A Mellow Revolution

'Tis a season of celebration at Lincoln Center: not the opera this time or the ballet or symphony, but chamber music. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the smallest member of the musical circle, is observing its tenth anniversary in the grand manner of the Met. There was the four-tiered monument of a cake that was wheeled onstage at Alice Tully Hall during the first concert (with a slice for everyone in the audience afterward). An imposing, six-foot-long version was the focus of the society's "street fair" birthday evening on the New York State Theater Promenade. Musical styles and centuries mingled: Mozart and Telemann, Renaissance dulcimers, an "Easy on the Tuba" jug band.

The celebration might well be for all chamber music. Not so long ago, it was burdened with the image of four old men sawing away in rusty black suits. But over the past decade, as the performing arts boomed in the U.S., people discovered the intimate beauty of chamber music, and it burgeoned in popularity. On Dec. 10, it will receive the official blessing of national television, when Live from Lincoln Center (PBS) airs its first Chamber Music Society performance.

There are now more than 1,000 professional ensembles in America. Some 200 cities hold chamber-music series. Colleges want to have groups as residents on campus. "The young seem turned off by spectaculars," says Cellist Paul Katz of the Cleveland Quartet, which is based at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. Members of the Chicago Symphony alone have formed 15 chamber ensembles.

One inescapable reason for the flowering of chamber music is economic: a top group can be engaged for around $4,500, compared with up to $15,000 a night for a diva or a virtuoso pianist. Another attraction is that the repertoire is seemingly limitless in number (hundreds of string quartets alone) and variety (duos for two, nonets for nine). The Juilliard String Quartet plays 600 works from three centuries. Other groups, like the Theater Chamber Players and the 20th Century Consort, both in Washington, D.C., focus heavily on contemporary works. Says Sergiu Luca, founder of the popular Chamber Music Northwest series in Portland, Ore.: "We are small enough to be easily marketed, easily paid for, and varied enough to attract a wide range of listeners. So we are a winner."

But chamber music is not by nature a crowd pleaser. It is an aristocratic, rather austere music that disdains the flashier effects of symphonies and operas. Its beauty lies in its miniature, jewel-like detail and an almost translucent texture that is best appreciated in smaller concert halls. But its simple air is deceptive: chamber music is murderously difficult to play well. If a performer is too flamboyant, he upends the others. If one violin is off pitch, all instruments sour. Each line is naked, each player dependent on the others to "breathe" together, in order to get the right pitch, intonation and rhythm.

The Chamber Music Society, which with a slight bit of license has been called the musical success story of the generation, has managed all of the right notes. In 1965, when Composer William Schuman, then president of Lincoln Center, first planned a resident chamber group, there was not that much chamber music to be heard in the country. Audiences were largely Middle Europeans, homesick for the quartets of Beethoven and Brahms. "Word had not gotten out about the beauty of the repertoire," says Pianist Charles Wadsworth, 49, the society's first and only artistic director.

Wadsworth recruited first-rate virtuosos, including Paula Robison on flute, Gervase de Peyer on clarinet and Walter Trampler on viola, and the society was under way. Beverly Sills, Rudolf Serkin, Isaac Stern and other stars joined in occasionally for extra excitement. Wadsworth unearthed some rarities (Ludwig Spohr's duos for two violins, for example) to add variety to the standard repertoire. An evening might include a little-known Boccherini quintet and a world premiere by Samuel Barber, along with classics by Mozart or Schubert.

From 16 concerts in its initial 1969-70 season, the society has expanded to 60 nationwide, always to full houses. The resubscription rate is a staggering 90%, and more than 200 hopefuls are pining on the waiting list. Pleading letters fill the files, like the one from a man who lost his tickets in a divorce settlement and begged for another pair.

The society has earned that adulation with exacting performance standards. Rehearsal time may run as much as 18 hours for a new work. Sometimes sessions are tense: the air vibrates with strings and stress. Before the anniversary concert, the problem at hand was William Schuman's "In Sweet Music, "Serenade on a Setting of Shakespeare, a world premiere appropriately selected for the celebration. The four performers--Robison, Trampler, Mezzo Jan De Gaetani and Harpist Osian Ellis--crept through the score bar by bar, debating tempos and cues and occasionally defusing the tension with jokes:

Robison: It says on my score to play this passage "with almost purity and simplicity." Somebody crossed that out and wrote "utmost."

Ellis: "Almost" would be more practical.

By performance time, however, "In Sweet Music " was just that. It had become a lovely, dark-hued mix of instruments and voices, of harmonies hovering just at the edge of dissonance.

