Cosmopolitan quartet with French dressing

By HEATH LEES

Say "ee". Then say: "say ee". Then say: "ee-say-ee". Voila. You've just said "Ysaye" with a perfect French accent.

Ysaye was born in Belgium and proud of it. He grew up in the French-speaking musical world to become a musician of enormous sensitivity and technical skill. Acclaimed as the greatest violinist of his generation by the early 1900s, Ysaye found his bowing arm increasingly unsteady, so he switched - very successfully - to conducting. For many years a professor at the Brussels Conservatory, he also developed a career as a composer, and his masterly set of six violin sonatas are still spoken of by performers in hushed tones.

The Ysaye Quartet, which performs in the Town Hall tonight, was founded in 1984 and took the Belgian violinist's name for its fame, and because the public never forgets an unusual name once they've mastered it. Think of the Amadeus Quartet.

Luc-Marie Arega, the Ysaye Quartet's second violinist, offers this information down the phone from Paris before finishing his preparations for the tour to New Zealand via Australia. Across the Tasman they're booked to play with pianist Pascal Roge, a long-term partnership that has produced famous performances, live and on CD. In New Zealand, the deal is just for the quartet (though Roge snuck into the North Shore last Wednesday with a dazzling, all-French solo recital).

Surprisingly perhaps, the quartet's programme here will feature only one French item, by Ravel, in a cosmopolitan line-up of Haydn, Bartok and even Puccini.

Arega says this is typical. "The Ysaye Quartet has always seen itself as a string quartet first and a French quartet second. If you look at the works we record you will see mostly mainstream quartets, but with plenty of French sauce here and there." And he's right. The quartet's CD listings show it's Mozart and Mendelssohn who appear most often.

Arega admits the importance of CDs, but he believes that a public concert is infinitely more special. "A concert is a unique event, with many facets. Some of the public know the music very well, some of them not at all. If we don't attract both types of listener and everyone in between, then our performance has failed. The public helps to create the world in which the music is being made, and the performers help the composer to speak. Other arts don't always require this rich chemistry. Painting for example, is a silent and a more private affair."

Asked what makes an Ysayef performance different, Arega opts for the rapport among the four players.

"Each of us has an individual identity, yet contributes fully to the rich interplay within the group. Sometimes it's difficult at rehearsals to keep this balance. We always have to choose our words carefully so that everyone feels encouraged rather than criticised. But now we are lucky. We've been playing a long time as a group, so we know each other very well, and have a level of understanding that I think shows in our concerts."

Passing on this kind of instinctive group music-making to the next generation is something the four Ysaye players have been doing in their home city of Paris, where they founded a course especially for young string quartets.

Now they are discovering that young performers are turning from the harsher spotlight of a solo career to the more sociable activity of chamber music and finding it much more satisfying.

"We are helping in a music-wave," he says proudly. Then he corrects himself. "No, it is deeper than a wave. It is a tide."