A place of joy
The Doric String Quartet performs at Wigmore Hall and Concertgebouw this month and then tours the US. Their viola player Emma Wernig describes the drama and joy of the programmes and explains the group’s approach to rehearsals, including the importance of staying present
What was your experience of the Doric String Quartet before you joined in 2024?
The Dorics have always been part of my musical world. I listened to them live for the first time at their teaching course in Mull. Ying wasn’t there, unfortunately, but I heard them playing individually in different groups and loved everything they were about. A year later, I played quintets with them at a festival in Norway and heard their Beethoven and Schumann as well. It was exactly how I would have wanted to play, and I realised it was my dream to join them. During Covid, I played string quartets with friends, and we used the Dorics’ Haydn recordings for inspiration, among many others of theirs. So it feels very much like I’ve come full circle.
Has the quartet’s sound changed since you and Maia became part of the group?
The sound of any quartet is made up of the people who are in it, and that evolves naturally, but the quartet's principles of music making have remained the same. We all come with similar artistic and aesthetic attitudes. We’re all honest musicians with a shared dream of what we want to achieve.
What is the quartet’s rehearsal process?
It’s mostly a lot of slow playing, listening closely to what the piece has to say without yet putting what we think it needs on top. We observe how the music changes and evolves, and try to allow that to happen as organically as possible. When you spend a lot of time with a work, it becomes increasingly difficult to remain present in that process because you already know what’s coming. You want the understanding and quality of playing, but also to feel surprised by every moment, as if it is the first time you’re hearing it. Whether it’s the first rehearsal or the twentieth time we’re playing a piece, the way we rehearse is similar: stripping back the music, trying to simplify our thoughts, and as simple as it sounds, just listening.
How do you make sure rehearsals are productive?
There’s a general rehearsal rule never to say no. Even when there are different views, we always try to see if an idea will work before deciding against it. We cultivate a general attitude and culture of respect, which is important. Many quartets have one person who speaks more than the others, or someone who runs the rehearsal, but in this quartet, we’re somewhat uniquely all quite equal in our contributions. It’s a highly collaborative process. We love getting into the details necessary to make a refined performance, and often the most helpful thing when we are deep in discussion, is when one of us reminds us, ‘Let’s just play’. That ends up being the most helpful thing – listening to what we’re actually doing. It’s a very wholesome, passionate process.
What was the experience of recording Beethoven quartets, in completion of the set?
Recording a Beethoven cycle is monumental. It’s been a huge learning opportunity and a massive privilege. This is the greatest music ever written and in a recordingyou have the chance to make it sound how you’ve always dreamed. It’s difficult to pick a version to be immortalised, though, especially as we are such a spontaneous group. Some people think you need to have lived with the pieces as a group for 20 years to be able to decide authoritatively what ‘the’ version is, but it will always be the version recorded that day and that moment. We are lucky that the quartet has always worked with Jonathan Cooper, an amazing recording engineer at Chandos, who understands what the group is about and has helped guide the process with so much trust and positivity.
The quartet is performing Mendelssohn’s First Quartet and Janáček’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ as the basis of your recitals on tour. How do these two pieces work together?
Mendelssohn and Janáček are both highly expressive. Even though this is Mendelssohn’s first quartet, and is seen as quite Classical, it’s already so emotionally advanced, like all his teenage writing, and gives a sense of everything else he has yet to write. It’s very lyrical and dramatic in moments, launching into extensive recitatives in the first violin, but always returning to a place of joy. The Mendelssohn is like a microcosm of everything that happens in the Janáček, which is one of the most dramatic string quartets ever written. That sounds hyperbolic, but it’s so frenetic and two-sided, and there’s even a murder in it – you can’t get more dramatic than that.
What are the viola parts like?
