Q&A; with DAVID HARRINGTON : ‘I Feel This New Responsibility’

The Kronos Quartet, founded in 1972 by David Harrington, who had been inspired by George Crumb’s “Black Angels,” turned the music world on its ears by focusing almost exclusively on new music, by using props and by wearing garb decidedly untraditional for a string quartet. By now, having inspired and commissioned composers over two decades, the Kronos virtually has exploded the string quartet repertory.

In its 23 years, the group has released 22 albums, including “Pieces of Africa,” which went to the top of Billboard’s classical and world-music charts in 1992, and a recent recording of quartets by Philip Glass. The Kronos--violinists Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt and cellist Joan Jeanrenaud--plays tonight at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

Harrington--whose 16-year-old son died of a heart attack last month, on Easter Sunday--spoke recently from the quartet’s office in San Francisco.

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Question: How many new works do you imagine are being written for the Kronos Quartet right now?

Answer: Around 45.

Q: What percentage of works on your programs was written more than, say, five years ago?

A: Zero.

Actually, from time to time, we do reactivate things that we’ve done. The other day, we went back and played the very first work written for the Kronos, in 1973 (Ken Benshoof’s “Traveling Music”), just to get a sense of where we started. . . .

Q: What sense did you get?

A: I see these last 22 years as our first years, our beginning. It’s taken that long to get going, get started, to establish . . . turf is not the right word. More a body of possibilities.

You think about a life as having a beginning, a middle and an end. The Kronos is now in the middle of what we’re doing, and being in the middle (entails) the largest amount of energy projecting and thrusting work out into the world, out into the universe.

Maybe 23 years from now, we’ll be talking about a much different time. Right now I feel this new responsibility. It’s too new for me to know (exactly what that will mean), but I sense it very strongly.

Q: I assume this taking stock is the result of recent events in your personal life.

A: There have been other events within the quartet. There was the death of Hank’s partner, the death of Joan’s child, and all of this has happened in a relatively short time, a little over a year.

The composers who are writing for us are very familiar with all of us in the group. Henryk Gorecki, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Ken Benshoof, there’s not a composer writing for us that hasn’t been affected by some of these events--and events in their own lives as well.

For me, life won’t be the same. I don’t know yet what is going to happen. (In the past) I’ve not wanted to know but just to have my ears open and be ready. Now there’s that as well as this . . .

I know now that I want the most passionate experience we can create, whether it’s the heights of joy or the depths of sorrow, and I know that every composer who knows us knows this. And so life moves on.

Q: It’s been true of two centuries of composers in the Viennese tradition, certainly also of Bartok and Shostakovich. . . . Are composers still saving their best ideas for string quartet?

A: That’s an interesting question. I’ve spent the last 22 years trying to ensure that that does happen. I’ve tried to make it part of my daily responsibility to know when I feel a composer ought to write a new piece for us.

Terry Riley is working on a new piece. He’s been working on it for three years. I’m absolutely confident that it will be one of the most major works that has ever been written for us. Same with Henryk Gorecki. It all has a lot to do with timing, where a person is in their world and in their life.

Q: Is the Liszt work (“At the Grave of Richard Wagner,” on the 1993 CD of the same title) the oldest work you’ve recorded?

A: No. Ever since I first heard Crumb’s “Black Angels,” I knew I wanted to record it some day, and I knew it had to start an album. It took about 14 years to figure out what comes next. For me, it was remembering a piece my grandmother introduced me to, the Thomas Tallis 40-part motet (the 16th-Century “Spem in Alium”). I got a score of that piece, and I realized that yes, it would be possible for us to arrange it for string quartet.

It didn’t matter when it was written. The vaulted emotional space of that piece was exactly where I wanted listeners to go after “Black Angels.” I can remember the day and the hour I first thought of that. That was a happy moment.

Q: “Pieces of Africa” went to the top of both the world-music and classical charts. The interplay of world-music and classical music once seemed a novel fusion of two very different genres. Now the question may be, how much of a difference is there?

A: Those are two words people use. I don’t really use them, so it’s hard for me to know. . When you’re around the sound that the throat singers of Tuva make, for example . . . . My first live experience of that sound was in my own home, when they came to rehearse for the first time. The whole house seemed to vibrate when they sang; it was an astonishing experience. The first involvement I had with that sound was very personal. I don’t know how to take myself out of that at this point and . . . I can’t.

Q: Apart from the world-music influence, what important threads are you seeing in string quartet composition today?

A: When I think of each piece that’s being written for us, the reason I want that piece to be written (at all) is that I think those composers each have their own attachment to the larger web of the world of quartet music. I believe that each one of these 45 new pieces will be another strand in the continuing development of this world, and this sound.

* The Kronos Quartet plays tonight at 8 at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive , Irvine, under the sponsorship of the Orange County Philharmonic Society . The program includes works by Frahghiz Ali-Zadeh, Harry Partch, Philip Glass, Ken Benshoof and John Adams. $14 to $25. (714) 854-4646.