Finding a Comfortable Juilliard Chair

It is one thing to fantasize about playing on a dream team, and quite another to actually enter the lineup. That’s the situation in which Ronald Copes found himself when he joined the legendary Juilliard String Quartet last summer. Founded in 1946, the Juilliard--due here Sunday for a concert at Caltech--transformed an often aloof and patrician genre into something smart, hip, edgy, distinctively American and surprisingly popular.

Which did not faze Copes at all, who brings substantial history of his own to the group. He played with the Audubon String Quartet early in its life, has been the violinist for the Los Angeles Piano Quartet and the Dunsmuir Piano Quartet, and he taught at UC Santa Barbara for 20 years. The son of a church choir director and organist, who started him on piano, Copes took up the violin at age 9 and never looked back.

“I really had no reservations about trying out for the Juilliard Quartet,” Copes says. “The piece they asked me to prepare for the audition was the Beethoven Opus 131, which is the only Beethoven I had never played before. So I thought, ‘If nothing else, I will have a wonderful experience and I’m going to emerge richer for it.’ And it was during the Beethoven it became apparent that we have a similarity of commitment and values, that we think alike musically.”

Juilliard personnel has changed before, of course, most recently in 1986 when Joel Smirnoff joined as second violinist, which is now Copes’ position. Smirnoff has moved up to the first chair, replacing founder Robert Mann, the widely acknowledged driving and defining personality of the quartet for the past half-century. That move is rare--long-established group dynamics and the desires and attitudes of many second violinists cause most quartets in that situation to look outside the ensemble for a new leader, or to disband.

“The way that they have handled it is very unusual,” Copes says. “I didn’t know Joel Smirnoff’s playing very well, so I was keeping my own ears open at the audition. We sat down to play, and it was immediately clear to me that this would work. I didn’t know exactly what they thought, of course, but I had a positive sense from them.”

According to Copes the new Juilliard is not making any conscious decisions about change versus continuity.

“It’s an unfolding experience. We’re not trying to be different or the same--that comes about from who we are individually.

“We were rehearsing the Beethoven C-minor Quartet last summer for the first time. About halfway through the first movement I’m telling myself, ‘This is so wonderful, the way we feel harmonic tension and release together.’ Afterward I told the others how happy I was to fit into this marvelous interpretation. They laughed and said it was the first time they had played it anything like that.

“Very different things are emerging. There is a lot of institutional memory here, but what’s nice is that it isn’t institutional habit.”

Piano quartets, in which Copes has worked for the last 15 years, have only one violin, but Copes has found little trouble adapting to second violin parts.

“I’m thoroughly enjoying the role of enunciating something from the interior of the ensemble. Getting to know what one’s expressive options are in any situation is always fun.

“The thing I enjoy most about chamber music is that because all the performers are involved in the musical decisions, there can be no prediction of what is going to happen on stage. You respond to what is passed over to you musically. I’ve always been intrigued by the balance between polish and spontaneity.”

Some critics have feared that with the retirement of Mann, the Juilliard’s pioneering commitment to contemporary music may flag. Copes adamantly denies this, suggesting that the repertory this season--notably lacking in the music of our time--should not be taken as indicating a sea-change in Juilliard attitudes.

“Our options this year, because of rehearsal schedules, were somewhat limited,” he says. “We were perhaps a bit conservative in terms of new work, but we wanted to be pragmatic about developing our voice first. There will be a gradual motion toward other areas. Next season we are doing [Elliott] Carter’s Fifth Quartet, for example, which the Juilliard hasn’t done before.”

Copes has also made the requisite personal changes easily, moving to Manhattan with his wife, violinist Michelle Markarski.

“Living in Santa Barbara for 20 years, I always told people that I loved it there but that I would go crazy if I didn’t frequently get away,” Copes says. “Now I say the same thing about New York. I have really wanted to live in a place where I could walk to work and now I do. I certainly enjoyed selling two cars--I don’t miss that whole thing at all.”

* Juilliard String Quartet, with Charles Neidich, clarinet, Sunday, 3:30 p.m., Beckman Auditorium, Caltech, Michigan at Del Mar, Pasadena, $13-$25. (626) 395-4652.