Since 1999, Quatuor Bozzini has been a unique voice championing new, experimental, and classical music. A driving force in Montreal’s hyper-creative music scene and beyond, the quartet cultivates an approach that embraces risk, experimentation, and collaboration, and ventures off the beaten track. Through its rigorous quality standards, it has contributed to the creation of a diverse repertoire that defies trends and fashions. Over the years, it has commissioned numerous works and premiered nearly 500. Its open, collaborative, and artist-led approach has resulted in numerous innovative and highly acclaimed productions, including interdisciplinary projects involving video, theater, and dance.
(Photo Credit: Michael Slobodian)
Alissa Cheung, Clemens Merkel, and Isabella and Stéphanie Bozzini are Quatuor Bozzini, the Montreal-based string quartet specializing in classical and experimental music by living composers; Linda Catlin Smith is a composer based in Toronto, whose work the quartet has interpreted many times. Quatuor Bozzini is celebrating their 25th anniversary this year, marking it with a reissue of one of their most acclaimed releases, Jürg Frey: String Quartets. To celebrate, Linda met up with the group in Montreal to catch up about it all.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Alissa Cheung: So, Linda, welcome back to Montreal. It’s great to have you here.
Linda Catlin Smith: It’s great to be here. It’s beautiful weather — Montreal in the almost spring.
Alissa: Almost spring. When was the last time you were here? Was it for Composer’s Kitchen?
Linda: No, I was here for a concert in September. I’d like to come here more, because I love Montreal. But the last time we were together — when was that?
Isabella Bozzini: In Toronto, in September, when we came. We had a lovely time.
Linda: That’s right. And then before that, I did do Composer’s Kitchen a few times. Once in Scotland. That was really nice. But, 25 years — that means 2000, you started?
Isabella: Yeah. And I think we started to play new music in 2003.
Linda: God, you guys have done so much. How do you even hold in your head all the things you’ve done?
Clemens Merkel: Oh, we don’t.
Alissa: It’s what the website’s for. [Laughs.]
Isabella: Yeah. I used to remember years and even some dates, but now it’s just too much. But at the same time, there’s milestones. Meeting Martin [Arnold], meeting Michael [Oesterle] are very clear moments.
Linda: The thing about Martin Arnold and Michael Oesterle — they have been so important to me, but they’ve been important to you, too. We share this mutual influence from each other. Martin introduced me to so much music that I hadn’t heard, because he listens to everything. And then Michael is such a knowledgeable person about everything to do with instruments. He just knows so much about it. And then you guys, when I think back to the Composer’s Kitchen being there as a mentor — [even] as a mentor you’re learning, because you’re learning from everything the students are trying to do, and hearing what you’re saying to them is going into me. So it was actually all part of my training as well.
Isabella: Well, it’s even ours. The Kitchen especially, or any of the labs we’re doing, the intensity of it… But we’re also surprised still today — sometimes you go, “Oh, no, it’s not going to work.” And then you’re surprised it’s going to work. You find ways.
Clemens: And it’s not so much to find unknown or new sounds necessarily. It’s more ideas. It’s not this period for us anymore where you dig deep into the sound and torture your instrument to find another little scratch you haven’t heard yet. [Laughs.]
Alissa: [Makes a scraping noise.] “Oh, that sounds beautiful!” [Laughs.]
Clemens: Yeah, it was never so much of a focus.
Isabella: And I’d say we learn from all the music we play. You talk about Composer’s Kitchen and learning on your side, but the creation — there’s always moments where we come together and learn about our sound, our balance, how we’re going to approach the music.
Linda: It’s really about the art of interpretation. Because, yes, I write the music and yes, you play it. But actually, the interpretation is the meeting point, where it’s like, “Should this be piano, or should this be mezzo piano? What mezzo piano? Which shade of piano is it?” All those conversations — I love that so much. Because really, what it is, is not outside of the piece what’s right, it’s for this particular piece what’s right and what does it need? That’s the constant questioning you bring to it, is the art of interpretation.
Clemens: And that’s also something which has changed over years. Because if you think about even early 20th century music, interpretation was not a topic. You had to execute to the last dot.
Alissa: Be the robot.
Linda: And the composer was micromanaging everything.
Clemens: The composer was always above the performer saying, “You can’t do this, you can’t do that.” And of course, it depends on the aesthetic, but largely it has started that interpretation is something which is allowed.
Linda: Yeah. And I think it goes back to if you look at early music, it has so little on the page — just the notes. And that’s enough to figure out what it needs. I think I’d like to put less in and see if the notes somehow guide your feeling of what it needs to do.
Isabella: We were discussing it yesterday, that you know which chords want which shade of piano as you play them. “OK, this one is saying that and it sounds like this,” and we have to nourish it or make it more floaty.
Linda: But it’s almost like I could have just put “piano” at the beginning of the score, and you have these shades of piano that you bring to it based on what [you’re interpreting from it]. I almost didn’t need to put anything in.
Clemens: The interaction of dynamic, color, and flow. Your harmonies suggest [colors], and I almost have to smile because at some points you write darker, but the chord is already so much darker than the one before.
