and equally jazz and pop audiences can discover that classical instruments are capable of different sounds. Our jazz-playing also helps to inform our classical performance. It enables us to look at the score from a different perspective and to see classical music as a kind of improvisation. We like to be as free as possible in our performance and for every concert to be slightly different.”

For their second Virgin Classics release the members of the Quatuor Ebène turn from the native French repertoire of their first release (Debussy, Ravel, Fauré) to music firmly in the Austro-German tradition, Brahms’ first string quartet and first piano quartet. Joining them for the quintet is the Japanese pianist Akiko Yamamoto; when the five musicians played the piece together in London in 2006, the Independent newspaper had the following to say: “This talented group wound up their concert with a brilliant performance of Brahms' Piano Quintet in F minor, with the piano acting as a firm anchor, while the strings sang their hearts out. Come back soon.”

The Ebène’s debut on Virgin Classics, the programme of French quartets released in September, has been receiving high praise: “Three French masterpieces (Debussy, Fauré, Ravel) played by young musicians with a rare degree of expressive subtlety, blended sonorities and electrifying joy. The late Fauré quartet achieves a fine balance between sounding suave and pulsing with life. Debussy quivers with febrile emotions, while the Ravel soars to heaven with refinement and poise,” said The Times, awarding the recording five stars. Also in the UK the Independent described the quartet as: “a Gallic equivalent of the Kronos Quartet, a widely acclaimed, award-winning group of young players whose dynamism and open-minded versatility is helping transform French classical music ... This set encompassing the principal string quartets of early-20th-century French music demonstrates something of the breadth and intensity of their abilities, not least in the different emphases they place on the passages, disruptively blending bowed and pizzicato notes which characterise the second movements of Debussy's String Quartet in G Minor and Ravel's String Quartet in F Major. Ravel modelled his piece as a homage to the earlier composition, and it's in the striking dynamic range which, despite its restricted pace, the Quatuor Ebène bring to the très lent third movement that best demonstrates their elegant command of the material. In Fauré's String Quartet in E Minor, they brilliantly negotiate the contrast between the melancholy cast of the first two movements and the more contented, even animated tone of the final movement, by allowing the lingering impressions of the second movement's see-sawing undulations to haunt the rest of the piece. “

The Debussy quartet also featured in the Quatuor Ebène’s programme at last year’s 2008 Salzburg Festival, eliciting the following reactions from leading Austrian media:

“The quartet plays on a sensational technical level with a commitment that assures expressivity for every note, keeping the overall sound lush and colourful while also providing a well-rounded harmonic subtlety. The very first bars of the Debussy quartet gave evidence of the application, fascinating in its clarity, of a pastel artist’s technique, illuminating the polyphonic connections ... [and] squaring, so to speak, the quartet circle, a feat which this ensemble, though still young, carries off in masterly fashion. Moreover, the Quatuor Ebène ensures that scrupulously conceived musical structures are also sensuous in quality, and the musicians are sensitive to the play of tensions in directional chordal shadings – that beauty in dissonance, so to speak, which can so captivate the listener.” (Die Presse)

“In the space of just a few years [the Quatuor Ebène] has made its way to become one of the world’s top quartets. Beyond youthful French charm, the quartet is notable for its distinctive musical approach and technical supremacy. From its first bars, Claude Debussy’s G minor quartet fascinated with is variety of colours, delicate nuances and the specific sensibility of sound. For all the loving attention to detail, there was a sense of scale and passion. Vibrato was used sparingly, but in absolutely the right way. It is unusual for a quartet to be cheered after the first work in its programme, but that was the case on this occasion.

Naturally the Quatuor Ebène has a special connection with the spirit and tonal precision of the French repertoire, but its interpretations in other idioms are also on the highest level.” (Salzburger Nachrichten)

When the Quatuor Ebène was signed to Virgin Classics in early 2008. Alain Lanceron, the label’s President, said: “The Quatuor Ebène is the embodiment of the modern string quartet. The extraordinary way its members craft their sonority, their re-examination of quartet masterpieces, their readiness to engage with music beyond the traditional repertoire, their innovative and creative approach: all these factors have led us to invite them to add their lustre to Virgin Classics' roster of artists. We welcome them with enthusiasm – the same kind of enthusiasm they bring to everything they do."

Formed in France in 1999, the Quatuor Ebène took its name from ebony, the precious and exotic wood used in instrument-making. The award-winning ensemble has since achieved an enviable international reputation for refined, dynamic musicianship, minutely responsive teamwork, an adventurous spirit and even a taste for improvisation. The Quartet’s repertoire ranges from Haydn and Mozart, cornerstones of the Classical repertoire, through the 19th and 20th centuries to contemporary composers and jazz.

The Quatuor Ebène’s debut recording on Virgin Classics brings together the string quartets of the three emblematic French composers of the late 19th and early 20tb centuries: Fauré, Debussy and Ravel. The Debussy and Ravel quartets represent a traditional pairing in the catalogue, but they have rarely been coupled with the Fauré, his final work, composed in his late seventies. As it happens, Ravel dedicated his own quartet to Fauré, who was his teacher.

“Interpreters of rare understanding and communicative flair” The Strad