1978 79 page
After our success in Brazil in the fall of 1977, we began to focus on establishing the Quartet on the national concert scene. Our obligations at Marywood College were not all that strenuous, which gave us time to rehearse on a daily basis. As with many people who find themselves in close daily contact, like that involved in the intense focus on the minute details of playing in a quartet, conflict can enter into their relationships, especially when they involve artistic egos. At the end of 1978, Janet had had enough, and decided for personal reasons that she would move back to Binghamton. She eventually married a cellist from another of the quartets that had started in the Young Artist Program the same year as the Audubon.
That spring we auditioned for her replacement and found Sharon Smith, who was just finishing her graduate studies in violin at the Juilliard School. A wonderful musician, full of artistic spunk and energy, she was a good match for the three of us, and we called her in New York shortly after her audition with an offer to join the Quartet. Of that audition, Sharon recounts, “I wasn’t given an audition repertoire list, and I was sight reading, while you all definitely weren’t! One of the pieces was Haydn’s “Sunrise”. You cooked a great Chinese dinner at your place that night – my first Hoisin chicken!”
The Audubon’s first concerts with Sharon took place on June 24th at the Mt. Gretna summer music festival. During the four-week festival, we performed six string quartets, opening with Haydn’s Quartet in B-flat major, “Sunrise” Op. 76, No. 4, and also participated in various mixed ensembles, ending that summer’s festival on July 23 with the Schubert Octet for strings and winds in F major, D. 803.
By the end of the Gretna festival, we had gained valuable experience working with each other during many hours of rehearsal, not only amongst ourselves, but with the guest artists.
In addition to returning to our teaching duties in Scranton, we moved ahead with the process of meeting with the Artist Representative Joanne Rile and securing a place on her roster. With our ambitions at an all-time high we met with Sharon’s father, a corporate executive, to get his advice and expertise in forming a non-profit corporation.
In addition to our ambitions to build larger audiences and establish a national reputation, we realized that the Quartet would have to increase both its income and its ability to travel beyond the region around Scranton, Pennsylvania.
We were successful on both accounts, as Joanne Rile agreed to manage us, and early in 1979, the Audubon Quartet was awarded 501(c)(3) non-profit status by the Internal Revenue Service, making it possible for us to receive grants from state and federal funding agencies.
It was an auspicious beginning to the New Year (1979). Shortly after the holiday season, a secretary from the Marywood music office had run down the hall and interrupted our rehearsal to tell us that we had a call from England. It was delightful to hear the voice of Sydney Griller, on the other end. Sydney Griller, the former first violinist of the Griller Quartet, who had been on the jury of the Villa-Lobos Competition in 1977 and had heard us there.
A new international string quartet competition was to be held in Portsmouth, England in April 1979, under the direction of Yehudi Menuhin. Mr. Griller, as a member of the jury, was very persuasive at convincing us to apply. Needless to say, we felt honored to be considered for such an event. I relayed his invitation to the other members of the Quartet, who had assembled around me in the office, and we agreed immediately to participate. We dashed back to our studio and began discussing a program and how we could afford to travel to England.
In February, we received a letter of acceptance from the competition administrator Dennis Sayer, and our preparations began in earnest for what was to be the next and final international competition of our career.
The Portsmouth competition was to be held in three stages, beginning with a two-part round, which included a compulsory performance of Mozart’s F major Quartet, K. 590, followed by quartet of choice, selected from a list of ten famous 20th Century quartets. We came prepared to perform Bartok Quartet No. 4 and were somewhat relieved that we had already performed the same late Mozart quartet under the stress of international competition in Evian two years earlier. All stages of the competition were open to a live audience.
It was a big event, with 20 string quartets invited to compete. They included 8 quartets from England, 4 from America, 2 from Romania and one each from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Hungary, and the Daniel Quartet, the same Israeli group we had met on the taxi ride in Munich.
The second stage (again in 2 parts), for quartets that survived the first stage, was a performance of a composition written especially for this competition by the English composer Alun Hoddinott. The parts to this new work had been given to each ensemble at the start of the actual competition. This gave each quartet an equal opportunity to learn and prepare the music, for the possibility of advancing to the next stage. The second portion was the performance of a work from a list of nine famous string quartets. We had come prepared to perform Dvorak’s Quartet in A-flat major, Op. 105.
The third and final stage of the competition was a Beethoven quartet of choice, excluding Opus 18. We had chosen the Quartet Op. 59, No. 3, in C major, with the famous and challenging last movement fugue (Allegro molto), played at Beethoven’s tempo marking: whole note=84 (half note=168).
Two memorable things happened during the competition, one hilarious and the other not so much. As we were backstage preparing to walk out and perform the Dvorak’s Quartet in A-flat major, we heard the announcement “…and now ladies and gentlemen, the Audubon Quartet will perform ‘A FLAT’ quartet by Antonin Dvorak”. That required us a long moment to regain our composure before we could begin.
The second memorable, following the final stage and our performance of the Beethoven, with the finale at breakneck and death-defying speed, occurred when we met Yehudi Menuhin, who scolded us that we “played the last movement too fast”. Trying to explain to him that we had attempted to follow the composer’s instructions, he simply repeated “it was too fast”.
Although we thought we deserved better, the Audubon Quartet was awarded third prize. With heads held as high as possible, we kept Bela Bartok’s words in mind: “Competitions are made for horses, and not artists”. However, we did receive some consolation from jury members kind enough to come to us after the competition and offer their personal comments. Amadeus Quartet violist Peter Schidlof told us that we were leading the competition until the final round. Rostislav Dubinsky, first violinist of the Borodin Quartet, told us that our Bartok “made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up”. Although the comments of Mr. Menuhin about our Beethoven were disappointing, we did return home a winner in England’s first international string quartet competition.
Over the span of the busy Audubon career, we did not stay in touch with Mr. Dubinsky or the other jury members other than Mr. Griller. Dubinsky was appointed to the faculty of Indiana University in 1981. It will always remain a missed opportunity that we did not build a relationship with him, as he passed away in 2011, the same year as the Audubon Quartet’s final season. However, the Quartet returned to England many times for concert tours and BBC recording sessions. During each of those visits, we made a point of contacting Mr. Griller and arranging coaching sessions with him, as we did with other distinguished quartet players throughout our career, to further unlock the musical secrets of the composers who wrote for the string quartet.