Linda: I’m just emphasizing that that’s what I mean. [Laughs.]
Isabella: I was going to say earlier — it just came to me when you talked about what’s on the page — I remember Antoine Berthiaume some years ago talking about music and interpretation. He was showing a score of Schubert — something pretty straightforward and simple — and he said, “When we play it, when we hear it, it doesn’t sound anything like what we see on the page, because it takes a shape that’s impossible to notate or recreate, and it’s going to be different depending on who’s approaching the music.”
Linda: Yeah. The notation is an invitation to think in a certain way. And then with different groups, it’s going to be a different response.
Clemens: And it doesn’t mean that you can’t do what you want. Also in more classical music, I think people don’t dare enough. But at the same time, I also think they just copy each other. And there’s traditions being passed on.
Linda: That’s right.
Clemens: So we never have that, in the good or bad sense. And we don’t want to.
Linda: You don’t need to.
Clemens: When something has been performed and we listen to someone else before we learn it — I can’t do that. I’m a really bad music listener, because even for other stuff, if it’s classical violin or almost anything, I go, Oh, what did he do? No, it doesn’t work!
Alissa: You are so disturbed by other people’s interpretations. [Laughs.] It’s like trauma for you.
Clemens: No, it’s not trauma, but it’s just not so much fun to listen. So I stick to the very few things I really like.
Linda: That makes sense.
Alissa: But coming back to having commissions just for us, it gives such a great blank slate, as you say, for discovering what the music is for everyone. And similarly, when Jürg [Frey] writes for us, once we rehearse with him, it’s coming alive and he’s like, “We’re discovering all at the same time, what is this composition? What could it be and how does it live?”
Linda: Those are exactly the questions. It’s not known before the rehearsals start, for sure, even in the composer’s mind — or at least for me — what it is and what it could be. It’s all a big question still. So hearing [“Reverie,” Linda’s composition recently performed by the quartet] in rehearsal, and then last night the concert, it’s like, OK, I know something about this now. I think it’s OK. [Laughs.]
Alissa: Does there come a point where you become more objective to things that you write?
Linda: I think that piece, it took maybe 11 months [to write]. So you’re living with it a long time. But after a while, you’re just like, Is this anything? Is this going to make sense to somebody, or is it going to be just deadly boring? You can only know it from your perspective. So that’s why it’s a question for me, What will the experience be like for others?
Alissa: But I think it is OK no matter what.
Linda: True.
Clemens: I mean, it’s a little bit like a concert for us, because a concert means that you do your best for what you can do in that moment, in that place. And for you, it’s just spread out over a much longer time. You do your best, what you can do.
Linda: Yeah. I mean, it’s a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor, which is good. But I was so happy hearing it.
Clemens: Do you work on several pieces at the same time?
Linda: Lately, I’ve had to work on more than one piece at a time. But that works really well, because you work for a couple hours on something and then you kind of get exhausted. And then you go to something completely different and you’re fresh for that one, so now you’re renewed. Then when you come back to the other one, you have a new perspective because you’ve been thinking about something else. And because I have more time — I’m not teaching as much — I can actually manage it.
Clemens: So the 11 months wasn’t completely only this quartet.
Linda: No, there was another piece that kind of dovetailed. I was finishing the other piece while I was starting this piece. And for most of the months, it was just this piece.
Clemens: This is like sudoku, because sometimes when you do a really hard sudoku, after a while you don’t see anything anymore.
Linda: [Laughs.] That’s how I feel all the time.
Clemens: Then you leave it, and then in the afternoon, you look at it and say, “Oh, yeah!”
Linda: Your brain refreshes. Composition is really like that, because you’re thinking about something and you kind of come up against a moment that might be a problem where you don’t know what to do. Then you go out and weed the garden or something, and you’re not thinking about it consciously, but somehow your brain is working on it in your absence. Then you come back and it’s like, “Oh! I know what to do!” Music is such a great mystery.
Alissa: Well, even if you think about 11 months — that’s almost the whole calendar year. You’re going through the seasons as you’re thinking about this.
Linda: Yeah. I like working on things over a long period. And, you know, it’s not like I work every day for 11 months. There’s days where I don’t get to it for whatever reason. I think that can be good. It’s like that with practicing an instrument — sometimes you don’t approach it for a day or so, and it gives you a little bit of perspective so that it’s not right here in front of you all the time. But I do think about it all the time. I love thinking about it while I’m washing the dishes or taking a walk. I find that a really helpful part of the process. And I listen to a lot of other stuff. I love to listen — which may seem odd for a composer to say, but I think there are some composers who don’t like to listen to other people’s stuff that much. But I actually really do.
Clemens: It puts your own work into perspective. Like when I listen and say, “Oh, I like this. I don’t like this. How did he do this? What’s going on there?”
Linda: It’s helpful to know what you don’t like. It’s sort of like, “OK, I can appreciate that. I can respect it. But that’s not for me. I’m not doing that.” It helps you understand your own personal aesthetic and point of view.
