The strings attached to a French quartet

The first-rate, award-winning Quatuor Ebène are as happy in a jazz club as a concert hall. Their secret? Being a group in which 'everyone has the freedom to express himself', writes MICHAEL DERVAN

SOMETHING SEEMED not quite right when I caught up with Quatuor Ebène at Berlin’s A-Trane jazz club. No, it wasn’t anything to do with the French quartet’s playing or repertoire. The Ebènes are a straight down the line, first-rate, classical quartet, and have a Gramophone Recording of the Year Award to prove it. But they’ve always embraced types of music other than standard classical fare, and at the A-Trane they were performing a typically eclectic mix with percussionist Richard Héry and sound man Fabrice Planchat. Eventually I managed to work out what was niggling at me. Even in a 21st-century jazz club, you’re not allowed to smoke. And much as that’s good for your health, it certainly changes the atmosphere for late-night, improvised music-making.

I met up with three members of the quartet the next day – second violinist Gabriel Le Magadure was under the weather, and wanted to preserve his energy for an all-classical programme at the Berliner Philharmonie that evening. And they explained to me that the jazz and pop and world music had in a sense almost come first. It was something the original members of the quartet had done for fun, even before they formed themselves into a quartet.

“In the conservatory,” explains viola player Mathieu Herzog, “we had a lot of friends, and after the practising day it was usual to just meet and play together, some pieces by Miles Davis, for improvisation, a jam-session for pleasure. When Pierre – because it’s Pierre who decided to try to build a string quartet – came to me, and suddenly, with those friends, all the people we chose for the quartet should improvise.” Later on there were two changes of membership, Le Magadure on second violin, and Raphaël Merlin on cello. “They came from the same conservatory in Boulogne and they also did improvisation and jazz.”

“It’s not strange,” says Merlin. “We were a witness to what they were doing. In the next room I was studying with my teacher, and listening to the rehearsals of the quartet. So I knew what they played before joining. We had the same teachers, and the same spirit of chamber music-making, basically.”

And why did they choose to play string quartets in the first place, rather than aim for careers as soloists? Pierre Colombet, the leader, adds his voice.

“Because we found in this particular combination that there were no frustrations about being soloists for us. We didn’t know if we had enough . . . ” he struggles for but doesn’t seem sure he’s got the right word, “. . . courage, to be soloists, though of course you need courage to play quartets. But the technique is different, you don’t have to travel alone and experience that big, big pressure on your shoulders. The string quartet is a perfect mix. You’re playing in a group, but everyone has the freedom to express himself.”

Talking about their student years, they make it sound like a kind of artistic idyll. They worked from 8am to 10pm. They ate together and partied together. When they were playing together, either seriously or just for fun, time simply flew by. Practising, it seems, wasn’t a chore, but a pleasure.

The quartet was already three years old when Merlin joined, and at that time they were playing non-classical repertoire in concert, but only as encores. The growth from encores into a separate activity was not planned, nor was the addition of a drummer and a sound engineer. The activity just evolved. “We were composing songs,” explains Colombet, “singing with bass, guitar and piano. Raphaël played jazz piano, Mathieu played guitar in a funk music group, I played bass and sometimes drums.”

“We loved all the music we were born with,” adds Herzog. Given the amount of time the players of a string quartet spend together, being a quartet-player has often been described as being along the lines of a marriage, but with three other people. “Yeah,” says Herzog, “but without sex. That’s the big problem. It’s more difficult than marriage.”

Colombet elaborates. “It’s like when you have to live with your brothers all the time. It’s not friends. It’s colleagues, but not exactly friends. It’s not partners after a wedding. It’s not brothers. It’s everything together. Without sex.” Like most quartets, the Ebènes strive to work democratically. If there’s one dissenting voice, then a decision, however large or small, will have to be revisited. For this reason, says Merlin, “we’re always suffering when we’re making decisions”.

So what takes up the most time at rehearsal? “Tuning up,” says Merlin, and it turns out that he doesn’t just mean the business of tuning the instruments, but also the challenge of the four players getting in tune with one another in the broadest of senses. And, says Colombet, they can spend any amount of time on details, “We can spend two hours on two bars”.

“Intonation used to be a big thing a few years ago,” says Herzog, “but not any more. Now we like to try to play everything slower, to play, say, a Brahms quartet at half speed, so that you listen to everything, so that you can know the cello part when you are the viola player, and try to remember everything. It’s hard to do. Playing slowly needs more energy than playing at the right tempo.” For Colombet, “Rehearsing with a string quartet is one of the most stressful things in the world, and one of the happiest, sometimes, and one of the most painful, sometimes. A string quartet has every extreme.” The Ebène’s conversation flows freely. They intercut and interrupt each other, add to and elaborate on each other’s statements, and contradict each other, all with a relaxed bonhomie. Is there anything they never argue about, I ask.

“We never argue about the fact that we have to be free,” says Colombet.

THE EBÈNES ARE quite clear about the non-classical end of their repertoire. It’s not jazz, it’s not crossover, it’s not world music. For them it’s just what they call it, L’autre Ebène, the other Ébene. Drummer Richard Héry chimes in. “It’s our music, influenced by all these other things.”

Héry’s other work involves collaborations with dancers and actors, and he plays in an orchestra which does improvisatory sound painting under a conductor who uses an extensive vocabulary of mutually understood signs, over 900 of them.

At the A-Trane, the amplification provided by Fabrice Planchat was the opposite of what you would expect at a Crash Ensemble gig. It was mostly low in level, and was careful about preserving the tonal character of the instruments, though the cello was at times given some of the resonance of a double-bass.

“I have to respect the colour of each instrument,” explains Planchat. “Because we need to preserve the character of the string quartet and combine it with the sound of the drums.” The perspex screens around the percussion, it turns out, were not yet another side effect of the EU noise directive. They were there to minimise leakage from the drums to the microphones for the instruments. Planchat, it turns out, is not a full-time sound engineer. His day job is making musical instruments.

The Ebène’s ideal is never to play the same way twice, never to get locked into a totally predictable way of playing anything. And, rather than seeing this kind of freedom being more restricted in the context of a group, Colombet explains that the opposite is the case. “It’s more complicated to improvise with yourself than to improvise with other people.” Think of a musical gesture as a question. “The answer that will be given to you is sometimes surprising, and will provoke improvisation.

“When you are with yourself, you are tempted to do what is the best for you. You’ve prepared something, this Beethoven sonata, say, and you know every detail that rings inside you. You play the best for you every time. If I’m playing a Beethoven quartet, and suddenly Mathieu is doing something I couldn’t have thought about, my life will change.”

“Colleagues can give you more energy,” says Herzog. “That’s the point of string quartets. You use the energy of colleagues.”

Quatuor Ebène plays Mozart, Bartók and Debussy at the opening concert of the KBC Music in Great Irish Houses festival at Castletown House, Co Kildare tomorrow; and L’autre Ebène is at the Sugar Club in Dublin on Sunday

WHERE TO CATCH THEM

Hear them play at quatuorebene.com/en

See them taking on Pulp Fiction at url.ie/6h5j

Catch them live tomorrow, playing Mozart, Debussy and Bartók at the opening concert of the KBC Music in Great Irish Houses festival at Castletown House, Co Kildare. On Sunday: as L'Autre Ebene at The Sugar Club, Dublin