The viola has a prominent role in both Janáček quartets. In the ‘Kreutzer Sonata’, it actually signifies the moment of murder in Tolstoy’s original story, while in his second, ‘Intimate Letters’, it represents the ‘beloved’ of the letters. Many composers enjoy using the viola for its mournful or dramatic vocal qualities – rarely the cheerful tune. In the Mendelssohn, I’m more of a lyrical bridge, responsible for filling things out. There’s an old analogy of the quartet being a wine bottle, where the cellist is the bottle, the first violinist is the label, and the inner voices are the wine. That’s certainly the case in the Mendelssohn. As well as his gorgeous melodies, his textures are so wonderful – full of heart flutters and gorgeous harmonies. Playing Mendelssohn as the violist makes you feel you’re riding on an unseen wave of joy, an emotion that Mendelssohn harnesses like no other composer.
What makes a good programme?
There are many ways to create programmes, but it is always about offering the audience a journey. This can be chronologically linear, or there can be touchpoints in one piece that appear in another. Sometimes we like to do ‘sandwich’ programmes where you might have Beethoven quartets as bookends, with something different in the middle. A programme might be rooted in contrast or in works of one composer, or offer an emotional arc. We’re lucky that the quartet repertoire is filled with such incredible music that you could put almost any string quartets together and have something compelling.
How does playing the same repertoire across a tour affect your interpretations?
Performances are also part of the rehearsal process, and on tour we are lucky to get to play pieces many times. This allows us to be spontaneous, letting the music affect us in different ways and moving in one direction or another. It’s a small improvement here or little evolution of a phrase there that keeps you moving forward and eternally interested. The way we play is always different, based on the day, the rehearsal, the hall, the city, the space and the atmosphere of that moment. These all change how you interpret musical details. That’s wonderful, but it can also be frustrating, because one corner that may have been fantastic in one atmosphere is changed the next night. You have to be comfortable with that impermanence. One of the great joys of quartet playing is that you have the opportunity to be spontaneous in a unified way.
What does being in a string quartet teach you?
String quartet playing is the ultimate teamwork. It teaches you about compassion, problem-solving, conversation, listening, mindfulness – the list goes on! In terms of playing, it demands a technique that is multifaceted and specific. It’s a three-dimensional experience: you’re aware of yourself, but everything you do is in service of the music that exists outside yourself. You do something specific with your sound or articulation so that someone else is able to do something specific with their sound, to be able to support the third person, so that you can all support the fourth person to make a phrase happen the way you’d all like.
You have to be aware of all the different levels at once. I often have to be several people at once, as the viola line is often a second cello or third violin. Everyone’s ears have to be everywhere. The inner voices, especially, have to juggle about seven roles at any given moment and remain present but supportive. It’s a constant balancing act. There are about a million hidden jobs that no one ever sees, but your colleagues know you’re doing them, which is a lovely thing.
When you coach young string quartets what advice do you usually offer them?
It’s the same thing we say to ourselves, which is, ‘Are you actively listening to what you’re doing?’ We’re all attached to what we think we’re doing or want to be doing, living in that future version of ourselves, rather than being aware of what’s happening in the present moment and committing to that fully. You see a young group going for it passionately, which is wonderful, but they’re in four different places, instead of channelling that into the present moment together and letting it evolve organically.
It’s about removing ego and widening your perspective – and not from a place of fear. Everyone must listen genuinely and want to play together, or it won’t happen. It’s the same if you’re having a conversation or an argument. If everyone is saying ‘I have this idea and I’m passionate about it,’ and there’s no desire to find commonality, there won’t be any understanding.
There’s a lot of pressure on young groups to be interesting or different while being impossibly clean. You hear many good groups who make specific decisions and focus on delivering them precisely and exactly together. It’s so controlled that they can lose the natural quality that keeps the music alive with possibility, even at the risk of imperfection.
Selected tour dates
1 March Wigmore Hall, London
3 March Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam
US tour
17 March Market Square Concerts, Harrisburg
20 March Ashuelot Concerts, Keene
22 March Wisconsin Union Theatre, Madison
24 March Tuesday Evening Concert Series, Charlottesville
25 March Harvard Musical Society, Boston
26 March Chamber Music Houston, Houston
27 March Duke Arts, Durham
29 March Eastman-Ranlet Series, Rochester
