The best things in life are worth waiting for, and the members of the Schumann Quartett have been waiting almost all their lives for the adventure which awaits them in June, when they will perform their first complete cycle of Beethoven quartets, at Suntory Hall in Tokyo. Having played together since childhood, the Schumann brothers officially formed the quartet in 2007, when the youngest of them, cellist Mark, was only 19 years old. Just four years later – still nursery stages for a string quartet when it comes to finding a collective identity – they took away second prize Osaka International Chamber Music Competition, followed in 2013 by first prize at the prestigious Bordeaux International Quartet Competition.
It was success in Osaka that really put the Schumanns on the map, however, and the first invitation from Suntory Hall came shortly afterwards. “They wanted a Beethoven cycle,” recalls Mark Schumann. “And we said, maybe in ten years! They have asked us almost every year since then, and we always said that we need more time. Then we decided to set ourselves a goal of 2025. Of course Covid then got in the way, as well as a change of personnel, but finally, here we are.”
In that sense, the concerts in June mark a completion of the circle. Growing up in Cologne with Japanese heritage on their mother’s side, the Schumann brothers – Erik and Ken on violin and Mark on cello, joined since 2022 by the violist Veit Hertenstein – are well aware of the hallowed place for Beethoven in Japanese culture. They know about the tradition of “Daiku” (“The Number Nine”) which makes performances of Beethoven’s Ninth across the nation as central to a modern-traditional Japanese Christmas as buckets of KFC.
This cycle of concerts in June will also mark the debut of the Schumann Quartett at Suntory Hall, but the Schumanns are already attuned to the affinity which Japanese audiences feel for the western canon of classical music, and for Beethoven in particular. “We are half Japanese,” says Erik, “and we do speak the language, so we feel a certain connection with the audience in Japan. And it seems to be easy for them to feel an emotional connection with Beethoven – even though they live so far away from his home, his music is so close to their hearts.”
In the postwar decades, Austro-German conductors found an adoring public in Japan: Herbert von Karajan and Günter Wand in particular, but also names less celebrated now, such as Horst Stein and Otmar Suitner. Whether touring with their own orchestras, or conducting local ones such as the NHK Symphony or Osaka Philharmonic, these conductors were held up as authentic purveyors of a grand tradition.
I bring up this history, and Erik replies: “Well, let me tell you a story. It’s thanks to this history that my brothers and my sister exist. Our mother is a pianist, and she came to Germany to study, and that’s how she met our father. But why come to Germany? As a child she was taken to a concert in Tokyo by our Japanese grandparents. It was one of the first concerts given in Japan by Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, and Karajan was treated like a pop star. Our mother was so overwhelmed by the concert that she decided she wanted to become a musician – and then, to really learn this classical repertoire, she wanted to do it here, in Germany.”
While the quartets do not quite rival the nine symphonies – and especially the Ninth – for iconic status in Japan, nonetheless, the Suntory Hall public is a discerning one, accustomed to hearing internationally renowned ensembles bringing ‘their’ Beethoven to Tokyo. “I think at least half the audience will be Beethoven super-fans,” says Mark Schumann, “who have heard every modern quartet play these pieces. So there is a pressure – not to satisfy them, but to invite them to experience this music once more and maybe in a different way. But this pressure brings joy and pleasure too.”
When I think back to distinguished quartet ensembles who found an enthusiastic welcome in Japan, such as the Gewandhaus Quartet, Erik points out that in fact Suntory Hall itself, architecturally and acoustically, could have been modelled on the Gewandhaus hall in Leipzig. They will be playing in the Blue Rose (Small Hall), which more resembles Wigmore Hall, in size and proportions, and perhaps in the connoisseurship of its public too.
