Word: chambers
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...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...
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...
...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...
...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...
...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...