A Modern Package Tied With Elastic Strings

It’s not the usual bunch of suspects, and it never will be. Other string quartets may play some 20th century music, usually sandwiched between melodious 19th century works, but the Arditti String Quartet exists solely to play contemporary music.

The 19th century, except for one thorny work, be damned.

“Basically, I’ve had my fascination with this music since I was a schoolboy,” said quartet founder and violinist Irvine Arditti in a recent interview from Vancouver, British Columbia, where the quartet was playing prior to concerts Monday in Los Angeles and Tuesday in Irvine.

As a 15-year-old student, Arditti went to the famous new-music festivals in Darmstadt, West Germany, and listened to radical composers such as Karlhheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez and Gyorgy Ligeti. That prompted him to start with his friends a group doing such music.

“We didn’t think about the future or making a career. We just did it. [But] we did not envision it would reach this height.”

This height includes playing hundreds of new works, a great many commissioned for the quartet. One of the loftiest, so to speak, was Stockhausen’s 1995 “Helicopter Quartet,” which required each musician to play his part in one of four helicopters circling a theater in Holland. The music was transmitted into the hall, where the composer mixed it together.

Formed in London in 1974, the quartet is approaching its silver anniversary, but Arditti doesn’t like to think about that.

“I hate anniversaries, counting, catalogs and systems,” he said. “There are always other people who are interested in doing that.”

Over the years, quartet membership has changed. “It’s quite a tough lifestyle,” he said. “We’re on the road more than half the year.”

*

Current members are violinists Arditti and Graeme Phillip Jennings, violist Dov Sheindlin and cellist Rohan de Saram.

In the beginning, Arditti also composed, but he ultimately decided that he preferred to play. “There were better composers than I was,” he said.

He also played in the London Symphony from 1977 to 1980 but gave that up too. “The quartet’s work dictated that,” he said. “It became clear I had to make a choice. I’m sure I made the right one.”

The Irvine Barclay program, selected by the presenters, will include Akira Nishimura’s String Quartet No. 3, Elliott Carter’s Quartet No. 5, Gyorgy Ligeti’s Quartet No. 2 and Beethoven’s “Grosse Fuge,” the one pre-20th century piece in the quartet’s repertory.

“It is still a modern-sounding piece,” Arditti said.

*

Nishimura and Carter wrote their works for the quartet. Composers and works the group has recorded include the complete string music of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg, the complete Bartok quartets and an amazing roster of contemporary composers, many unfamiliar to the average concert-goer.

Most of what they play is complex music, in contrast to the neo-Romantic or Minimalist music that has been sweeping this country.

“There are phases in everything,” he said. “That doesn’t affect us too much. We’ve never looked at lists of figures to see how many people are listening or buying recordings. People can work without that in Europe. A significant amount of people hear what we do. In a way, we’re going against the trend. We’ve always done that. It’s nothing new.

“The challenge is to put the music over to the public and make them understand what you’re doing.”

It’s a challenge the Arditti audience welcomes.

“It’s a different sort of audience that comes to hear us,” Arditti said. “There are some people who are going to be surprised by the music. But we’ve been doing this for some time. People know what to expect.”

In addition to playing concerts on the international circuit, the quartet participates in workshops with composers in universities. “This is a very important part of our work,” Arditti said. “Composers can lose the reality of the writing and the sound if they never hear their music played properly. Workshops let them hear what they’ve done and improve.”

*

Clearly, he regards the quartet as having a mission.

“What we’re doing for music is something that none of the other quartets have been doing, which is to enhance the repertory for string quartet in the 20th century in such a huge way. Some classical quartets play new music, but no quartet does it to the extent we do.

“What’s important is the idea that we’ve extended the tradition of the string quartet in the classical way, creating new music and bringing contemporary works to the normal listening public and not just to the modern-music ghettos.”

* The Arditti String Quartet will play works by Elliott Carter, Jonathan Harvey, Akira Nishimura and Roger Reynolds Monday at 8 p.m. at the Bing Theater. L.A. County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. $6-$15. (213) 857-6010. It will play works of Beethoven, Nishimura, Carter and Ligeti on Tuesday at 8 p.m. at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive. The latter program is sponsored by the Laguna Chamber Music Society and the Philharmonic Society of Orange County. $14-$25. (714) 854-4646.