2024 in quotes
As we come to the end of 2024, here are a few of the interesting things I've been told by string players across the year...
I’ve been lucky enough to interview some of my favourite string players this year as part of my freelance work for BBC Music Magazine and The Strad. Here are just a few of the inspiring and interesting quotes they’ve given me, and links to the original articles.
Thank you for the time and attention you’ve given to Elbow Music this year, and may 2025 be full of beautiful, thrilling music and thought-provoking, inspiring musicians!
Happy New Year,
xAriane
Augustin Hadelich, Elbow Music
‘Everyone’s career is different and it’s more true now than it was in the past that people find their own unusual paths. Some people’s careers move very fast, some have a more steady progression. My career has a certain trajectory, and it’s not necessarily helpful to compare your career with mine. When you look at my career now, it might look like a normal solo career, but it wasn’t at the start. It is necessary to think creatively about the programmes you play and how to grow in all kinds of directions that interest you, and basically figure out who you are as a musician’
Vilde Frang, Elbow Music
‘Playing chamber music teaches me a lot about phrasing and to what extent one can be oneself. It’s always a balance that you need to search for in a chamber music setting – the feeling that one is just part of one organism. I always try to merge. That’s also what I try to achieve when I play with orchestras, too, but it’s much harder. Chamber music improves me as a musician’
Vilde Frang, BBC Music Magazine
‘The challenge of going on stage is that the mind interferes. You start to question basic movements, like walking on a pavement: “Am I right in putting my right leg in front of my left? What if I stumble?” It’s inevitable that you may indeed stumble at some point because you’re questioning these things. It’s exactly the same playing-wise. If I played a good concert the day before, I’m always asking myself, “How can I live up to what I did yesterday?” And that’s dangerous, because then the mind starts to think, “Oh but…” If I can achieve a state of mind where I’m curious – “I wonder what’s going to happen tonight?” – then if anything goes slightly awry, I don’t mind. I’m on a journey and maybe I stumbled, but I’m on a bigger mission than playing a note slightly flat. It’s an eternal struggle if you’re a soloist. Without risks, there’s no potential of better and worse concerts. That’s something you must live with’
Laura van der Heijden, BBC Music Magazine
‘Sometimes I look back and think, “Was I better then?” But I think lots of people do that. At different times in your life, you look back and sometimes it’ll be, “I was better then”, or sometimes you’ll have improved. It has so much to do with your mental state while you’re comparing yourself. Hopefully, I’ve found my own voice more, although to some extent that [BBC Young Musician] final was before I’d become self-aware. I was still very open to the world and maybe slightly naïve. I felt quite honestly myself and wasn’t afraid. Pretty much instantly after the final I felt a lot of pressure from myself – not necessarily from people around me. I felt I had something to live up to. That’s been a long process and I feel I’m just getting started trying to find out who I am as a musician, and to be that as honestly and truthfully as possible’
Edward Dusinberre, Elbow Music
‘In the past we did a couple of Bartók cycles in a day, and I wouldn’t do that again now. It’s not so much that I couldn’t get through it, but I don’t have the interest in it. I don’t want to jump through that particular sort of Olympics, whereas many years ago, it felt like a fun challenge. As you grow older, you have to get smarter and more efficient in the way you play. With the Schubert G major Quartet I got to a stage about 15 years ago where I found it hard to play. It’s so demanding that while I was happy to play it once off, I didn’t want to tour with it because it was too much maintenance and too taxing on the system. But in this formation of the Takács, the new conversations and interplay of musical ideas have caused me to change my mind. I find the piece easier to play and manage physically now than I did back then. I still wouldn’t necessarily play it ten nights in a row, but I never thought we’d record it again and doing so has been a real joy. I’ve come out the other side of the recording not feeling too sore.’
Edward Dusinberre, BBC Music Magazine
‘I associate my student life as having the wild highs where I could do absolutely anything and then the big lows where I thought I would never be a professional musician. Similarly, coming off stage, I’d either be completely ecstatic or in the depths of despair. Somehow as you get older, you learn to manage the ups and downs. When I joined the quartet I played well, generally, but my rehearsal technique wasn’t great. I was too dogmatic. You have to learn that people are different. Just because I react in a certain way, that’s not how someone else works. Developing empathy and understanding is difficult and it’s something that you have to work at every day’
Rachel Barton Pine, Elbow Music
‘It used to be that no conservatoire anywhere taught community engagement and now many of them do, but it still seems surprising that there are still some that don’t. Teaching students how to talk to people at a homeless shelter or to kids in a kindergarten classroom, or how to speak from the stage to their audience at a concert – all those types of communication skills are so key. We should know how to do our jobs and it’s crazy to think that you might graduate not having the skill to do the job you’re going to be hired to do, but also because knowing how to do those things helps teach you those values of connecting with the public and finding ways to share the music more effectively’
Andrej Power, Elbow Music
‘Diplomacy is key. Egos have to be left at the door, especially in an orchestra. As long as you’re respectful and diplomatic, and you show that your intentions are always to emphasise whatever the conductor wants, then you can work as a pair, and you get better results. There are some things we are required to do as musicians in an orchestra that we may personally not agree with on a musical level, but in the end, the conductor has the final say and you have to adapt’
My article on 100 days of practice, BBC Music Magazine
‘There’s a certain calm to surrendering to a plan – not necessarily understanding the point of each step or even having a clear belief in the outcome, but nevertheless following instructions, whether that’s a pattern or diet or exercise regime. And so, with the far sight of 100 days, I don’t necessarily know what I’m doing or what the outcome will be, but I know I’m at the start of something that will take me somewhere if I just hang in there and enjoy the moment’