Sombre inspiration from the Holocaust

By WILLIAM DART

The St Lawrence String Quartet visits us next week with a swank calling card - their Grammy-nominated CD of Osvaldo Golijov's music. When I catch up with violinist Barry Shiffman, he pre-empts my first question: "The whole Grammy thing is a bunch of hype but it does catch people's attention. It was important that contemporary music got the nomination."

Were there any regrets? "It would have been great to go along to the party with Jennifer Lopez and all those fancy people, but we were giving a concert that night."

Fourteen years ago, when the quartet gave their first concert in Calgary, the slick Grammy set was far from the four Canadians' thoughts. The group's name suggested another agenda. "We wanted a strong association with Canada and, as the St Lawrence is the main waterway link with the US, it was a good choice."

The eventual move across the border - the quartet is on the music faculty at Stanford University in California - was inevitable. "Canada is geographically huge and yet its population is quite small. There are just not enough places to perform regularly and sustain an income. Crossing the border gives us access to a stunning number of chamber musicians and so many large festivals."

As they travel the world, they see themselves as roving ambassadors for Canadian music. But unlike the American Kronos Quartet, who specialise in the contemporary, the St Lawrence musicians like to maintain "a certain cross-pollination between the various styles. Playing the dead guys' stuff informs us when we come to do Golijov, and then Golijov frees us up for playing Haydn."

The Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov is a hot property these days and it's not difficult to gather that these musicians are pleased he gives them substantial scores and not wacky encores ("Even our encore basket is still pretty serious stuff," is Shiffman's dry aside.)

I'm not expecting the violinist's playful warning, "Don't come to Wednesday's concert if you expect to be relaxed" when I bring up the Golijov's Yiddishbuk, which is the centrepiece next week, in between Mozart and Tchaikovsky.

Ten years ago, this involved "working amazingly closely with Golijov on a daily basis. The first seeds of inspiration were drawings by some of the children in the Terezin concentration camp. Osvaldo saw them and translated them into music. At first, the opening movement looked like nothing; it sounded ugly and we didn't know what to play. We met up with him and it all started to come together as a combination of Jewish cantors' song, the screams of hell and the songs of angels."

These musicians don't stand on ceremony. "We don't sit and rehearse politely, we're intense and bring a strong advocacy into the rehearsal situation. There's no sitting on the fence. After all, you can't get conviction unless you yourself are convinced."

When founding cellist Marina Hoover decided to leave the group last year, auditioning a new member was "frightening and enlightening. Suddenly we had to define exactly what our quartet was."

Golijov's advice was to find someone crazy. "He was serious," laughs Shiffman, "because that's how he sees himself. In much the same way we're always willing to go a little nuts, throw ourselves into his music and allow ourselves to be completely subsumed by it."

In the end it was Italian Alberto Parrini who fitted the bill.

There's just too much to talk about with this man, from taking Janacek into Stanford dormitories to playing a Jack Body piece for a dance troupe. And, in case we're expecting too cosy a time with Mozart's K428 on Wednesday, Shiffman signs off with another of his friendly warnings ... "the first three notes could almost be Bartok".

Performance

* What: The St Lawrence String Quartet

* Where: Auckland Town Hall

* When: Wednesday March 26, 8pm