Interview, Julian Azkoul on Renewal

United Strings of Europe made an assured debut on BIS last year with a programme of music by Schubert, Boccherini, Haydn, Gareth Farr, Matthew Hindson and Arturo Corrales which marked out the young London-based ensemble as a force to be reckoned with, thanks to their innovative programming and the sheer virtuosity of the playing; this month they return with an equally intriguing album of works by Caroline Shaw, Joanna Marsh, Osvaldo Golijov and Felix Mendelssohn (arranged, like the Schubert Quartettsatz which featured on their previous disc, by their Artistic Director and violinist Julian Azkoul).

I spoke to Julian earlier this month about the ensemble's origins and ethos, how the group's focus shifted during lockdown, the impetus behind the new programme, and his passion for arranging works for these forces...

Could you tell me a little about the genesis and philosophy of United Strings of Europe?

The group began in 2013 when a few of us at the Royal Academy of Music got together and decided that we wanted to play some larger-scale chamber music - which is essentially how I think of the ensemble and string orchestra playing generally. Before the pandemic we did a few projects here and there for a few years, mainly going to France and occasionally to Switzerland and Lebanon (which is where my family on my father’s side is from). Outreach work is also an important part of our ethos, collaborating with students or with organisations around the places where we tend to perform. I gradually took a more active role charting the artistic course of the ensemble and really got into arranging music and exploring new works, so over the past few years we’ve commissioned and/or premiered a lot of pieces.

Originally we had members living all around Europe, but since the pandemic began it’s been really challenging to fly people into London for projects as we did before; that’s a shame, but we have a great pool of multi-national players here in London. The name United Strings of Europe was chosen to celebrate our common heritage – it wasn’t a political statement, but it has taken on more resonance in light of subsequent political developments. I think we have a positive message to share: that despite political differences and administrative difficulties we have a common heritage worth celebrating.

In spite of all the concert-cancellations due to the pandemic, we’ve still been able to do interesting work. We did a film during lockdown on a piece we commissioned by Jasmine Kent Rodgman, called send back the echo: essentially Jasmine took quotations from Beethoven’s private diaries about his struggle with hearing-loss, and wrote a piece that explores this and features a deaf actor signing those words in British Sign Language. It was featured in BBC Arts’s ‘Culture in Quarantine’ series, and was premiered at the British Film Institute on Saturday as part of the London Short Film Festival.

How did your relationship with BIS come about?

We got our first album in motion in the can in March 2020, but we had no plans for how to release it; our brilliant producer Matthew Bennett suggested that we send some clips and a description to a few different labels, and I was amazed we had three offers. BIS not only wanted to release it, but they wanted to do four more albums with us - that was such a shot in the arm at a time when everything was looking pretty desperate, and it really gave me an artistic direction to focus on over the course of 2020.

We managed to record Renewal in March 2021. When things were looking so bleak in January I thought it wasn’t going to happen, but we managed to get it done in two sessions: two days at the beginning of March and two at the end. We hadn’t played together since October 2020, and we’d never played any of the music apart from the Golijov songs (with a different singer), so there was a lot riding on those sessions – but I was so delighted with the results, and I feel very blessed to have amazing colleagues and friends who are willing to go along with my ideas!

Presumably the concept of your latest album was a response to the events of the past two years?

This new disc Renewal was an attempt on my part – at first subconsciously but then increasingly consciously – to acknowledge the situation that we’re in but to try and propose something hopeful as well. Hence the range of emotional content on the disc, from optimism to harrowing sorrow; the third Golijov song is about the death of his friend, and the Mendelssohn String Quartet No. 6 was written just after his sister Fanny’s death (and only about six months before his own).

Then in contrast we have Caroline Shaw’s And the swallow, which is incredibly hopeful, and the genesis of that is interesting. I watched an interview with Caroline where she said that she was inspired by the Syrian refugee crisis and the humanitarian crisis on the US/Mexico border – the piece is based on a psalm from the New Testament which is usually read at the dedication of new churches, and it celebrates having a home and somewhere safe for a family to grow. That took on even more resonance for me when we were all stuck at home due to COVID…how do you survive in lockdown if you don’t have a home? It’s a terrible predicament at the best of times, but during a pandemic it’s something else altogether, so it was also a means for us to focus on those who are less fortunate.

