String Quartets: A British Regeneration?

I just remembered I never posted anything after watching the London String Quartet competition. I watched, amongst other things, the final of the competition at London's Wigmore Hall, and was overjoyed to hear a phenomenal standard of music making; there's no doubt that one of the finest genres of music is alive and well.

What I wanted to question though, was the role of the string quartet in the UK right now. I can't speak for anywhere outside of this country, but here at least, many people - and indeed quartets - hold an unfailingly defeatist attitude towards the supposed decline of interest in the string quartet as an art form (London String Quartet competition being a marked exception, though those same conversationalists might suggest that it is the exception that proves the rule). So many people I speak to seem to think that in line with many peoples' perception of classical music, quartet audiences are 'dying off'. "There's just so much less demand for it any more".

I'm convinced that this is a self-fulfilling fallacy (if that's not an oxymoron!). In this recent competition there was a glut of British quartets with interesting musical personalities - Sacconi, Carducci, Pavao, Navarra and Bronte - (and a groundswell of others who didn't enter) - that prove that there is no decline in interest from the musicians' side of things.

So what's the problem? The problem is that with one of the richest, most incredible repertoires in all of classical music, it's very easy to remain conservative - in programming and in outlook - which of course is all fine and dandy in it's own way. But that attitude alone doesn't play well with developing audiences; it's much more conducive to the 'let's hang on and grab as much as we can of what's left' factor. And where have we heard that one before? (-coughs- record industry -coughs-) :)

This is where competition will prove a fantastic motivator. When decline of the status quo means there's not room for everyone, the consequent scrabble for opportunity will force people to seek out the new and the exciting.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the point: with such a dazzling array of British quartets now arriving, it would be irresponsible to focus energies on desperately grabbling about (new phrase I just invented) to catch what remains, when a little inter-quartet consensual development of the 'Young British Quartet' factor could potentially reinvigorate British appetite for the artform (with consequent opportunities for everyone).

If there's one quartet that has done this as a matter of course over the last few years, I guess it's the Brodsky. Now imagine there were 4 or 5 Brodsky Quartets in the UK, all with this breadth and depth of vision. What would happen then?

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Now here's a question: If you have a School of Whales, a Murder of Crows, or even a Wallet of Tenors(!)...
...what's the collective noun for String Quartets?!