Rising Quartet

String quartet players probably have more fun than any other musicians, for each of them--two fiddlers, a violist and a cellist--is in sole charge of a part that would be played by a whole section in an orchestra. But string-quartet music, limited to small halls, has a reputation as "difficult" listening. It has none of the sensational blare and boom of a symphony, its finely-spun lines are pared to essentials, requiring the listener's intense concentration; also, it lacks a conductor, whose dramatics an audience can follow. Today, the way for a quartet to establish a name is to play, of all things, modern music. Reason: it brings almost certain notoriety with the public, and awe with other musicians and critics. Paris' rising Parrenin Quartet* has done just that. Last week touring the U.S. for the first time, the group played in Manhattan's Public Library; it lived up to its notoriety, inspired its share of awe.

Forced Labor. It proved to be a blooded group, fully capable of stirring up a roomful of excitement while its players maintained a kind of Gallic detachment. In a program of modern French music, they gave a virtuoso performance, rippling through the runs with the clear articulation of woodwinds, melting into the passionate sections with sharply contrasting warmth. The players neatly sorted out the intricacies of Martinet's twelve-tone Variations and romped through Milhaud's dancy, polytonal Quartet No. 13. They spectacularly dramatized Martinon's Quartet, Op. 43, with its melodramatic outbursts, its massed tonal tumbles, its lovely patterns in the adagio movement and its one incredible moment of whistling, fluting overtones.

Today the Parrenins are admired across Europe, but in 1942 they were simply superior students at the conservatory who liked to make music together. During the occupation, they might have been sent to forced labor in Germany--or at least to careers as orchestral musicians, which they felt would also mean oblivion--but for the intervention of the late conservatory director, Claude Delvincourt, who provided them with fake identification and ration cards, got them financial support that allowed them to go on playing as a quartet.

Enthusiastic Search. By 1944 the group was becoming familiar to French radio listeners, but the members still supported themselves and their wives by jobbing in local orchestras. In 1948 Delvincourt lent them a house in Paris (willed to him by a music-loving friend). "It was very little, very dirty, very uncomfortable," says Jacques Parrenin. "Our wives didn't want to live there." Actually, after some refurbishing, all members and their families have lived there contentedly for the past eight years, played from morning till night. They got a few concert dates, and in 1952 came the break: they were asked to play a difficult modern work (by Germany's Hans Werner Henze) at a German music festival. Other quartets had taken one look at the score and declined, but the Parrenins accepted, found themselves on the way to fame.

Since then, the Parrenins have worked 58 pieces into their repertory, including such imposing quartets as the six by Bartok and the one by Elliott Carter. Ahead for the booming Parrenins after their U.S. tour: tours of England, Europe, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, and an enthusiastic search for more modern chamber music.

*Named, as are many quartets, after the first violinist. The members: Jacques Parrenin, Marcel Charpentier, Serge Collot, Pierre Penassou.

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