I discovered that piece during lockdown, when I was listening to a lot of vocal music – maybe because it was a way of feeling closer to people at a time when we were all starved of human contact, and maybe because I just have a predilection for arranging things! That was also how I came across Joanna Marsh’s In Winter’s House, which Tenebrae Choir commissioned and premiered at Wigmore Hall; they’re recording the vocal version, but I reached out to Joanna and asked if it would be OK to arrange it for strings. We had a couple of Zoom sessions and it was great to have the composer’s input, which isn’t always possible - either because they aren’t here anymore, or because they simply aren’t interested! Golijov was also really communicative: I made some changes to the orchestration in the first two songs and he seemed delighted with the results, which is rare!

How did you first come across those extraordinary songs?

I think it was via a YouTube video by the Boston-based ensemble A Far Cry. I don’t think they had been performed in the UK at that stage, so in February 2020 we planned to do it with Héloïse Werner in London and Lebanon; Héloïse was ill in the end, so Joanna Songi stepped in at the last minute and did a fantastic job. What’s brilliant about these songs is the space for the instrumental playing, particularly in the first song which is about one-third singing and two-thirds instrumental! It’s quite a satisfying role that he gives the string orchestra. And the fact that it’s in three languages, charting his heritage, is something which really resonates with us trying to reflect our multicultural identity and to programme more diverse music.

Ruby Hughes is also a BIS artist and I was a fan of her singing already, so it made sense for her to join us for the recording. We have another project coming up with Ruby in 2023, called Inheriting the Earth, which is a programme of new works and older works celebrating the planet and our stewardship of it – we’re doing that at Wigmore Hall in September 2023 and will also be recording it.

You mentioned your love of arranging works - how do you go about 'upscaling' something like the Mendelssohn quartet on this recording for string ensemble?

People often ask me if I compose, and I don’t pretend to be able to write anything that people would really want to listen to! But I think acting as an arranger and curator of works is such an important role in itself: already as an interpreter one brings one’s own perspective, but I find that when I arrange a piece I get to understand it so much more because I look at it from an engineering point of view. We did the Schubert Quartettsatz on the first album, and I wanted to do something more creative than just having everybody play their original part in a big section all the way through.

The way I crafted it was more like a concertante approach: moments with just quartet, moments with quartet plus bass, and moments where it was the whole group. I try to bring out elements which are already inherent in the work, to make them more present or clearer for the listener. I think it’s really effective, and the Mendelssohn here is the same – already for a quartet it’s such an intense work, but when you add in extra strings and space and the double bass in certain passages then the contrasts are even greater than in the original.

Did arranging the two works which were originally scored for choir bring its own specific set of challenges?

It really did! You can’t just copy-and-paste from voices to strings, and both Joanna’s piece and Caroline’s are written in quite non-standard ways in terms of counterpoint and voicings. Caroline’s piece involves a lot of antiphonal material, with two staves each of SATB, but the way she writes it isn’t always right-left - she moves things around. It’s a short piece, but it took a while to figure out how best to deploy the material.

Joanna’s piece was tricky too, because it was originally written for five individual parts; as a string orchestra is usually four, with the double bass doubling the cello line, I had to think really carefully there as well…sometimes the violins are divided and sometimes the violas are divided to try and get all the voices in. Until you hear it with players there’s no way of knowing how certain chords are going to balance, so we had to do some tinkering in the rehearsals and even in the sessions. It’s hard to listen in an objective way as an arranger when you’re also playing in the ensemble, but I learned a lot in the process!

Is the ensemble usually around the size it is on this recording, or was the number of players reduced in response to COVID restrictions?

We’re usually about thirteen players, but we're flexible! We have a third album coming out which we’ve already recorded, and that’s an all-Tchaikovsky programme which includes the Serenade and Souvenir de Florence as well as some arrangements I’ve done of his choral and chamber music. For that one we went up to fifteen players, and we’re planning to record a fourth album this year including Strauss’s Metamorphosen with even more strings (without a conductor), which will be the biggest we’ve been so far!

Is working without a conductor an important part of your ethos?

I’m not a purist about it: I think some repertoire works best without a conductor and some really benefits from having someone there. We basically have an associate conductor based in France whom we work with from time to time, and two of the pieces on our first album were conducted. But the group has moved more towards doing fully unconducted programmes, and maybe my role as director has grown over the course of the ensemble’s existence.

I think string ensembles are really in vogue at the moment - there are so many fantastic groups, like 12 Ensemble, Manchester Collective (whom I play with sometimes) and A Far Cry in the US. It’s really nice to see that there’s an audience for that music, and I think the classic string orchestra repertoire is a little tired or has been done a lot, so there’s a lot of scope for new works and arrangements…