Balanescu Quartet charmed by Long
Admiration for Romanian violinist Alexander Balanescu’s renowned Quartet has led Vyvienne Long, one of our most idiosyncratic musicians, to invite them to Ireland on a national tour.
The Balanescu Quartet are noted for their collaborations and their confounding of expectations. Long toured with their cellist in 2010. “I was always aware of what the Balanescu Quartet was doing, because I really liked their style and everything they did and how they did it,” she says, citing their covers of German techno pioneers, Kraftwerk, as much as their original output.
Long asked the cellist to collaborate with her, but he said Ireland couldn’t afford the Quartet. “Which sounded a little bit pompous, but it was kind of true,” she says. “But I really liked the idea of it and I thought it would be a great collaboration. So, I put in an application to the Arts Council and I got some funding. I’ve been having a very sort of purse-pinching period the last few months, just living on dry toast and horse burgers to get them over. So that’s what it takes, but it’s happening, so it’s great.”
The Balanescu Quartet exist in a rarefied world, moving effortlessly between artists such as Philip Glass and the Pet Shop Boys. But the Dublin cellist was undeterred. “If you want something to happen, you’ll just do anything and go to any lengths. Like, it’s been a real challenge from every single angle. It hasn’t been easy.
“You know, financing it is one thing and then, musically, it’s a massive undertaking, as well, to arrange all my music for string quartet and that requires an awful lot of work and preparation,” she says.
“They’re an international group and they tour the world, but they have never toured Ireland before. I don’t know if that’s a reflection on Ireland’s ability to finance classical music of that calibre. I’m not sure. I think, partly, yes.
“And, maybe, they’re just not so known here. They’re really very well-known in other parts of the world. I think they have the highest-selling classical music CD in England, and in other parts of the world they would be really high-profile for classical music. I mean, not that they are classical, because this isn’t a classical tour,” she says mischievously.
She has a point. The music of the Balanescu is conceived for amplified string quartet and is contemporary, while Long describes herself as a cellist who “writes songs about crazy stuff that I’ve never heard other people write songs about, so it’s so far from the centre it is hard to describe.”
For this tour, she will rearrange songs from her acclaimed debut album, Caterpillar Sarabande for the Quartet, and compose new material.
“There was a lot of choice, because they have a vast repertoire and it’s brilliant stuff. And, then, I’ve got my music. But there’s only two hours, really, in a concert, so we had a think about it and we decided to sort of share the concert. So they’re opening it, so the first 20 minutes is their Quartet stuff. And the rest of it will be my music.”
*Vyvienne Long ‘String Collision Tour’ March, 2013, featuring The Balanescu Quartet, plays The Holy Trinity Church of Ireland, Fethard, Co Tipperary on Thursday 28; Triskel Arts Centre, Cork, on Mar 1; The Freemasons Hall, Dublin, on Mar 2; Druid Lane Theatre, Galway on Mar 7; The Dock, Carrick-On-Shannon, on Mar 8.
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