The eleven-member society draws strength from flexibility in members. Says Robison: "We have the freedom of not being a quartet. Getting away from each other gives us a sense of humor." But the heart of chamber music has always been the quartet. The Budapest-four Russians who began to play in the U.S. in the 1930s and performed together until 1967-dominated American chamber playing for decades. Its music had an exquisite surface and loving depths, and it gloried in the 16 Beethoven quartets. In 1946 another major, and distinctly American-style, quartet appeared: the Juilliard. It championed modernism with messianic zeal, reveling in Schoenberg and Bartok. Its explosive energy and furious tempos sometimes unnerved audiences. "Western European playing produced rich sound, like overstuffed furniture," says Founder and First Violinist Robert Mann, the only survivor of the original Juilliard. "They used more bow speed than pressure; we dug the sound out, and got bite and rhythmic impetus."

Since World War II, several other groups have risen to international rank, most notably the silken-toned Guarneri; Beaux Arts, a pre-eminent trio; and the La Salle Quartet, superb interpreters of modern music. But the most important development in the field has been the blossoming of many brilliant young groups. Still in their 20s and 30s, the players are already technically fluent, with a maturity of interpretation remarkable for their age. Four standouts among many:

The Tokyo String Quartet, now in residence at Yale, continues the candlelight-and-champagne tradition of Guarneri. They were discovered by the Juilliard in Japan, and later came to America to study in New York. In 1970 they spent a grueling two months rehearsing eight to ten hours a day for the prestigious International Music Competition in Munich. They won. "We didn't want any of this made-in-Japan stuff," quips Cellist Sadao Harada. With its sweet, delicate sound and creamy phrases, the Tokyo seems more Old World than Far East. Appropriately, the group favors Mozart and Haydn; a spectacular Haydn cycle is among its best recordings.

The Cleveland Quartet's sound lies somewhere between the Guarneri and Juilliard. Its repertoire tends toward the traditional, but the playing is both vigorous and polished. The Cleveland cut its tone the hard way. The group was asked in 1971 to take up residency at the State University of New York at Buffalo, but on one condition: each year it had to play the formidable Beethoven quartets, continuing a tradition set by the Budapest in 1955. An intense group, the Cleveland mastered the lot, which it is recording for RCA.

The Concord String Quartet is rigorously modern. Although the ensemble avoids playing only the avant-garde--"You see the same 300 devotees at every new-music concert," says First Violinist Mark Sokol--the Dartmouth-based group has performed many premieres by such composers as George Rochberg, Hans Werner Henze and Lukas Foss. Its style is propulsive and passionate, its sound taut. "If they can write them, we can play them," jokes Violist John Kochanowski of modern composers. The group's twelve contemporary recordings prove the point.

Tashi (Tibetan for good fortune) is the most radical and freewheeling of the young groups. An unusual combination of instrumentspiano, violin or viola, cello and clarinet--Tashi adds or subtracts members and friends for various pieces, which range from Schubert to contemporary Japanese Composer Toru Takemitsu. A Tashi concert is like a jam session of pros: the music sounds both spontaneous and polished. The four have recorded a superb version of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, one of the few major works written for their mix of instruments.

Chamber musicians often speak of the "terrible intensity" of their lives. Top quartets can average 100 concerts a year, some 200 days on the road. Performances are not always the rarefied affairs that one might imagine. When the Juilliard was playing once at Darmstadt, Germany, a contemporary music center, the crowd found the Elliott Carter quartet so passe that they talked and jeered throughout. Robert Mann retaliated by playing with his back to the crowd. When the Concord was playing at Vassar in 1972, the group had to stop twice in a lengthy George Rochberg quartet to replace broken strings. As he turned the last page, Violinist Sokol breathed a sigh of relief--and his music fluttered to the floor. When Cellist Norman Fischer bent down to retrieve it, he knocked over Second Violinist Andrew Jennings' stand. Then Fischer's own crashed over. It was a case of concerted collapse.

But chamber music is also a Circe. For soloists like Isaac Stern, Leonard Rose and Eugene Istomin, it offers a vacation from the old warhorses. For amateurs, there is the simple appeal of playing the pieces, not just listening to them. The Amateur Chamber Music Players, Inc., a group founded in 1946 that promotes evenings of devoted playing, has grown to about 7,000 members. Its directories list names of eager players in almost every state and 60 foreign countries.

For great artists as well as amateurs, chamber music can call forth the deepest emotions. Not long ago, Artur Rubinstein, who is 91, invited the Juilliard Quartet to rehearse at his Paris town house. After a leisurely lunch, the four went to work in the living room, with the old man listening. They had played only a few bars of Mozart when tears began to stream down Rubinstein's face. "I began to cry too," says Violinist Mann. "We all began to cry. It may not have been the best performance we ever gave, but it was certainly the most emotional." Said Rubinstein, now too blind to play the piano: "As I sat here with you, you made me realize what I am missing." --

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