London's Castalian String Quartet plays music to move you
The acclaimed ensemble takes on Schubert’s final string quartet in Vancouver Recital Society performance
The Castalian String Quartet (from left): Sini Simonen, Christopher Graves, Ruth Gibson, and Daniel Llewellyn Roberts.
The Vancouver Recital Society presents the Castalian String Quartet on February 27 at 3 pm at the Vancouver Playhouse.
EPIC IS ONE word to describe Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15 in G major, D. 887. Written over 10 days in 1826 when the prolific composer was 29, two years before his death, the masterpiece lurches from agony to ecstasy during its 48 or so minutes. Here’s how Ruth Gibson, viola player with the London, England-based Castalian String Quartet, described a recent performance of Schubert’s “fiendish” final string quartet: “I feel like I’ve given birth, ran a marathon, and died at the same time.”
Born in Ireland, Gibson is speaking to Stir via Zoom along with cellist Christopher Graves from their respective hotel rooms in the U.S., where they’re on a North American tour that brings the quartet to the West Coast for a performance presented by Vancouver Recital Society.
The program here will include Schubert’s extraordinary work. “It has all the extremes,” Graves says. “It goes from heaven to hell.”
Rounding out the ensemble—whose members are all between the ages of 34 and 36—are Finnish violinist and quartet leader Sini Simonen and Welsh violinist Daniel Llewellyn Roberts (who has been loaned a fine violin by the 500-year-old Worshipful Company of Musicians, the instrument made in 1705 made by Joseph Guarneri filius Andrea). Individually, they have earned high praise for their playing, each with a list of awards, accolades, and recognitions as long as their bows.
The quartet takes its name from the Castalian spring in Delphi. According to Greek mythology, the nymph Castalia transformed herself into a fountain to evade Apollo’s pursuit, creating a source of poetic inspiration for all who drink from her waters. Named the 2019 Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist of the Year and the inaugural Hans Keller String Quartet in Residence at the University of Oxford, the ensemble has made several critically acclaimed debuts at places such as the Lincoln Center, Banff International String Quartet Festival, the Philips Collection in Washington D.C., Hamburg Chamber Music Series, International Musikfest Goslar, to name just a few.
The Castalian String Quartet.
Prior to connecting with Stir, the group had recently played Carnegie Hall —picking up from where it left off in March 2020, when its concert was the first that the iconic venue had to cancel in the wake of the pandemic.
“When you’re on stage, it’s a concert with a great audience in a lovely, beautiful hall playing the music you know and love, and there’s almost nothing more complicated than that in the moment,” Graves says. “But then there’s the whole legend of it as well, which is something to be enjoyed if possible, if it doesn’t terrify you.”
Whether performing at a famous theatre or in alternate settings like a rainforest or a maximum security prison, the group has the same aim: to help people connect to music and its inherent emotion.
“It’s hard for us to put our music into words because…the pieces we play are so long and many-layered, it’s almost like reading a great novel rather than reading tweets, which is what a lot of people read these days,” Graves says. “They’re trying to wordlessly go to places in our hearts and in our souls. I don’t really know what those places are unless I’m in the middle of that piece of music. We provide a kind of place where people can go deep. The kind of language we use is music.”
Notes Gibson: “At the heart of it, we have a very strange and amazing job in that we play the notes and words and feelings of someone that has died—a lot of the time, many, many years ago,” Gibson says. “It’s a huge honour to be able to bring that to life when you go to work and share it with people. But I think maybe particularly since COVID, people realize music is so often a vehicle to feel and to connect and release, and I think for us, our primary goal is to get that emotion across and to connect with the music with integrity and honesty and do it in the best way possible….Some people think classical music, or string quartet, is an intellectual thing, and it’s not; it’s an emotional, visceral thing.”
For its Vancouver appearance, the Castalian String Quartet will also perform Haydn’s String Quartet in D minor, Op. 76, No. 2, “Fifths”—one of the ensemble’s favourites—and Fanny Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in E-flat major. It’s common for audiences to have never heard the latter and to fall in love with it. “Maybe because it’s so emotionally gripping and raw and incredibly heartfelt, but also incredibly fun,” Gibson says. “From the first moment, your heart is open. It’s very engaging and passionate and very fun… and very sore on the left hand.”
The artists contend that ultimately, they just want people to come and enjoy the show, without worrying about requiring any particular expertise in or knowledge of chamber music; quite the opposite, in fact.
“We might play a piece of music that one person thinks is all about grief and they find it incredibly sad and cathartic, and another person can find it joyful because it’s constantly moving between emotions,” Gibson says. “At the end of the day you connect to what you connect to….The beauty of not having lyrics and words that kind of tell you what it’s about is that you can take what you need from it. You can come with your friend or family member and maybe you’ll have totally different feelings, and that’s okay, and I think that’s what’s particularly special about what we do.
“If you want to bring the knowledge you have to the table, by all means, but you definitely don’t need to have any to experience it,” she adds. “I encourage people to not feel that they have to know anything; we’ve all lived through so much. For the last two years, we’ve all had to suppress a lot and live within limited things. I think somehow being in a space where there are no words and where you can feel a connection of the audience and the players is very, very special, and maybe particularly alive now because it’s so long awaited.”
For more information, see Vancouver Recital Society.
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