Rather than a straightforward chronological presentation of the 16 quartets, the Schumanns have devised a sequence of six thematically connected recitals. They begin on 11th June with “Alpha and Omega” – Op.18 No.1 and Op.135, and the first of the “Razumovsky” Quartets Op.59. A week later, they end with “La Malinconia (From the Heart)”, taking their cue from the name of the theme which Beethoven took for his variation finale to Op.18 No.6, and then bringing the cycle to a close in the sublime strains of Op.127.
In this way, for example, the contrasting character of each Op.18 quartet stands on its own terms. As Mark Schumann says, “No.1 is full of light: beautifully balanced and refined in character, the nearest of the quartets to the example of Haydn. But then No.4 is much more turbulent, and I think it strikes the listener much more forcefully. You hear the main motif in the first movement of No.1 something like 130 times, which puts you into a loop of listening – whereas No.4 plunges you into a drama.”
The Schumann brothers got to grips with Beethoven under the tutelage of Günter Pichler, following the founder-leader of the Alban Berg Quartett when he moved from a professorship in Cologne to Madrid. Pichler had his own, exacting ways of coaching, and passing on methods for rehearsal, score preparation, performance practice and so on, but it is his energy and his devotion to the score which impressed themselves on the Schumanns above all, and which they have subsequently tried to own for themselves. “We would be fortunate to play like the ABQ!” says Erik. “But we have to do it in our way.”
Pichler, for example, had particular ideas about tempi for each Beethoven quartet. So did the composer, when he wrote out metronome markings for most of them. But Mark Schumann points to Beethoven’s confusion, when asked for such markings, and writing back: “But what should I mark, if the second bar should be in a different tempo?” He goes on to recall: “Once we worked with a famous composer of our own time. His metronome marking for this piece was incredibly fast, but we practised like crazy, and somehow we made it work. Then he heard us play, and he said, ‘It’s very impressive – I’ve never heard it this fast. But it’s too fast.’ And we replied, ‘But you wrote it this way!’ He said, ‘But if nobody can understand what you're saying any more, what's the sense in playing like this? I wrote it this way to make the music sound uncomfortable.’ So we have to translate these ideas for ourselves when working on Beethoven.”
The Schumanns play old Italian instruments, but they are not what you would call a “period-instrument” quartet. They admire their gut-stringed colleagues such as the Chiaroscuros, but they use steel strings, and longer bows. “I like the warmth of the historically informed style of playing,” says Erik Schumann, “sometimes more than our modern approach, to be honest. But there are trade-offs. There’s a reason why string instruments have developed. Composers wanted more brilliance – so did audiences. The bows became longer, the set-up of the instruments changed, and therefore so does the timbre and the tempo of the music. Each group has to find their own truth in this music. I like to get as close to the letter of the score as possible, and then adjust it. When I hear recordings of the Amadeus Quartet, for example, they may not even be close to the letter, but the way they make the music pleases me all the same.”
Mark Schumann thinks back to lessons with the second violinist of the Hagen Quartet, Rainer Schmidt. “We don’t play this music better than the previous generation, he said to us, but we have different information. That doesn’t make us more clever. And indeed, which quartet wouldn’t want to sound like the Amadeus? But I also loved the approach of the Hagens – their balance, their brilliance, their use of vibrato which is so conscious. When you listen to Andras Schiff playing a modern piano, you can tell that he also knows how to play older instruments, in the way he articulates a chord or a phrase. So I like to listen to these performers and to try and understand how they accomplish what they do.”
Ultimately it is not tradition that leads the Schumann Quartett, but the score in front of them. Playing with pure tone in the Grosse Fuge, for example, is always a means to an end. “Otherwise the juicy sound becomes the main theme – not the music itself,” remarks Erik. Mark chips in: “I always ask myself, what do the public want? In some ways I shouldn’t care, but we do care in the end, we have to. It’s not enough to play nicely – which in Beethoven is already a goal in itself. Beyond that, we have to put across how we experience this music for ourselves.”
The Schumann Quartett perform Beethoven at Suntory Hall, Tokyo from 11th–18th June.
This article was sponsored by Suntory Foundation for the Arts.
